June 2012

There are two things that I want to talk about in this article.  One is the action happening at Christie’s on June 12th at 1pm in London of Rock & Roll Memorabilia. Some of the items include Jeff Beck’s guitar and case (Lot #2), a collection of Jimi Hendrix items (Lots 18-25), one of Buddy Holly’s shirts (Lot #26), some of Michael Jackson’s items (Lots 27-31) to a pair of Madonna’s boxer shorts that she wore in the 1985 Orion Pictures file Desperately Seeking Susan (Lot #38) and a signed LP and poster by Nirvana.

One of my favorite pieces is a posted of Bob Dylan (Lot #53) The estimate price is $460-$770.  The poster is one of a kind and beautiful.  Christie’s has the Lot description as follows:

“Psychedelia/Bob Dylan – Two promotional poster, one featuring Bob Dylan Mister Tambourine Man, 1967, and Donovan, Sunshine Superman, 1966, art by Martin Sharp — both 30x20in and framed.

Mister Tambourine Man

Bob Dylan Mister Tambourine Man, 1967

There are a lot of other really amazing things in this auction that such as a fanzine from the Sex Pistols.  This fanzine is of their classic “Anarchy in the U.K.”.  The fanzine is amazing.  It is of you classic 1980s punk rock girl, included with a bi-hawk, a skull earring in her left ear, the eye make up…the full works. Everything works with this cover, except for it’s condition.  The corners and edges look fine, however, there is a huge cease in the middle of the publication.  On the left side of the fanzine there is some major discoloration around the fold  and on the right side of the post, it looks like there are a couple of holes along the fold.

Now the fanzine (Lot #113 Est. price of $769-$1,075) is beautiful, printed by none other than ZigZag and it features the photos by Ray Stevenson of the Pistol’s trip to Paris in 1976. It is 17x12in.

Now the thing is that there are a lot of signed pieces, from the Beatles (Lennon, Harrison, Star and McCarthy) to the Rolling Stones.  Now I don’t doubt that Christie’s had the signatures verified…but they don’t say this anywhere.  Now I trust the company, yet I have also worked in the music industry.  I know that when you have an autograph book and bring it to a show, the last thing on  your mind is “How am I going to verify that this is so-and-so’s signature???” Yet, I personally would feel better about the sale if Christie’s would just mention that yes, the signatures have been verified as authentic. If they can’t be authenticated or the auction house is going to fail to provide that information for the general public prior to the sale, then how do we know they are real or how are to know we are not going to spend several hundred to thousands of dollars on a piece of paper.

Okay, the next auction I would like to talk about is the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on June. 19th 2012 at Sotheby’s. This sale is going to be amazing.  There will be some beautiful works from Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edvard Munch, Joan Miro and works from the Private collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D Rockefeller 3rd which includes works by Pierre Bonnard and Paul Signac.

The other collections are from individual artist like the collection of Eight Watercolours by Wassily Kadinsky, while there are single pieces by partist like Picasso, Henry Moore, Otto Dix, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, van Gogh and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. These works are beautiful, simply breath taking.  This collection that Sotheby’s has is  collection that I would like to have in my own personal collection. Now, these pieces are not as noteworthy as what one would see in the MoMA or the Louvre, but these works are still as breath taking as ever and when the artist is still in their prime, or at the end of their prime (not as the other article where we saw artist being sold 40-60 years after their prime), and each one of the works is well worth their asking prices.

Claude Monet – The Seine at Bougival c. 1869

 

For Further information on the Sotheby’s Auction, please click the link.

For Further information on the Christie’s Auction, please click the link.

May 2012

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