Art Market Monitor

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

November 9, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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).

Phillips to Launch Selling Exhibition of Banksy in Hong Kong

November 8, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Phillips’ is bringing Banksy to Hong Kong in December with Banksy: Who’s Laughing Now? The exhibition to be held in the St. George’s Building opens November 17th to coincide with Phillips’ Hong Kong sales later in the month. It presents 27 works by the anonymous street artist, including significant and previously unseen artworks like the six-meter long Laughing Now (above) and Girl with Balloon, AP Gold, the now notorious image that introduced Banksy to an even wider audience around the world.

According to Phillips, the show will offer two portraits of Abraham Lincoln, executed after the series of New Orleans murals that Banksy created in 2008 as commentaries on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Miety Heiden, Deputy Chairman and Head of Private Sales: “The works highlighted in this exhibition illustrate the artistic achievements of Banksy over the last two decades. A visionary and trailblazer at the forefront of street art since the 1990s, Banksy has dedicated his career to challenging society’s perception of fine art versus street art. Banksy has been propelled to the forefront of today’s art market and we look forward to sharing these works with both new and longstanding admirers of his work.”

Artelligence Podcast: Hugues Joffre of Phillips

November 8, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Three years ago, after a career at Christie’s and as a private advisor, Hugues Joffre took over the task of establishing a Modern art department within Phillips, auction house noted for its expertise in cutting edge artists.

In this podcast, Joffre talks about the process of winning the kinds of 20th Century consignments that would help drive Phillips’ sales totals higher and position the auction house as a peer and alternative to Sotheby’s and Christie’s not only in Contemporary art but also in the art of the 20th Century.

Along the way, Joffre comments on the way young collectors develop and broaden their tastes, the future of the art market and the taste of the great Greek shipping collectors of the 60s and 70s.

Listen Here>>>>

Edward Hopper’s Valedictory Two Comedians Looks for $12m at Sotheby’s American

November 7, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Sotheby’s announced its line-up for the American art auctions auction on 16 November 2018. The sale will be led by Edward Hopper’s final painting, Two Comedians (estimate $12/18 million), as well as significant examples by American icons such as Norman Rockwell, Grant Wood, Georgia O’Keeffe, Horace Pippin and Robert Henri.

EDWARD HOPPER’S TWO COMEDIANS

The November auction is led by Edward Hopper’s iconic autobiographical painting, Two Comedians (estimate $12/18 million). Executed in 1966, Two Comedians represents the culmination of Hopper’s career and manifests a number of the most important themes that he explored in his art. The work depicts the artist and his wife Jo on stage, taking a bow before turning to walk into the unknown.

Hopper often used Jo as a model and muse, yet he typically portrayed her as an anonymous character and protagonist of his figural paintings. In contrast, Two Comedians explicitly depicts Jo holding the artist’s hand, symbolizing their close bond and the significant role she played in his life and career. Hopper’s choice of a stage for the framing device of this final work speaks to his lifelong interest in theater, as well as the voyeuristic and escapist themes that figure prominently throughout his body of work.

Extensively exhibited and illustrated in literature on Hopper and 20^th–century American art, Two Comedians is distinguished further by its notable provenance: it was acquired by Frank and Barbara Sinatra in 1972, and remained in their collection until it was purchased by the current owners in 1995.

GRANT WOOD’S SEMINAL PORTRAIT OF HIS SISTER, NAN

On offer for the first time in over 65 years, Portrait of Nan comes to auction at a time of heightened interest in Grant Wood’s work, following his recent 2018 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). This extremely personal work portrays Wood’s beloved sister Nan, whose likeness is most recognized in the artist’s American Gothic from 1931, one of the most iconic images in 20th century art. In response to the criticism the artist received for his stern depiction of Nan in American Gothic, Wood painted Portrait of Nan one year later as a heartfelt apology to his sister.

The only work Wood refused to sell in his lifetime, Portrait of Nan remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1942. In 1952, the work was purchased by Senator William Benton of Connecticut, the publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and an important patron of American modernism, and subsequently descended to his daughter Helen Boley, appearing at auction this November from her estate.

A NORMAN ROCKWELL CHRISTMAS

Leading the selection of five works on offer by Norman Rockwell is his Tired Salesgirl on Christmas Eve (estimate $5/7 million), which served as the cover illustration for the 27 December 1947 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, and which has remained in the same private collection since it was last sold in 1996. The painting depicts a department store employee on Christmas Eve after a strenuous shift, exhausted by the relentless onslaught of customers seeking last-minute gifts. To create this composition, Rockwell had elements of the scene photographed on-site at the Marshall Field department store in Chicago, and asked a 17-year-old waitress he discovered working at a diner nearby to pose as his protagonist. The work demonstrates Rockwell’s undeniable gift for visual narration, and captures an aspect of the holiday season that would become increasingly common throughout the century.

