Art Market Monitor

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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

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