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Crichton: Collector v. Investor

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Colin Gleadell raises an interesting question about Michael Crichton, the novelist, film director and television producer, who fell in with a group of Pop artists while they were making lithographs with an LA printmaker. The returns from the works Crichton acquired directly through his relationships with artists and gallerists would appear to be very strong. Witness the sale of Crichton’s Jasper Johns Flag painting for $28.6 million.

When Crichton switched to auctions earlier this decade, his golden touch tarnished a little:Continue Reading

Crichton Ate with His Art

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[audio:http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/20100509_wesun_15.mp3|titles=For Sale: Michael Crichton’s Pop Art Collection]

NPR’s Weekend Edition gets inside Michael Crichton’s art collection and explains how he lived with his works and what he needed to do to be sure he could own a work:

Crichton employed art handlers to change the placement of a painting in his house or to move it to a room with a different light. One of them, Owen Casey Rothstein, who works for Fine Art Shipping, remembers a painting by Claes Oldenburg that he moved at least seven or eight times. In Crichton’s home, he said, “you would take a piece off the wall, and the whole wall is just Swiss cheese. There are so many nail holes in the wall from moving art around, but you start counting, and you realize that easily 30 paintings were hanging at this particular spot.”Continue Reading

The Crichton Collection

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The Michael Crichton collection is on display at Christie’s in New York right now. It’s a revelation with the mix of Picasso, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Hockney, Johns, Tom Friedman, Agnes Martin, Mark Tansey, several Koons works, Gursky and more. The film Christie’s produced–click through the image to see it–is also a revelation showing how Crichton met Hockney, Rauschenberg and Johns through the Los Angeles printmaker Gemini. Watch it.

Cohen Hoists the Flag

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Christie’s is ecstatic right now at the news that Steven A. Cohen has bought Leo Castelli’s own Jasper Johns flag painting–one that had been on loan to SFMoMA by Castelli’s heir–for a rumored $110 million. The painting joins Cohen’s other remarkable nine-figure acquisitions in what Brett Gorvy calls “the most comprehensive collection of American postwar images in private hands.”

For Christie’s this revalues the Crichton transaction. Carol Vogel quotes Gorvy in her New York Times story on the sale:Continue Reading

Complicated Crichton

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The Los Angeles Times provides elaborate details about Michael Crichton’s heirs and who will benefit from the $100 million sale of his art collection at Christie’s this May. Even though Crichton was on the board of LACMA, no art was bequeathed to a museum in his will:

Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie’s Americas, said he expects the sale to bring in about $100 million. The money will go to Crichton’s widow, children and other heirs and to pay estate taxes. The rules of inheritance for wealthy individuals such as Crichton are rarely simple, and they have provided drama in this case, which combines vast wealth and valuable works of art.

Crichton’s 2007 will provided for the vast majority of his assets, including his art, to be placed in a private trust benefiting his fifth wife, Sherri, his then-teenage daughter from a prior marriage and other family members, friends and employees as well as a charitable foundation. At the time of his death from cancer the following year, his wife was six months’ pregnant with their son, John Michael Todd. The will did not provide for the unborn child.Continue Reading

Crichton Estate Goes All In

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The Crichton estate has had a sudden change of heart. Perhaps market conditions have convinced the estate it’s a good time to sell because the four works to be sold at Christie’s–led by a Jasper Johns flag painting–will be joined by the rest of the collection. 25 works will be in the evening sale and the rest sold during the day and print sales, according to Carol Vogel in her New York Times column. Christie’s Brett Gorvy puts a nice round $100m on the whole collection:

So in addition to paintings by Jasper Johns (a friend of Mr. Crichton for more than 30 years), Robert Rauschenberg and Picasso, and a collage by Roy Lichtenstein, the auction is to sell nearly all of Mr. Crichton’s holdings — some 90 objects, many bought over the past decade. Among the works going on the block are sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons, and paintings by Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol.

Inside Art: Crichton Auction Grows (New York Times)

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