All eyes will be on lot number 9 tonight at Christie’s to see if one of the many potential buyers will meet consignor Joe Lewis’s $100m price ambition. With the no reserve announced, the real question is where the bidding opens. Will there be bids in the book? At what level? Could the painting possibly start at $1?

There’s no denying the artist’s work had a strong night at Sotheby’s last night with two later works—the domestic Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs and the landscape Moving Wisp—performing near or above the high estimates to make $12.7m and $8.5m respectively. Sotheby’s has been leading the way in the Hockney market lately with strong sales for the later works. In May, the firm pulled off a major sale with the Piscine de Medianoche (Paper Pool 30) making nearly $12m over a $5-7m estimate range.

No matter what happens with Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)—and AMMpro subscribers can read our data analysis on the Hockney market here—Christie’s has a paper pool from the same year, 1978, with an estimate almost as low, $6-8m, and a massive provenance. Hunk and Moo Anderson built a legendary collection of 20th Century art. The masterpieces went to found a museum at Stanford University but Moo and her daughter are selling their equally impressive collection of works on paper at Christie’s.

Add to this the sunnier composition on Sprungbrett mit Schatten (Paper Pool 14) and the work’s position in Christie’s sale five lots after Lewis’s lot. Whether bidders take the bait and drive the big lot to $80 or $100m or someone gets it at a steal of $40 or $50m, the paper pool is positioned to benefit.

In other words, no matter what happens to Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), the Hockney market remains strong and the paper pool offers one of the artist’s best images at a price most collectors can swallow.

Sotheby’s just announced a large David Hockney painting from the estate of television producer and writer Steven Bochco. The $9m interior image was painted in 1988.

Today Sotheby’s announces that David Hockney’s large scale painting Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs from 1988, a highly regarded period within the artist’s career, will highlight our Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York on 14 November 2018. The work comes to auction from the collection of legendary television producer and writer Steven Bochco, who acquired it in 1997, and appears at auction for the first time this fall with an estimate of $9/12 million.

Jacqueline Wachter, Sotheby’s Vice President of Private Sales, Contemporary Art, said: “We are thrilled to present this dynamic Los Angeles interior to collectors on the West Coast next week and to bring it to auction for the first time in November. Los Angeles has played a major role in Hockney’s life and work, and this painting is an excellent illustration of that relationship. This piece is also one of the greatest Hockney’s to be kept in a private California collection, out of public view for the last 20 years. It is a particular privilege to offer this painting from the collection of the late Steven Bochco – himself a legend of the entertainment industry and of the city of Los Angeles.”

Steven Bochco (1943 – 2018), a winner of ten Emmy Awards, was an iconic television writer and producer for over 50 years, best known for creating the groundbreaking television dramas “NYPD Blue,” “Hill Street Blues,” and “L.A. Law.”  Bochco was an avid enthusiast of Hockney’s work and he hung Montcalm Interior With 2 Dogs prominently in the salon of his Los Angeles home, denoting it as his personal favorite from his collection of art.

Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs will be exhibited publicly for the first time in over two decades in our Los Angeles galleries (2029 Century Park East, Suite 2950) on 16 & 17 October, alongside other highlights of our marquee autumn auctions in New York. In addition to the present painting, works by titans of the 20^th and 21^st centuries – including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Barkley Hendricks, Claude Monet, René Magritte and more – will be on view to the public.

Lit with the bright glow of California sunshine, Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs encapsulates Hockney’s evolution in the tradition of interior painting, while also displaying his unique interpretation of the genre. Painted in 1988 – the same year as his first, critically-acclaimed U.S. retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art – the canvas captures a room within Hockney’s Montcalm Avenue home in Los Angeles, which he purchased in the summer of 1979. This home went on to inspire a number of the artist’s most iconic paintings of the late-1980s, including the sister painting to the present work, Large Interior, Los Angeles, which has been held in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1989. Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs was featured prominently in the artist’s 1992-93 retrospective organized by Fundación Juan March, Madrid, which traveled to both the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels and the Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona. The work has not been exhibited publicly since.

At once highly personalized and deeply rooted in art historical tradition, Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs exemplifies Hockney’s ability to merge the painterly techniques of the past with his own distinctive, inventive, and remarkably intimate experience of reality. Painting with vivid brushstrokes and vibrant, raw colors that clearly evoke the post-Impressionist masters whom he greatly admired, Hockney flattens space to enhance the emotional and physical immediacy of the viewing experience. In this way, Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs showcases the rich, saturated color application and deft handling of space that are characteristic of Hockney’s greatest paintings.

It hasn’t really been a secret that Christie’s has one of the most important David Hockney dual portraits to sell this Autumn. Katya Kazakina was the first to report that Joe Lewis would be selling his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972 for a princely sum that is three times the record price paid for the artist. We’ll have more detail on the progression of the Hockney market in a post for AMMpro subscribers. But here let’s simply say that two years ago, a small sketch for this work was sold for twice the high estimate of $1m. The last time a portrait from this era sold was nine years ago. The estate of collector Betty Freeman, who was the subject of a massive 12-foot-wide 1967 portrait, realized $7.9m then. It was followed six months later by the smaller California Art Collector (1964) which made $5.4m.

How much a collector will be willing to pay for this work is one of the great market questions. Nothing like it has come up for auction since 2003 when the artist’s Portrait of Nick Wilder was sold. The Contemporary art market has seen values rise by many multiples since 2003. The question that will be revealed in November is how that multiplication can be applied to the Hockney market. Until then, here’s Christie’s press release on the painting:Continue Reading

Sotheby’s has unveiled a large, late David Hockney painting fresh out of the artist’s traveling retrospective:

Sotheby’s is thrilled to unveil the latest addition to the Contemporary Art Evening Auction, David Hockney’s Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica. Featured in critically-acclaimed retrospectives at the Tate Britain, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this large-scale oil painting is a landmark of Hockey’s career. Carrying a pre-sale estimate of $20/30 million, Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica is poised to break the artist’s record – set by Sotheby’s in New York in November 2016 for Woldgate Woods – when it makes its auction debut on 16 May. The New York exhibition opens to the public on 4 May.

David Galperin, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York, commented: “Following its tour in the sensational museum retrospective last year, we are honored to bring this exuberant monumental landscape to market for the first time publicly this May. David Hockney’s ‘Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica’ is a true triumph of his singular vision: a panoramic and kaleidoscopic paean to his adopted hometown. We eagerly anticipate setting a new bar for the artist at auction on the 16th with one of the most well-known paintings of his beloved California.”

One of a limited group of monumental California landscape paintings, Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica is a significant marker of David Hockney’s sixty-year career. The ambitious painting, dazzling with hues of chartreuse, tangerine, rose, lavender and cerulean across its 10-foot wide canvas, epitomizes the artist’s bold use of color – a characteristic that has come to define his oeuvre. Comparable works hold court in renowned institutions such as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. This 1990 oil on canvas is also an acknowledgement of the importance and significance of traditional painting. At a time when artists across the board were turning away from painting and towards photography and conceptual art, Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica addresses the history and impact of artistic styles such as Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, all executed in Hockney’s signature vernacular.