In the month of June, there will be several good auctions. Sotheby’s will have a Fine Books and Manuscripts auction that will be happening on June 15th in New York City to their Impressionist and Modern Art action happening on June 20th in London. This will be an interesting sale that I will look forward to. I am not going to lie and say I know a lot about Fine Books and Manuscripts. I LOVE to read, and I know which books that I would consider a good book and which ones I would not…like right now I’m reading Emile Zola’s Nana, which I’ve just started reading, and I know a few things to look for in a book to see if it is at least considered an okay or good book…but until further notice, I will say that I know nothing in regards to having the ability to say what a book is worth and what it is not.
Yet another sale that Sotherby’s will be doing on Wednesday, June 20th in London will be their Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale (34-35 New Bond Street London W1A 2AA) at 10:30am and 2:30pm. This sale includes work by Jean Arp (from 1960 to ’65) and surrealist Joan Miro (later works, 1970, 1978 and others) to Henri Matisse, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.
The one constant in the works that Sotheby’s is auctioning off is that the works are by the artist in their later life, not when they were in their prime. These works seem to be, for the most part (excluding works like Dali’s La Maison Surrealiste c. 1949) as the artist are on their way out or right before they pass. Yes, there is a market for these works, a grim look on life, seeing an artist’s last grasp at something that they were at one point in time renowned for, however when Joan Miro, a surrealist (which had their day from the mid 1920s (some say as early as 1922 with ManRay others when the first Surrealist Manifesto of either 1924 and yet others in the year 1929, that is why I say the Mid 1920s), having his work from 1970 (the work I’m referring to is Tete [Sale Lot #116] which was executed on the 31st of March, 1970), almost 50 years since the Surrealist movement had had it’s day and only 13 years before Miro died, can be appealing to some people, to own the last bit of history of an artist.
However, I remember watching a documentary, I don’t know if it was from the Tate Modern or had a retired curator from the Tate that stated even Andy Warhol, who most consider one of two of the greatest artist of the 20th century, if not the greatest, as well as one of the five artist that changed art forever, couldn’t get an exhibition in the last years of his life, that actually when Warhol passed on, the Tate had been taking steps and scheduled an exhibition of his work, his first one in over five years (and if I am wrong on this, either way far off or if there was another exhibition that came closer to his death than this one that was in the works, please let me know and comment) or longer as he had been all but forgotten about outside of the work that he had done in the late 1950s to the early 1960s.
That is the way that it happens with art. As the artist grow older and their work no longer fits into the world around it (as Miro’s work Tete was done in the Pop Art era, when screen printing and BenDay Dots were all of the rave), the work can be seen as the artist doing what he/she loves the most, which is art for art’s sake. For the most part, their work is not being sold for what it was (Example that Tete has an estimated value of $243,000-324,000 and Salvador Dali’s Deesse De La Pluie [Sale Lot #119] is estimated at $40,500-57,000, a price fare less than work created in their prime) can bring the buy to sure that they might be buying a beautiful piece of work, but the price is there namely for the sake of the the artist who created it, and nothing more.
To see the works up for sale, including the catalogue notes and the provenance on the auction, please go to the Sotheby’s Auction Website or to see the exact works that I reference in this article, please visit the following:
Joan Miro’s Tete
Salvador Dali’s Deesse De La Pluie
Art and Auction 