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Sotheby’s to Sell SFMoMA’s $35m Rothko for Acquisitions Firepower

February 15, 2019 by Marion Maneker

Sotheby’s will be selling SFMoMA’s untitled 1960 Mark Rothko painting with a $35-50m estimate to benefit the museum’s acquisitions fund. The sale will be held in New York in May:

An important work completed at the apex of Rothko’s artistic powers, Untitled, 1960is one of just 19 paintings completed by the artist in 1960. This year marks a critical juncture in the iconic Abstract Expressionist’s career, following his defining commission of the Seagram Murals (1958-59) and his representation of the United States in the XXIX Venice Biennale (1958) – organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which would subsequently hold Rothko’s first and only major lifetime retrospective in 1961. Untitled, 1960 is distinguished further by its connection to Peggy Guggenheim, preeminent philanthropist and patron of the 20th century.

Untitled, 1960 will travel to London, Taipei and Hong Kong, before returning to New York for exhibition and auction this May.

Neal Benezra, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA, said: “With a spirit of experimentation, diversity of thought, and openness to new ways of telling stories, we are rethinking our exhibitions, collections, and education programs to enhance accessibility and expand our commitment to a global perspective, while sustaining our dedication to Bay Area and California art. Untitled, 1960is being sold in order to broadly diversify SFMOMA’s collection, enhance its contemporary holdings, and address art historical gaps in order to continue to push boundaries and embrace fresh ideas.

Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, said: “SFMOMA is very fortunate to have rich holdings of Mark Rothko, including his undisputed masterpieceNo. 14, 1960, which was acquired in the late 1990s as the result of another strategic deaccession. The proceeds from the upcoming sale will allow us to make great strides in diversifying the collection.  Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and I are creating a focused plan and list of priority acquisitions. Works will be proposed to our Accessions Committee for review as early as May 29, 2019.”

Saara Pritchard, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department in New York, said: “Sotheby’s is honored to present Mark Rothko’s Untitled,1960 on behalf of SFMOMA this spring. This exquisite work embodies the height of Rothko’s artistic practice, and provokes an intense emotional reaction in the viewer which was his preoccupation at this time. While featuring all of the expressive and transcendent qualities of Rothko’s 1950s pictures, there is a nuance to the surface, brushwork and layering of colors in the present painting that creates a compelling sense of vibration, movement, breath, life and depth. Given the rarity of works from this period on the market, as well as its connection to the great Peggy Guggenheim, the appearance of Untitled, 1960 at auction this spring will be a major market moment – one we are privileged to present to collectors around the world in the coming months.”

The ownership history of Untitled, 1960 unites the artist and institution with one of the preeminent philanthropists and patrons of the 20th century. A champion of Abstract Expressionism broadly and of Rothko specifically, Peggy Guggenheim’s pioneering vision and commitment to the artists she promoted paved the way for one of the most significant artistic movements in history. Determined to provide a voice and platform to this new generation of artists, Guggenheim gave Rothko one of his first important solo shows in 1945, at her famed Art of This Century gallery. The following year, she loaned the artist’s Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea to SFMOMA’s exhibition of Rothko’s work titled An Environment for Faith, and subsequently donated the work to the institution. Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea remained in the museum’s collection until 1962, when SFMOMA made the direct request to Rothko to exchange the work for a more contemporary example of his oeuvre. The artist obliged, and the museum selected Untitled, 1960, which has remained in their collection to present. Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea now resides in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Christie’s Has $35m Rothko + 4 Cornell Boxes from de Menils

October 16, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s has a dark Rothko from the de Menil family estimated at between $35 and $45m. The work was displayed in Rothko’s own home, shown alongside Piet Mondrian, Phillip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock in an exhibit curated by Dominique de Menil in the 1960s. It was later a featured work in the 1978 Guggenheim retrospective held the same year it was bought by François de Menil. Along with the Rothko, four boxes by Joseph Cornell will also be sold:

On 15 November, Christie’s Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art will be highlighted by Works from the Collection of François and Susan de Menil. Encompassing five lots, this grouping encapsulates the impeccable tastes of architect and filmmaker François de Menil, and his wife and business colleague Susan. Leading the selection is a consummate painting by post-war master, Mark Rothko, who is represented by Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) (estimate: $35-45 million). Painted in a period of creative ferment between his two greatest series, the present work was executed shortly after the completion of the Seagram Murals in 1960. During this time, he began to contemplate the shimmering dark plums, blacks, and purples that became the predominant palette in the panels at the Rothko Chapel commission that was soon to follow. Completing the selection, is an exemplary group of four works by Joseph Cornell, made between the 1930’s and 1948.

