After bit of time off for an observation of what happened in the art world, I’m back. I had a post I was going to do about The Scream (of Nature) (Edvard Munch, c. 1893) a day before, but unfortunately I didn’t get it up in time and the sale just blew me away. $119.9M for the piece is mind blowing. The Scream is a fantastic piece of work and yes there are four total copies of the work that had been done, but the work that went up for auction at Sotheby’s Auctions was the last one still held in private hands. This painting was the highest price paid for a painting in auction (not to get confused with the 2011 private sale ofThe Cardplayers by Paul Cezanne that went for an estimated $250-$300M). The price for a single piece of this nature is amazing. If the work is worth that much or not, I’ll let the reader decide, however I have no doubt in my mind that it is the most recognizable piece of Expressionistic art work in the world.
However, the sale of Photographs at Christie’s this month that included works by David LaChapelle (two of them) that sold for what I thought they would, both reasonably priced for a former student of the great Andy Warhol.
Some other artist hit new personal best though thus far, including the likes of Jackson Pollock. This is one artist and his work that I would like to touch on for a second. Paul Jackson Pollock and his “drip” style paintings are amazing. I have tried in my own work to pay tribute to Pollock with my own gestural movements and did everything I could think of when it came to all of my past research on him. The thing is that even though the painting (which later came out to be a photograph in it’s final form) was good but no close to what Mr. Pollock could do. I later talked to the model, who was a painting student at the time at a local art school about Pollock and she said that she hated him, but couldn’t give me an actual reason why.
I bring this up for one simple reason. How can you hate this artist? The piece that sold at Christie’s was Number 28, 1951, for a price of $23,042,500 (Lot #22). The piece has everything a person could want in an Ab Ex work. It has beautiful expressionistic colors, the layering is fantastic, The gestural strokes are both beautiful and horrific at the same time. Pollock shows in this one piece why he is considered one of the five artist (with artist like Manet, Warhol, Caravaggio and Leonardo) who changed the art world forever. Why is his work only now seeing this type of numbers? Yes, Pollock only lived a short time, and his work really only ranged for the better part of ten years, but with more and more of his work being in either museums or in the hands or the Krasner/Pollock Foundation, the privately held pieces should be going up so much higher and quicker when they are up on the market, especially as rare as they are seen on the market today. I would say that this is a great buy for the piece, since it was on the low end of Christie’s estimated range, and if the buyer holds onto it, he/she will see a great return on the piece if they so choose to sale it in the future.
For more on this sale, please visit the Christie’s website.
Now for this month. There are a couple of sales that I am excited about. Christie’s sale 4225: Masters of Italian Photography 1945-1975 from the Collection of Paolo Morello coming up on June 12th, 2012. I have had a chance to look over the catalog and I will say that this collection if very impressive. The prices on average are around the $10-$12k range, which for the beauty alone should be worth it. However, even for the history buff that is out there, the time frame of these images, shot right after the Second World War, would be amazing. To see a country build it self back up, to see the beauty in the world that has been known for it romance, the beautiful blacks and whites of each image, they are just amazing. They would remind anyone, I feel safe to say, of their ideal romantic Italian getaway, showing how beautiful the country is and documenting a great 30 years of the Italian life. I would say that anyone who is fortunate enough to own one of these images will be lucky to have a great piece of photography in their position and the value should go up over time as well.
Enjoy.
Art and Auction 