Art Market Monitor

Sotheby’s is bringing one of the two remaining Andrea Mantegna drawings—out of 20 extant—still in private hands and not in the collection of a major museum. The sale is expected to be a major event in the Old Master market because only two other Mantegna drawings have been sold in the last five decades of the art market. The work—‘The Standard Bearers and the Siege Equipment’—is a study for the second panel of Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar series of paintings which is part of the British Royal collection now and on display at Hampton Court. The panels were originally commissioned i the 15th Century by the Gonzaga family for their Ducal palace in Mantua. A few generations later, Charles I of England acquired the works and they have remained in the Royal Collection since.

This drawing is estimated at $12m. Here’s Sotheby’s release:

Sotheby’s will offer one of the most art-historically important drawings ever to appear at auction: Andrea Mantegna’s only known preparatory drawing for one of the canvases in the Triumphs of Caesar, the Italian Renaissance artist’s most influential and revered work. Recently rediscovered, the masterwork will headline Sotheby’s Old Master Drawings auction in New York on the 29^th of January 2020, when it is estimated to fetch in excess of $12 million.

Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506) was one of the most innovative, influential and celebrated artists of the Italian Renaissance.  His importance was very recently underscored by the major exhibition, Mantegna and Bellini, dedicated to his work and that of his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini, held at the National Gallery, London, and the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.  Approximately 20 drawings by Mantegna are known, all except two (including the present work) are in the collections of major museums, such as the British Museum in London.  The sale of this drawing is of enormous significance: only two other drawings by Mantegna have appeared at auction in the last half century.

Dated to the late 1480s, the drawing is the only known preparatory study for Mantegna’s famed and celebrated masterpiece, the Triumphs of Caesar – a series of nine monumental paintings depicting the triumphal procession of Julius Caesar and his army through ancient Rome. The paintings are part of the British Royal Collection at Hampton Court Palace, where they have resided since they were acquired by King Charles I in 1629. The King bought the paintings directly from the Gonzaga family, Dukes of Mantua, who were Mantegna’s most important patrons.

The present pen and ink drawing is a study for ‘The Standard Bearers and the Siege Equipment,’ which is the second canvas in the Triumphs series. The drawing theatrically recreates a section of the processional that includes gigantic statues on carts, a model of the tower of Alexandria, and oversized siege weapons.

Though sold as an autograph work by Mantegna in 1885, the drawing subsequently disappeared into private collections, and was totally unknown to scholars until shortly before the Mantegna and Bellini exhibition in London and Berlin.  Its inclusion in that exhibition caused much excitement, but only since the exhibition have other extremely significant aspects of the drawing been identified, following further careful research by Cristiana Romalli, Senior Director and Italian specialist in Sotheby’s Old Master Drawings Department.  On the basis of new technical analysis using infrared photography, performed by Sotheby’s Department of Scientific Research, Romalli was able to establish that the main figure on the left side of the composition was altered very significantly during the process of the drawing’s creation.  Underneath the figure of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine, which appears in the finished drawing and the final painted version, there is actually another entirely different figure, identified by Romalli as Helios, the Roman god of the Sun, which the artist chose to obliterate and replace as he developed his composition.

This change conclusively proves that Mantegna himself was the author of the drawing, and this remarkable and unexpected discovery sheds exciting light on Mantegna’s restless working method, in which he continued to edit, refine and perfect his compositions, even in the final stages.  Moreover, it is unquestionable proof that this is the only known surviving preparatory study for the Triumphs.

Speaking of the drawing, Cristiana Romalli said: “The discovery of a previously unseen underdrawing, more than five hundred years after it was made, is a moment of considerable importance for the study of this complex, intriguing and highly influential master of the early Italian Renaissance. By examination under special filtered infrared light, we were able to detect the hidden figure of Helios, revealing a major change in the composition that proves Mantegna’s authorship. This change in fact defined his whole approach to the finished painting that we see today.  The exceptional and rare opportunity to bring to light this news, obscured for centuries, is what defines the excitement and thrill of the drawings market. It is a great privilege to be handling the sale of a drawing of such extraordinary importance and rarity.”

The drawing will be on view in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London before returning to New York for exhibition beginning 24 January.

