Art Market Monitor

Another example of the back-to-back sales of similar work in this week’s auctions is this pair of Warhol Tunafish Disaster paintings. A much larger example sold in London this year for $6.1m. No doubt that helped spring these two examples from their owners.

Peter Brant is selling the picture at Christie’s where they’re looking to push the price level forward by pricing the work at $6-8m for a work that is very similar to the one that sold in London. At Sotheby’s they’re much more cautious putting a $1.5-2m estimate on their much smaller example with a single image.

Sotheby’s Tunafish Disaster

Christie’s Tunafish Disaster

Also of Interest:

• When Price Becomes Message
  An Australian artist, Van Thanh Rudd, has taken a novel approach to pricing his work and, in the process, made...
  
• Tunafish Correction
  Lindsay Pollock reports that Peter Brant is not the consignor of the Warhol Tunafish Disaster painting that was a, well,...
  
• Dueling Scully’s
  It’s become an all-too-common experience that major sales will contain one pair of very similar works by the same artist...
  
• India’s Conjoined Art Twins
  The Business Standard‘s Kishore Singh profiles Thukral and Tagra, or T&T, Punjabi artists who emerged from Ogilvy advertising to become...
  
• Christie’s PWC Wrap-Up
  Tuesday’s sale at Christie’s was filled with surprises and confusion. The overall strength of the sale where $75m in art...