A RARE & MONUMENTAL CANVAS BY EMANUEL GOTTLIEB LEUTZE

The selection of Western art on offer this November is led by Emanual Gottlieb Leutze’s Western Emigrant Train Bound for California Across the Plains, Alarmed by Approach of Hostile Indians (estimate $2.5/3.5 million). Though Leutze was born in Germany in 1816 and spent most of his life living and working there, his paintings of the significant figures and historical events of 18^th and 19^th century America rank as the most celebrated images of his oeuvre – including his iconic image of Washington Crossing the Delaware (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Painted in 1863, this dynamic image represents one of Leutze’s finest achievements on the subject of Manifest Destiny and the struggle to tame the Wild West. Highly ambitious and sophisticated in both content and form, the painting exemplifies the unique synthesis of realism and idealism that allowed Leutze to successfully mythologize episodes of American history.

Measuring more than 5.5 feet across, the impressively-scaled work is being sold this fall to benefit the Dover Free Public Library in Dover, New Jersey, where it has resided since it was gifted to the institution in 1943.

HORACE PIPPIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WORK

A self-taught painter from West Chester, Pennsylvania, Horace Pippin began producing art at age 37, after his honorable discharge from the United States army due to an injury. The pastoral Holy Mountain, I presents an autobiographical scene, with a harmonic foreground that is contrasted by the soldiers marching through the ominous forested background (estimate $1/1.5 million). The painting is first in a series of four works Pippin executed on this subject. Reflecting both his personal experiences in World War II and the cultural climate of the period, the painting – datedJune 6, 1944 – corresponds with D-Day, further reinforcing the ideological dichotomy between war and peace. Holy Mountain, I last appeared at auction in 1981 at Sotheby’s New York, establishing the artist’s auction record of $385,000 that has held to this day.

THE ESTATE OF ESTELLE WOLF

Sotheby’s is also pleased to present a group of four works from the Estate of Estelle Wolf are led by Robert Henri’s At Far Rockaway from 1902, an important 20^th century landscape of Rockaway Beach in New York City that represents a pivotal moment in the artist’s career (estimate $700,000/1,000,000). At Far Rockaway represents one of the earliest examples of Henri’s works that demonstrate the influence of the Spanish tradition of painting, which turned the attention of a generation of important American artists including George Bellows and Edward Hopper toward the gestural European style.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait Mrs. Charles Anstruther-Thomson is another highlight from the Wolf Estate (estimate $450/550,000). The work depicts Anges Anstruther-Thomson, a fashionable member of London society and wife of prominent Scottish landowner Charles Anstruth-Thomson. The painting remained with Mrs. Charles Anstruther-Thomson and descended in her family until it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1981.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S SOUTHWESTERN INSPIRATION

Four years following our sale of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, Sotheby’s is honored to announce that we will again offer three important works by the artist from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico to benefit its Acquisitions Fund.

The American Art auction on 16 November is highlighted by Cottonwood Tree in Spring from 1943 (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). O’Keeffe started to visit New Mexico regularly in 1929 when, in an effort to escape city life, she left New York to spend the summer there.

Works such as Cottonwood Tree in Spring reveal the profound inspiration O’Keeffe gleaned from the American Southwest. The sublime beauty of the landscape provided a free range for her imagination, and she would continue to investigate its imagery for the remainder of her life, returning almost every summer until 1949 when she made Abiquiu her permanent home. While the artist had always utilized the natural world as the basis for her unique visual language, in New Mexico her art gained an even deeper intimacy and, in works such as Cottonwood Tree in Spring, it transcends a literal study of nature to evoke the spiritual connection she felt with her adopted home.

Two additional works by the artist from the O’Keefe Museum – A Street, a rare and highly significant depiction of New York City from 1926, and the striking Calla Lilies on Red from 1928 – will highlight our Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 14 November 2018.

Heritage Launches Weekly Prints & Multiples Sales Online

November 6, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Last week Heritage sold $1.78m in Prints and Multiples led by several Andy Warhol prints and a Richard Diebenkorn. The sale was followed by a long-planned announcement to accelerate the prints and multiples market online through regular weekly sales. Heritage says the new sales are in response to “ever-growing demand for high-quality prints.”

