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George Michael’s Collection of YBA Art at Christie’s in March

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MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN (b. 1941) Commissioned Self-Portrait (George) (£60-80k)

Christie’s reveals today that it is offering George Michael’s art collection for auction in London this March. Here’s their release:

George Michael’s private art collection represents a dialogue with his own British contemporaries, artists such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Michael Craig-Martin, and Marc Quinn, who rose to prominence by challenging the status quo of the time, and together creating the Young British Art movement. Through visits to galleries and artists’ studios, he developed friendships with many of the YBA artists whose work he deeply admired. The collection represents George Michael’s dedication to cutting-edge creativity in every field and reflects his instinctive support of young emerging artistic talent.

Wham! was the first major Western act to perform in China, playing two historic concerts in 1985. In 2019, Christie’s will pay tribute to the groundbreaking spirit of George Michael with an expansive global tour of the Collection including a stop in Shanghai, and concluding in London with the works appearing in a public view at Christie’s headquarters. The flagship auction will take place on 14 March, alongside an online sale which will be open for bidding from 8-15 March, with estimates ranging from £400 – £1,500,000, offering fans and collectors alike a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire a work owned by George Michael.

Key works of the sale will include Tracey Emin, Drunk to the Bottom of my Soul, 2002; Damien Hirst, The Incomplete Truth, 2006, Bridget Riley, Songbird (1982); and Michael Craig-Martin, Commissioned Self-Portrait (George) (2007).

Additional key works from The George Michael Collection will be unveiled during the global highlights tour, beginning in New York from 8-11 February. The tour will continue to Los Angeles where works will be on view from 11-16 February, Hong Kong from 19-22 February, and Shanghai from 23-28 February. The complete collection will then be open to public view at Christie’s King Street, London from 9-14 March, with the sale taking place on the evening of 14 March.

Comprising more than 200 lots across both the live auction and the online component, “The online sale will allow fans and collectors alike to participate globally, with estimates starting from as little as £400,” said Paola Saracino Fendi, Specialist, Post-War & Contemporary of Christie’s.

Works in the Macklowe Collection Enumerated for Sale

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This court document with the Macklowe art schedules is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here. We'll keep the initial sales reports outside of the paywall before they are only available to subscribers.

Judge Draper granted Linda Macklowe a list of 15 works that are sentimentally valuable to her in the Macklowe divorce. There is no dispute over the valuation for these works so Linda Macklowe can pay Harry Macklowe $20m for his half of the $40m the 15 works are worth and keep them for herself.

The remainder of the collection will be sold to determine its value fairly, Draper has decided. She divided those works into two schedules. The first represents the highest value works which carry very different appraisals from the experts each side hired. Here are those works and the value ranges between the two experts:

Schedule II

Andy Warhol Nine Marilyns $50m

Alberto Giacometti, Le Nez $35-65m

Michael Heizer Track Painting 1967 $150k-$1.7m

Robert Irwin, Untitled (1965-6) $2m v $8.5m

Jeff Koons Vest with Aqualung $10m - $11m

Jackson Pollock, Number 17 $35m  v $15m

The secnd schedule lists the works to be sold presumably in May of 2019 for which there are no agreed upon valuations:

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Judith Neisser’s Art, $10.8m Worth of It, Shines at Sotheby’s

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Quietly included in Sotheby’s Contemporary art sale next week is some of the collection of Judith Neisser, a fixture in Chicago and Aspen where she was a pillar of the art and museum community. A trustee of both the Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary art there, Neisser was a collector of minimalism and conceptual art. She was also an accomplished writer on art. Many of her works have been donated but Sotheby’s has 32 works with a combined low estimate of $10.8m on offer. A few other works will be sold next year.

Next week, a clutch of works by Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly, Donald Judd and Lucio Fontana will be featured in the Evening sale of Contemporary art.

An additional 28 works from the collection will open the day sale (lots 101 – 128).

Across several decades, Chicago-based collector Judith Neisser amassed an extraordinary collection of Contemporary art that is widely acclaimed for its special emphasis on Minimalist and Conceptual Art. The thematically-cohesive collection is distinguished by its explorations of the monochrome, seriality, and minimalist abstraction, and stands as a testament to Judith Neisser’s remarkable taste, prodigious scholarship, and patronage of the arts.

Sotheby’s will offer works from Judith Neisser’s collection across our Evening and Day Auctions of Contemporary Art this November. The Evening Auction features: Robert Ryman’s 1961 Untitled, an important example of the artist’s early work that has remained in her collection since 1997 (pictured right, estimate $1.8/2.5 million); Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, executed in metallic gold and epitomizing the essence of the artist’s iconic career (estimate $1.5/2 million); Donald Judd’s Untitled, an exceptional work composed entirely of galvanized iron and executed during Judd’s most transformative period (estimate $1.5/2 million); and Cy Twombly’s Untitled, painted in 1970 during the apex of the artist’s celebrated Blackboard works (estimate $2.5/3.5 million).