If you subscribe to AMMdaily, you’ll already know about the $30m Ed Ruscha painting coming up at Christie’s. With a low estimate of $30m equal to the 2014 record price achieved for the artist, the sale may help shift market leadership toward Ruscha. The California artist has long been seen as having the potential to make a bigger impact on the overall market.

On November 13, Christie’s Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art will be highlighted by Ed Ruscha’s Hurting the Word Radio #2, 1964 (estimate: $30-40 million)* from the collection of Joan and Jack Quinn, Beverly Hills. Joan Quinn and her late husband Jack, represent a pivotal moment in the history of Contemporary art, as Los Angeles came to symbolize an innovative and prolific brand of creative freedom. Ruscha’s canvas being offered here is a sublime example of the conceptual creativity that emanated from Los Angeles in the early 1960’s, that which would make Ed Ruscha into one of the most revolutionary artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Quinns acquired Hurting the Word Radio #2 directly from the artist in the early 70s, marking this as the first time the canvas has ever been offered at auction.

Few individuals have left such an indelible mark on the artistic landscape of Southern California than Joan and Jack Quinn.

Jack Quinn, a prominent and influential attorney, was the youngest president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and founder of Quinn Kully & Morrow, a firm that later merged with the prestigious Washington D.C. firm, Arnold & Porter. Quinn utilized his skills to help an array of emerging artists and their dealers, including the Ferus, Nick Wilder and Corcoran galleries, navigate the worlds of law and business.

In 1978, Andy Warhol asked Joan Quinn to join his Interview magazine as its West Coast editor, which she did through 1989. In addition to her work at Interview, Quinn served on the California Arts Council for 17 years, was the society editor of Angeles magazine and Hearst’s Herald Examiner , and the West Coast Editor for both Conde Nast Traveler and Germany’s Manipulator magazine. Quinn’s work at these publications – among others internationally – allowed her to further promote the work of their growing circle of Southern California creatives.

Known for her charisma, intelligence, and incomparable élan, Joan Agajanian Quinn has been a muse for artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Zandra Rhodes, Larry Bell, Frank Gehry, Ed Moses, Helmut Newton, Billy Al Bengston, Antonio Lopez, and many others. As artists sought to record her image across a variety of media, Joan Quinn has found herself with one of the world’s largest and most important collections of Contemporary portraiture—a poignant representation of friendship, appreciation and respect.

Based in Los Angeles, Ruscha arrived at his own brand of Pop based on the utilitarian styling of words and letters. His participation in the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s firmly established him as an influential figure whose conceptual rigor played a leading role during the movement’s early days. Ruscha’s paintings from the early 1960s stand at a pivotal point in art history when the tradition of painting fought to maintain its relevance in light of the beginnings of the Pop movement. In work’s such as Hurting the Word Radio #2, Ruscha successfully straddles both, connecting the painterly tradition to the new contemporary culture of advertising and mass-media.

Across an expansive sky blue canvas, the word “RADIO” is laid out in a juxtaposition of static and surreal sunshine yellow painted letters. Hurting the Word Radio #2 is an iconic example of Ed Ruscha’s c-clamp paintings, which also includes Hurting the Word Radio #1 (Menil Collection, Houston) and Not Only Securing the Last Letter but Damaging it as Well (Boss) (Museum Brandhorst, Munich). Here, the bold, stately letters synonymous with Ruscha’s practice become distorted and warped as trompe l’oeil c-clamps squeeze the “R” and tug on the “O,” distorting and transforming them in to rippled rubbery notes. Hurting the Word Radio #2 is an important early example of the artist’s revolutionary Text paintings—a body of work that would establish Ruscha as one of the most innovative and influential painters of the 1960s.

Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter, married Ron Miller, a football player turned CEO of the Walt Disney Company. Among their interests were collecting art but also classical music, vineyards and wine making. Ms. Miller set up a charitable trust which will benefit from the sale of their art at Christie’s and will support causes like Jane Goodall Institute, the HALO Trust, the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Among the works being sold this Fall are a Richard Diebenkorn work from the Ocean Park series. A Wayne Thiebaud painting of Mickey Mouse—both Diebenkorn and Thiebaud had their personal encounters with Disney’s creative teams—and American works by Milton Avery and Andrew Wyeth.