Ana Maria Celis, Senior Specialist and Head of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, remarked: “It is a privilege to offer five exquisite examples from the distinguished collection of François and Susan de Menil. This group presents a wonderful opportunity to juxtapose the brilliant work of two markedly different artists, Mark Rothko and Joseph Cornell. Although their styles varied dramatically, through the eyes of farsighted collectors, one can see the interconnectedness of two visionary artists who not only worked at the same time, but were inspired by one another’s passions.”

The painting first came into the possession of its current owner in 1978, the same year as Rothko’s stunningly successful retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. However, the history between the de Menil family and Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) dates back much further. Dominique and John de Menil, the legendary collectors who founded the Menil Collection and the Rothko Chapel, both located in Houston, Texas, had first visited Rothko in his studio in 1960, where the painter showed them the Seagram Murals. The series had originally been commissioned for the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, designed by Mies Van der Rohe, but when Rothko discovered that they had been slated to hang not in the lobby but in the building’s Four Seasons restaurant, he returned the commission and kept the paintings himself. This notorious fit of pique did not deter the de Menils from returning in 1964 and offering him a commission of their own, to paint a series of his own devising that would hang in a chapel in Houston. During the frequent visits that ensued as the couple consulted with the artist and followed his progress, Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) caught the eye of Dominique.

As the construction of the chapel neared completion, Dominique de Menil, then Chairman of the Art History Department of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, proposed arranging an exhibition, “Six Painters,” at the University, which was near the site of the forthcoming Chapel. She requested five works by Rothko, including Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum), which she had seen on the walls of the artist’s personal sitting room in his 69th street studio.

The paintings were exhibited with works by the five other midcentury masters, Piet Mondrian, Phillip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. When the show concluded at the end of the year, the painting returned to Rothko, who possessed it until his death.

Growing up in the environment that he did, François formed a natural affinity for the mysterious and mystical qualities of Rothko’s darker canvases. Some months before the Guggenheim Exhibition, François de Menil approached Arne Glimcher, founder of the Pace gallery who represented the Rothko estate, to express interest in purchasing a painting featuring Rothko’s darker palette. Glimcher offered de Menil, Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum), which would grace the Guggenheim retrospective later that year.

In his review of the Rothko retrospective, the art critic for the New York Times, Hilton Kramer, took the unusual step of describing the museum goers attending the show before turning to the works on display: the crowds were “hushed” “awestruck,” “transfixed,” and they tended to linger, “often turning away from the paintings in front of them to look across the great open space of the Guggenheim spiral at paintings in the distance.”

The Christie’s sale on November 11th will present the second instance that Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) has ever changed hands.

Accompanying the Rothko offering from the collection of François and Susan de Menil, is a quartet of examples by Joseph Cornell. The works are exquisite, speaking fluently in an imagistic language that feels just beyond grasp. The intangible mystery possessed by Cornell’s work runs parallel to a similar quality inhabited by the enigmatic paintings of his close friend Mark Rothko. The two were born just three months apart in 1903, Rothko in Dvinsk, Russia and Cornell in Nyack, New York. They first met by chance in 1949, at the Horn & Hardart automat on 57th Street, where they struck up a friendship that seems to have lasted throughout their lives. In 1957, Cornell sent Rothko’s daughter Kate a book on Fra Angelico, and Rothko’s wife sent back a thank you note with a hand-colored angel that Kate had made for the family Christmas tree. Rothko, despite a reputation as a formidable and imperious figure, was notably gregarious. Nevertheless, he envied the ease and generosity that Cornell displayed around other artists. “I wish I could approach your genius for expressing to people how you think about them and what they do,” he wrote to Cornell in 1959. Then, he gave a wonderful example of his own brand of artistic appraisal: “I do want to tell you that I think of you and the uncanny magic of the things you make.”

Leading the selection of examples by Cornell is Untitled (Medici Slot Machine), 1942. Executed in 1942, Untitled (Medici Slot Machine) comes from
the celebrated eponymous series and emerges as an archaeology of poetry. In this body of works, Cornell adapts three different Renaissance portraits as their
sources. Here Cornell reproduces a painting by Sofonisba Anguissola, titled Portrait of Marquess Massimiliano Stampa in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Although Cornell was known to have almost never traveled beyond the bounds of New York, he was an inveterate traveler of the mind. He was enchanted and obsessed by ideas of the travel of bygone years, in the same way that he was obsessed by the ballerinas of prior centuries. In this sense, his accumulation of materials for his boxes
resembled the souvenir-gathering of the Grand Tour. Here in the present work, Cornell himself brings the magpie tendency of the romantic imaginary traveler of yesteryear to his box, filling it with snippets of different works and maps, subliminal and seemingly random scatterings of thought, interrelation, memory and association. This is a very personal museum of the mind.