The Weekly Online-Only Prints & Multiples auctions commence with a sale that closes Nov. 7. All lots are being sold without reserve prices. The auction features artworks by Keith Haring, Mr. Brainwash, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Shepard Fairey, Alex Katz, Red Grooms, KAWS, Robert Motherwell, Takashi Murakami, Pablo Picasso and Ken Price. At the conclusion of each auction, bidding opens for the following week’s auction. Here’s what Heritage had to say about the move:

“Prints are a great medium for collectors, from beginners to experts,” said Frank Hettig, Heritage Auctions Vice Present of Modern & Contemporary Art. “The quality of prints Heritage Auctions offers is such that interest has grown at an incredible pace. The addition of weekly auctions is the logical next step, as we broaden our reach to a wider scope of collectors.”

The popularity and collectability of prints have soared to the point that the auctions went from semi-annual events to monthly sales, and now to weekly events. The department will continue to present Live Floor Auctions in the Fall and Spring seasons, presenting the market’s high end prints.

Christie’s Tours Magritte Le Lieu Commun Months Before London Sale

November 5, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s is getting a jump on 2019 with the launch of René Magritte’s Le Lieu Commun, 1964 yesterday. The large (for Magritte) painting is estimated to set a new record price for the Belgian Surrealist (£15,000,000-25,000,000) because it depicts his echt subject, a man in a bowler hat. Here’s Christie’s on the sale:

Never before offered at auction, Le Lieu Commun will lead Christie’s The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale on 27 February 2019. The painting will be on view in New York from 4 to 11 November 2018 before touring to Hong Kong from 22 to 26 November 2018, Beijing 8 to 9 December 2018, Shanghai from 12 to 13 December 2018, Taipei from 15 to 16 January 2019, and LA from 31 January to 6 February 2019. It will be exhibited in London ahead of the auction from 22 to 27 February 2019.

Le Lieu Commun was formerly owned by Gustave Nellens, the great collector who commissioned the ‘Le Domaine Enchanté’ series of eight paintings by Magritte, and owned many great works by the artist, as well as the Fuji Museum in Tokyo. It is one of four paintings featuring the bowler-hatted man from 1964 that mark the culmination of this theme in Magritte’s work. The others are Le Fils de L’Homme, made for Harry Torczyner and which previously set the world record for the artist when auctioned in 1999, La Grande Guerre and L’Homme au Chapeau Melon. The three other paintings featured a simpler image of a single bowler-hatted man standing in front of a seascape and facing the viewer. In each of these works the face of the man has been obscured by an object: either an apple or a white dove. For the first time, Magritte makes use of a strip-like play with perspective and a forest view in a technique that anticipates one of the greatest paintings of his very last years – Le Blanc Seing of 1965, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington – in which the image of a horse and rider are ambiguously intertwined with the tree trunks of the surrounding forest.

Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s: “In subject matter, rarity and scale, Le Lieu Commun is the most important painting by René Magritte to be offered at auction since 1999 when the painting Le Fils de L’Homme, created for Harry Troczyner, the great friend and patron of the artist, was sold for a then world record price. The everyman figure of the bowler-hatted man was used by Magritte as a pictorial cypher, moving between layers of reality. The present work is highly enigmatic and inventive. In Le Lieu Commun Magritte subverts the traditional genres of portrait and landscape painting and challenges our understanding of reality and representation; he plays with the viewer’s sense of what is real and what can be perceived. Uniquely we see this figure both in front of and behind the column so that he is at once revealed and obscured. We are thrilled to offer this as the leading work of our 18th edition of the dedicated The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale.”

Sotheby’s Hints at Strategy to Break Historic Valuation

November 2, 2018 by Marion Maneker

This look at Sotheby's earnings for the third quarter of 2018 is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed.

Sotheby’s released its third quarter earnings report yesterday. Spanning the slow Summer months of July, August and September, the quarter rarely provides much in the way of directional information about the tone of the art market or the evolution of Sotheby’s strategy. Paradoxically, the absence of data usually allows or, even, requires Sotheby’s management to use their earnings call as a bully pulpit on their business.

Before we survey the color commentary Sotheby’s provided, there were some numbers worth paying attention to. For the first nine months of 2018, sales are up a solid 20% to $4.04bn. Half of that rise came from a 49% updraft in private sales to $675.4m. That puts the division on track towards a nice round $1bn in private sales. That number surely reflects the new-ish private sales division hitting its stride but also a quietly increasing industry trend away from public auction to private transactions.

Nowhere is that better seen than in the Warhol market where industry players insist four massive private sales have taken place behind the scenes while the 20th Century’s giant has all but vanished from the auction block.

Digging deeper into Sotheby’s numbers, one can see that auction sales are up in 2018 without relying upon Sotheby’s to empty its storerooms as the firm did in 2017. That means Sotheby's business improved markedly in 2018 without anyone really noticing. In the third quarter of 2018, Sotheby’s sold $6.5m of property that it already owned. These are works previously guaranteed that didn’t find buyers or inventory acquired in other ways. During the same period in 2017, that figure was more than 12 times that amount or $81m. For the nine months of 2018, inventory sales were $62.8m. The year before that figure was almost three times as high or $172m. Overall revenue was down but without an impact on the profit.