Here’s Christie’s release on the collection:

Together, Ron and Diane Disney Miller built an impressive private collection of works by artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Milton Avery, and Wayne Thiebaud—figures whose works, like the animations of her father, are infused with bold experimentation in line, color, and movement. Of particular poignancy are works in the collection that reflect both the Millers’ connection to California, as well as the artists’ own association with The Walt Disney Company. Thiebaud, for one, apprenticed at Walt Disney Studios as an animator drawing characters such as Goofy, Pinocchio, and Jiminy Cricket—early influences for what would become his signature style of stylized realism in lively technicolor. During WW II, Diebenkorn was dispatched to Hawaii to work in cartography alongside Disney animators, where he learned to translate three-dimensional imagery onto a two-dimensional plane—a key element within his later of work.

Whether in the couple’s exceptional grouping of American landscapes or Contemporary paintings and works on paper, Diane and Ron built a collection remarkable for its originality and diversity. The legacy of Diane Disney Miller rests not only in the remarkable continuation of Walt Disney’s artistic spirit, but in her own unwavering belief in fostering a more inspired, creative world.

Proceeds from the sale of Wayne Thiebaud’s Mickey Mouse will fund programming initiatives at The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, a 40,000-square foot institution housing historic archival materials and artifacts of the 95-year-old company paired with the latest technology to fully illustrate Disney’s rich legacy. Sale of the remainder of the collection — including works by Henri Matisse, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Roy Lichtenstein, and others — will benefit additional causes important to the family including the Jane Goodall Institute, the HALO Trust, the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The latter being especially significant to the Disney family, as in 1987, Lilian B. Disney (Diane Disney Miller’s mother) gave an initial donation of $50 million to build the Frank Gehry-designed California performance venue in memory of her pioneering husband.

POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING SALE | NOVEMBER 14

Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park #108 ($7-9 million) belongs to the series of Ocean Park paintings that the artist made in his studio in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica, which afforded abundant natural light and a narrow view of the Pacific Ocean. Ocean Park #108, painted in 1978, is suffused with the ineffable qualities that define the West Coast way of life, which Diebenkorn has distilled into a taut, geometric design. Diebenkorn devoted twenty years to the Ocean Park series, continuously refining and perfecting his craft from its beginnings in 1967. By the end of the 1970s, when Ocean Park #108 was created, the artist’s flair for color had been honed to a fine point. About a year after it was completed, this work and others in the series were selected for a solo exhibition at the artist’s gallery in New York with many from this show now located in major American museum collections including the Oakland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART MORNING SESSION | NOVEMBER 13

Wayne Thiebaud’s depiction of the iconic cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, 1988 (estimate: $400,000 – 600,000), is a delight in both its composition and color palette. Reminiscent of Disney’s golden age, Mickey Mouse demonstrates Thiebaud’s modern treatment of color with his bold use of acrylic paint, bringing new life to Walt Disney’s globally beloved icon. Thiebaud’s ability to transform a universally recognizable character into a subject of drama and complexity is a testament to his power of observation as well as his extraordinary sense of color and form.

AMERICAN ART | NOVEMBER 20

Andrew Wyeth’s Oliver’s Cap (estimate: $3,000,000 – 5,000,000) is an enigmatic painting, characteristic of his greatest works in its realization of a distinct, delicate balance, being at once both intensely complex and intimate. Painted in 1981, on the surface Oliver’s Cap may appear as a simple, traditional, American portrayal of a rural country scene. With Oliver’s Cap, Wyeth achieves a mysterious detachment from his subject while effectively communicating an intimate personal narrative, a quiet, pervasive tension, and sense of anticipation. Wyeth considered the present work intensely personal, stating in a letter, “I want you to know the egg tempera painting you have, titled ‘Oliver’s Cap’ I consider one of my very richest (sic) and most personal pictures.”

Additionally, the collection includes a group of works on paper by Winslow Homer featuring his classic maritime themes as depicted in Boats Alongside a Schooner (estimate: $300,000-500,000), Thomas Hill’s Picnic by the Sea, a 7 ½-foot-wide 1873 painting of San Francisco Bay (estimate: $70,000-100,000), and William Keith’s The Headwaters of the Owens River (estimate: $100,000-150,000).