Christie’s Says Signac Record Should Fall in February

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Christie’s is promoting a collection of Impressionist art as well as drawings, sculpture, English and European decorative arts, not to mention 20th Century design. The bulk of the collection which is being sold to fund a charity will go on the block in December. Five paintings from the collection will be held for the London sales of Impressionist and Modern art in February. Leading that sale is a work by Paul Signac. Christie’s claims this is the most important work by Signac to come to market in two decades.

Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892) is one of the first works that Signac painted in St Tropez where he had gone after the death of his friend Georges Seurat. The work is offered with an estimate upon request. Christie’s believes this painting will set a new record for the artist. In 2007, a buyer paid $14m for one of Signac’s works. That suggests Christie’s estimate range for the work will be £12-18m.

Here’s Christie’s release on the entire collection:

Christie’s will offer an eclectic and carefully curated collection, titled An Adventurous Spirit: An Important Private Collection Sold to Benefit a Charitable Foundation, across two London sales in December 2018 and February 2019. Major works from the collection will be exhibited together in an exhibition in London during Christie’s Classic Week in early December.An Adventurous Spirit provides a remarkable view of a unique collection across many fields, from Impressionism to 20th Century Design, which was shown in beautiful homes in London, Saint Tropez and Saint Barths. Visitors to the galleries will witness a recreation of the extraordinary mis-en-scène, with masterpiece paintings presented alongside the great objects and artworks as they were shown in these exquisite homes. The Collection Sale on 13 December 2018, will describe the discerning eye of a significant collector, embracing paintings, drawings, sculpture, English and European Decorative Arts and 20th Century Design. Following the Collection Sale, five major paintings by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Edouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini will be highlights of the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 27 February 2019. This inspirational and deeply personal collection provides evocative insights into the creative joy of collecting and connoisseurship and the matching of fine objects with Impressionist artworks.

Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s: “Every object and every painting in the collection has been chosen with considerable care and with a grand design in mind. These were homes of wonderful contrasts, filled with joy, and with refined objects which caught the eye and the imagination. The Signac is amongst the finest of the artist’s great Opus paintings, and certainly amongst the greatest of Signac’s works in private hands. The Caillebotte and the Vallotton are also museum quality pictures which will challenge the world records for the artists. Both were bought here at Christie’s and it is a privilege to be handling these works again and to see them exhibited as they have been shown by this great collector, and a close friend, for so many years.”

Albada Jelgersma Collection ‘A Seminal Moment’ for Old Master Market, Says Christie’s

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In what Christie’s is calling a “seminal moment for the Old Master market,” the December sales of Old Master paintings in London will feature two sales comprising the collection of Eric Albada Jelgersma and his wife, Marie-Louise. The Albada Jelgersma paintings will get their own Evening sale. The rest of the collection of furniture, drawings, silver and the like will fill a a 350-lot day sale. These sales will take place December 6 & 7. The Evening sale will feature a pair of Frans Hals portraits, above, estimated at between £8-12m, and works by Judith Leyster and Anthony van Dyck.

Here’s Christie’s release:

Christie’s will offer a landmark, two-part sale of The Eric Albada Jelgersma Collection in London on 6 & 7 December. This is one of the most important private collections of Golden Age Dutch and Flemish pictures to have been formed in living memory, revealing the unerring eye of Eric Albada Jelgersma and his wife Marie-Louise Albada Jelgersma for outstanding quality.

Christie’s will devote a special, stand-alone Old Masters Evening Sale to The Eric Albada Jelgersma Collection comprising over 40 paintings, including works by the greatest artists from the 17th century, notably Frans Hals, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Breughel the Elder, Judith Leyster and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder.

This sale is led by the finest pair of portraits by Frans Hals to remain together in private hands: Portrait of a gentleman, aged 37 and Portrait of a lady, aged 36 (estimate: £8-12 million) and includes arguably the most important Golden Age painting by a female artist left in private ownership, Merry Company by Judith Leyster (estimate: £1.5-2.5 million).

The Collection Sale will take place the following day and will comprise over 350 lots of furniture, decorative objects, sculpture, antiquities, silver, Asian works of art and a selection of the Old Master paintings. The quality and range of the Old Master paintings and works of art within the collection is extraordinary, and their appearance together at auction will constitute an historic pair of sales. Highlights will be on public view at Christie’s New York from 26 to 30 October and in Hong Kong from 23 to 26 November, ahead of the pre-sale exhibition opening in London on 30 November.

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