Christie’s Has Giacometti & Rothko from Antoni Tapies Collection for Frieze

September 12, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Giacometti, Homme (Apollon), left, and Rothko’s Untitled (Orange and Yellow), right

Christie’s announces that it will sell works from the personal collection of Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies over the next year. A Giacometti work, Homme (Apollon) estimated at £800k-1.2m, will be featured in the up close sale of small scale works on October 3rd and a Rothko from 1969, Untitled (Orange and Yellow) estimated at £4-6m.

Tàpies first came to prominence in the late 1940s, working in a Surrealist idiom that shared much with the ideas of artists such as Paul Klee and his fellow Catalonian Joan Miró.  A scholarship to Paris in 1950-51 led to a meeting with Pablo Picasso. Informed by his interest in Zen philosophy as much as by the privation of Post-War Spain, Tàpies deliberately chose commonplace materials to infuse with new significance, invoking a transformative alchemy that prefigured the Italian movement of Arte Povera.  Following his first American exhibitions in 1953, he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1958; a celebrated solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum followed in 1962, and another toured Europe in 1973-74. In 1984, he created the Tàpies Foundation, which holds his archives and over 2000 of his works, and continues to this day to promote the interdisciplinary study of modern and contemporary art. Major retrospectives were held at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1994, at the Guggenheim in 1995, and at Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum in 2000.

Masterworks from the Collection of Antoni Tàpies will be on view at Christie’s King Street from 29 September 2017 with highlights touring to Christie’s Rockefeller Center, New York (12 September), Hong Kong (18 to 21 September) and Madrid (19 to 20 September).

Gorvy’s Look Back at Heller, Rothko & Rubin Stirs Ancient Rumors

January 6, 2017 by Marion Maneker

A photo posted by @brettgorvy on Dec 30, 2016 at 4:23pm PST

(A portion of this post is available only to AMMpro subscribers. Subscriptions begin with a free month, so feel free to subscribe to sample AMMpro content and cancel before you are billed.)

Brett Grovy has been reminiscing about the legendary collector Ben Heller on his Instagram feed recently. Over the New Year holiday, he posted about Mark Rothko’s No. 9 (White and Black on Wine) which is one of the centerpieces of the Glenstone collection, one of the world’s leading private art collections.

In his enthusiasm to post a celebration of a great picture, an amazing provenance and a career highlight, his musings eventually came to this:

The painting carried with it a curse. For some unexplained reason, Bill Rubin had spread a rumor that the work was damaged, perhaps jealous of Heller’s sale at Sotheby’s. The picture could not shake this rumor mill, despite several examinations by the top Rothko conservators.

We also brought in the experts to allay any lingering doubts. Nothing was found. But on the night of the auction itself, someone actually called a renowned Rothko dealer in the sales room, just as the Lot was being offered, knowing that he would be bidding on this masterpiece. Fortunately the dealer was not swayed by the repeated claims, and went on to buy the work for a record $16.4 million. He was acting on the behalf of the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, where it resides today amongst other seminal Abstract Expressionist masterpieces.

David Nash chimed in with his own war story:

Bill Rubin was absolutely adamant that this painting was badly damaged when he lent it to an exhibition, unwillingly, but at Rothko’s express request. When it came back from the exhibition it had a huge area of damage, according to Rubin. At Rothko’s suggestion the damage was repaired by a conservator named Lebron who was notorious for completely repainting works by AbEx artists. Rubin sold the painting to Heller who put it up for auction many years later at which time Rubin vigorously denounced Sotheby’s (and me!) for not making any announcement about the condition. […] Rubin’s unyielding position about the damage to his painting has remained one of the unsolved mysteries. This man was the powerful chief curator of MoMA and not somebody to dismiss lightly!

These musings have had the unfortunate effect of raising questions about the Rothko’s condition when it was sold by Christie’s in 2003. Though the condition of the painting should not be an issue at this point. Glenstone is an ambitious collection that has already been established as a private museum. The collection’s trajectory is most likely institutional meaning that it is unlikely that a tentpole work like the massive Rothko would ever be on the market again.

As an institution, Glenstone also has access to the best conservators (and would have satisfied itself before the sale with independent reports  that work was in acceptable condition.)

Continue Reading

Waldemar Januszczak Takes You Through the Royal Academy’s Abstract Expressionism Show

November 11, 2016 by Marion Maneker

Waldemar Januszczak leads the viewer through the Royal Academy’s Abstract Expressionism show organized by David Anfam.

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