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Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac to Represent Donald Judd & Foundation in Europe

November 2, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Beginning with a show in April 2019, the first in Europe in 20 years, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac will represent Donald Judd and the Judd Foundation in Europe. The show will take place in Ropac’s space in the Marais in Paris. The last major retrospective of Donald Judd’s work was at the Whitney in 1988. MoMA announced its plans for a historic show in 2015 but the event has been delayed by the museum’s building plan. In 2004, the Tate Modern held a survey. In May 2006, the Judd Foundation sold a substantial number of works at Christie’s. The event ignited the market for the sculptor’s work:

Major works by Donald Judd are currently featured in Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s Pantin exhibition Monumental Minimal (above) on view until March 2019, which includes two rare monumental vertical MENZIKEN works dating from 1988, each formed in aluminium and coloured Plexiglas.

In 1968, the first major museum exhibition of his works in three dimensions was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the same year Judd purchased 101 Spring Street, a five-story cast-iron building in New York where he developed his idea of the permanent installation, his belief that the placement of a work of art was as critical to its understanding as the work itself. The building became a platform for his art and that of others, with Judd’s works permanently exhibited alongside those of his contemporaries.

In 1971, Judd first visited Marfa, Texas where he eventually established studios, living quarters and ranches, now part of Judd Foundation. In Marfa, Judd’s work increased in scale and complexity as he started making room-sized installations. In 1986, he transformed this the public part of this unique large-scale project into the Chinati Foundation, a landmark of contemporary art as much as it is a key expression of his aesthetic in which his work was to be exhibited permanently alongside fellow artists including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Long, and Ilya Kabakov. Until the end of his life in 1994, he endeavoured to question the notion of the art object, using a variety of materials, a crafted approach and rigorous experimentation with colour.

Christie’s Has $2m in Hudson River School Paintings to Benefit Refugees

November 1, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s announces a collection of Hudson River School paintings, including Frederic Church’s On Otter Creek ($400-600k), shown above, that will be sold from the collection of Kevin and Barrie Landry. Kevin Landry was the Chief Executive of private equity firm TA Associates. The proceeds of the sale will benefit philanthropies that support the global refugee crisis, UNICEF USA, RefugePoint, and The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

Christie’s announces a prestigious collection of Hudson River School paintings from the Collection of Kevin and Barrie Landry will be offered in the American Art sale on November 20 in New York. One of the finest groupings of Hudson River School artists to appear on the market in decades, all sale proceeds will benefit philanthropies that support the global refugee crisis, UNICEF USA, RefugePoint, and The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. Inspired by their love for America the couple were drawn to the Hudson River School artists who celebrated nature, discovery, exploration and patriotism. Artists include Frederic Edwin Church, Asher Brown Durand, George Henry Durrie, Sanford Robinson Gifford, David Johnson and John Kensett, among others. Comprising 13 lots, the collection is expected to realize in excess of $2,000,000.

Barrie Landry remarks, “For both Kevin and me, these paintings represent love letters to our country, honoring rugged individualism and the beauty of place. Kevin was a patriot whose favorite holiday was the 4th of July. As such, Kevin was particularly attracted to this period of art because of its emphasis on the natural beauty of the landscape and man’s relationship to it.”

Speaking about the decision to donate auction proceeds to support the global refugee crisis, Barrie continues, “Our country was founded on the principle of E pluribus Unum, out of many one. Our country’s diversity and welcoming of others has made us strong and will continue to make America strong.”

A highlight of the collection is a tour de force of 19th century American art, On Otter Creek by Frederic Edwin Church, the leading American painter of his day (estimate: $400,000-600,000). In this bucolic scene set against a dramatic backdrop of towering hills, a covered bridge at center of the composition is the only sign of human intervention, conveying the central motif of the Hudson River School movement on the sublimity of nature. Another leading work is John Frederick Kensett’s Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode Island created in 1859 during a pivotal period in the artist’s painting style that demonstrated a transition from the traditional Hudson River School aesthetic to a modern Luminist treatment of light and form, which resulted in a spontaneous yet highly finished canvas painted directly from nature (estimate: $200,000-300,000). Additional top lots include Haymaking by Asher Brown Durand (estimate: $250,000-350,000), Tropical Landscape by Louis Rémy Mignot (estimate: $150,000-250,000), and Lake Winnipesaukee by Sanford Robinson Gifford (estimate: $200,000-300,000).

KAWS Toy Collection at Heritage Could Reshape the Market