Following Phillips’s $12m success with John McEnroe’s sale of Helter Skelter I in London last Winter, the auction house has secured the pendant for sale with an $8m low estimate and a third party guarantee.

Phillips is pleased to announce that it will offer Mark Bradford’s Helter Skelter II, a large-scale work executed in 2007, at its May 16 Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in New York.

Its companion work, Helter Skelter I, was sold by Phillips on behalf of tennis great John McEnroe at its March 2018 auction in London for a record price of $12 million. It was purchased by The Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Phillips had previously held several auction records for the artist for his works Constitution IV and Rat Catcher of Hamelin III.

Jean-Paul Engelen, Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said: “We are thrilled to offer Mark Bradford’s masterpiece, Helter Skelter II, in our May Evening Sale after realizing a world-record price for its companion work last year. These works were first shown side-by-side in 2008 at the inaugural exhibition Collage: The Unmonumental Picture at New York’s New Museum. Since then, the artist has secured his reputation as one of the leading lights of his generation and is internationally lauded for his brilliant pursuit of socially and politically conscious abstraction. His work has been exhibited around the world, and he represented the United States in the 2017 Venice Biennale. It is an honor to represent this great painting.”

Helter Skelter II summons the Manson Family cult murders in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. The attacks were spurred by Charles Manson’s attempts at igniting an apocalyptic race war and blaming black militants for his murders of celebrities, which he dubbed ‘Helter Skelter’ after the Beatles song. The gouged and torn canvas bears witness to the artist’s clever ability to exploit the creative and expressive force of destruction, addressing the persistent issues of race, crime and celebrity culture that continue to structure urban America.

Helter Skelter I and II were created concurrently to his series of silver-clad abstractions that debuted at his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007. Both paintings represent the shift in the artist’s practice characterized by a departure from his earlier grid-like work towards more monumental compositions.

There’s been a building frustration with estimates in the auction market, especially the Modern market where great works of art can have the most recognized ‘asset’ value and a mature art market has raised expectations by sellers. With that in mind, Christie’s announcement this morning that it will be selling a carved stone head by Amadeo Modigliani with a $30m low estimate is refreshing. Four and a half years ago, another example of these works was sold at Sotheby’s for $70m. This work is different from that one. But the estimate range should definitely attract bidders.

Here is Christie’s release on the statue:

On May 13, Christie’s will offer Amedeo Modigliani’s limestone sculpture, Tête, carved circa 1911-1912, in its New York Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art (estimate: $30-40 million). The present work is among the finest examples of the approximately twenty-six carved stones that defined Modigliani’s sculptural output, and one of the last left in private hands.

Giovanna Bertazzoni, Co-Chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art, remarked: “It is an immense privilege to have the opportunity to offer Tête in New York this May. This is a magical and alluring work by one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Modigliani’s pure and daring shapes have always attracted the attention of international collectors whose collecting interests range from Old Masters, to Modernism and Contemporary art and Contemporary Art. This marks the first time that one of Modigliani’s highly sought-after carved heads has been offered at auction in five years. The last example was sold in 2014 for a very strong price, offering a perfect illustration of the extraordinary demand around these sculptures, which are so rarely available.”

Adrien Meyer, Co-Chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art, continued: “Tête is one of the last sculptural masterworks by Modigliani in private hands, made all the more desirable by the fact that Modigliani identified himself primarily as a sculptor. The outbreak of WWI and Modigliani’s physical exhaustion had lead him to abandon sculpture abruptly. Up at auction for the very first time, its tremendous rarity makes it a perfect complement to Modigliani’s moving oil portrait of muse Lunia Czechowska, from the collection of Drue Heinz presented in the same sale.”

Alongside Picasso, Brancusi and Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani is rightly recognized as one of the pioneering masters of Modern sculpture. Modigliani differs from these artists however, in that his reputation is founded almost solely upon a unique series of works, all made in a brief and concentrated burst of creativity between 1911 and 1914. This series comprised of a sequence of twenty-six unique sculptures all created in Montparnasse in the years running up to the First World War. As the British artist Augustus John remarked after first encountering Modigliani’s sculpture in 1913, these “stone-heads affected me deeply. For some days afterwards, I found myself under the hallucination of meeting people in the street who might have posed for them; and that without myself resorting to the Indian Herb. Can ‘Modi’ have discovered a new and secret aspect of ‘reality’?” (quoted in A. Werner, op. cit., 1962, p. XVIII).

The present sculpture is a work that displays many of the unique motifs common to the finest of Modigliani’s stone heads. The frontal, hieratic position of the head; the elongated face; long, trapezoidal nose; smiling, v-shaped mouth; elongated ear-lobes and pointed chin are all distinguishing features, common to many of these pioneering works, but not found altogether in any of them, except here. In Tête, as in all of Modigliani’s sculptural heads, each of these features has been seamlessly amalgamated and refined into a unique configuration. The resulting effect conjures a personal, idiosyncratic sense of portraiture.

Because Modigliani was later to be so acclaimed for his painting, it is sometimes overlooked that the artist saw himself primarily as a sculptor. He had longed to be a sculptor ever since his first discovery of Michelangelo in his youth. But, it was only after becoming close with Constantin Brancusi in Paris in 1909 that Modigliani began a practice of making his own carved sculptures; learning, under Brancusi’s direction, to carve, first into wood, and subsequently into stone.