Sotheby’s is feeding KAWS fever with a cache of works from Ryan Brant’s art collection that are being sold across a group of art and design sales. Earlier this year Phillips featured four KAWS works from Ryan Brant’s collection in their London Evening and Day sales. The group made a total of £888k or nearly $1.1m. That’s not a bad haul.

The founder of Take-Two Interactive, the pioneering video game producer, Brant died of a heart attack at 49 earlier this year. KAWS isn’t the only artist represented in Brant’s collection. Today in New York, a few KAWS works and a Francisco Clemente will be sold in Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sale.

Next weekend in Hong Kong, three more KAWS works, a Josh Smith and a Kenny Scharf painting will be offered. More works from the collection will follow as Sotheby’s explains in their press release:

Sotheby’s is pleased to announce that we will offer 130+ works from the prescient and playful collection of pioneering video game executive Ryan Brant across a series of sales beginning in September 2019 and extending into spring 2020. 

Led by a selection of more than 25 works by KAWS, Game On! Property from the Collection of Ryan Brant features works by many of the most innovative and celebrated artists and designers of the 20th century, including Fernando and Humberto Campana, Ettore Sottsass and Wendell Castle. 

Amy Cappellazzo, Chairman of Sotheby’s Fine Art Division, commented: “Ryan Brant was a brave and independent collector with a definitive point of view, and it’s a privilege to present his vision and collection at auction. As is befitting a successful creative entrepreneur, Ryan was ahead of the curve in his appreciation for cutting-edge contemporary artists – most especially as an early collector and advocate of KAWS, in addition to his passion for the avant-garde designs of the Camapana brothers, Sottsass and more. Together, these vibrant works offer a glimpse into the way Ryan viewed the world.” 

Born into a collecting family with an illustrious presence in the arts, Ryan Brant was raised in an environment of immense creativity and aesthetic stimulation. The Collection of Ryan Brant provides perspective for collectors and admirers to experience the animated atmosphere that he carefully assembled for himself. 

Brant founded Take-Two Interactive, a power-house in the video game industry that radicalized the perception of gaming in the 1990s. Take-Two Interactive, and its subsequent acquisitions,  developed some of the world’s most recognized and esteemed  video games – including the Grand Theft Auto empire and Red Dead Redemption. 

Though Brant left the company in 2007, the tastes and interests reflected in his collection were clearly sculpted through the eyes of a video-game designer with a knack for colorful, character-driven compositions and post-pop imagery. Keeping up with a changing market, Brant’s focus shifted – he began collecting artists like KAWS and avant-garde designers like the Campanas in depth, and with a discerning eye for quality, all of which is reflected in Sotheby’s sales of works from the collection. 

The Italian bank UniCredit, which has an art collection of 60,000 works, is planning to sell 312 works in an effort to raise €50m to fund a Social Impact Banking initiative. The first tranche of works is coming to market during the Frieze week sales in London in two weeks. Christie’s will be selling 33 works with a combined low estimate of £14m. The most valuable works—accounting for nearly £12m in low estimate— are two Gerhard Richter paintings and an Yves Klein sponge.

Here’s Christie’s release on the upcoming sale:

UniCredit has appointed Christie’s to manage the sale of artworks from Austria, Germany and Italy. The proceeds will be primarily used to support the further roll-out of the group’s Social Impact Banking (SIB) initiatives. The remaining balance will be dedicated to other relevant projects, including the support of young artists.

The artworks will be offered at various Christie’s international salerooms across a range of marquee week sales in 2019 and 2020, with the first pieces being auctioned in London on 4 and 5 October as part of the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions alongside Thinking Italian, taking place during Frieze Week. The selection will include works by Gerhard Richter, Yves Klein, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Enrico Castellani, Sam Francis, Andreas Gursky and Nam June Paik among others.

Further details of these lots can be found here. Information regarding works being offered in future auctions will be announced in due course.

Social Impact Banking is part of UniCredit’s commitment to building a fairer and more inclusive society. It aims to identify, finance and promote people and companies that can have a positive social impact. As well as continuing to provide credit to projects and organisations not usually served by the traditional banking sector, UniCredit employees educate micro-entrepreneurs, social enterprises and vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, building valuable networks within our communities. SIB also focuses on
monitoring and measuring outcomes, essential for sustainable growth. It is currently being rolled out in 10 additional UniCredit markets, including: Germany, Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.