By 1911, Modigliani had abandoned painting almost entirely and from then on, until around 1914, sculpture became almost his sole practice. Between 1911 and 1914, Modigliani produced almost all his known sculpture, very few paintings and a vast number of drawings and gouaches, all related either to sculpture or to sculptural projects. Tête is one of the series of either limestone or sandstone heads that Modigliani carved during this period.

At the basis of Modigliani’s sculptural vision was an innate concept of a sublime, timeless and all-encompassing beauty. This was a quality he had first divined from much of the Ancient Greek and Roman art he had encountered as a student in Rome and Florence. And, it was this, “truth in beauty”, he had written as a young man, that had laid the foundation for all his subsequent artistic endeavors.

Christie’s has announced today that it will be taking an unconventional route to expand in the market for decorative objects, furniture and other collectibles by opening a physical location in 1st Dibs new Terminal Stores location on 11th Avenue in Manhattan as well as a appearing as a vendor on the 1st Dibs platform.

1stdibs, the leading digital marketplace for the world’s most beautiful things, and Christie’s, the world’s leading art business, have jointly announced a collaboration that introduces a special collection presented by Christie’s available for purchase through 1stdibs.

Starting May 1, 2019, Christie’s will be an exhibitor at the 1stdibs Gallery in New York City, also selling its “Christies for 1stdibs” collection exclusively through the new Christie’s digital storefront on 1stdibs.com. This will allow collectors to access Christie’s listings without having to wait for an auction. A preview of the collection has gone live online today, with a select number of works available for immediate purchase.

The offering features approximately 100 items of furniture and decorative objects with prices starting below $1,000. The sale will feature property from various consignors, including esteemed interior designer Juan Montoya, who is curating the Christie’s exhibition at the 1stdibs Gallery and is a member of the 1stdibs Trade Program.

“We are delighted to work with Christie’s, renowned globally for their esteemed auctions, record-breaking sales, and expertise in the fine and decorative arts to offer these specially curated objects for purchase immediately in a new and exciting format for Christie’s,” said Cristina Miller, Chief Commercial Officer, 1stdibs. “There is tremendous synergy between 1stdibs and Christie’s, and we look forward to exploring additional ways to offer continued benefit to our combined networks of collectors and interior designers.” 

“The collaboration with 1stdibs, the leaders in ecommerce luxury goods, is an exciting opportunity for Christie’s,” comments Matthew Rubinger, Deputy Chief Marketing Officer, Christie’s.  “Through offering a buy it now option for this specially curated group of furniture and objects beautifully designed by Juan Montoya, we are providing more options for our discerning collecting base. In addition, we are thrilled to introduce Christie’s to a whole new group of collectors, many of whom are based in New York as well as connect with new buyers entering our market digitally.”

Some of the standout objects from “Christie’s for 1stdibs” collection will include a pair of Swiss ‘black forest’ large antler trophy mounts, circa 1905-1906; a pair of Indonesian ‘Art Deco’ stained wood and caned bergere; a pair of French ‘Art Moderne’ mahogany and caned armchairs; a massive Minton majolica aubergine-ground ‘Marochetti’ cistern; and a group of seven petal-form side tables designed by Juan Montoya.

Galerie Gmurzynska will be bringing a 30 x 42 foot stage drape painted by Natalia Goncharova for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes just before the outbreak of the first world war.

As a unique art fair exhibition concept Galerie Gmurzynska will present at the year’s TEFAF at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, a single masterpiece of enormous scale and seminal historic importance. The 9 x 13 meter (30 x 42 feet) painting was created for the world’s most famous ballet company of all times, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and was presented 105 years go in Paris and London only weeks before the outbreak of World War I. Le Coq d’Or was one of the last productions of Sergei Diaghilev.

As at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005, the work will be suspended from the ceiling of the great hall of the Park Avenue Armory and will be accompanied by a special exhibition stand (by the famed designer Tom Postma) at the entrance to the fair.

Natalia Goncharova’s backdrop is the only surviving large scale painting from this Diaghilev production but also one of the very few important large scale backdrop paintings, such as Picasso’s stage cloth for Diaghilev’s Le Train Bleu from 1924, today in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Le Coq d’Or was sold in 1968 at the famed Diaghilev Sale at Sotheby’s London, as has since been shown at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Royal Albert Hall in London, and the MART Museum with a Skirt publication entitled The Dance of the Avant-Gardes, paintings, scenes and costumes from Degas to Picasso, to Matisse to Keith Haring.

The presentation at TEFAF coincides with a strong renewed interest in the world of Natalia Goncharova, with a major retrospective of the artist set to open at the Tate Modern in London in June with a Room dedicated to Goncharova and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes including designs for Le Coq d’Or. It is also noteworthy that a 1916 painting by Goncharova was recently sold at Christie’s London for over $8m.

Le Coq d’Or will be accompanied by an in-depth Galerie Gmurzynska publication, with historic photographs and texts by renowned scholars such as John Bowlt and Germano Celant, as well as documentary film material.

The documentation will include two original drawings. A portrait of Natalia Goncharova by her husband Mikhail Larionov and a costume design by Goncharova for Le Coq d’Or.