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Warhol’s Double Elvis at Christie’s for $30m

April 6, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Warhol, Double Elvis

Christie’s just announced it will offer Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963 with a whisper estimate in the region of $30m in a version that is a little more Elvis 1.1 than two times given the faint register of the second printing of the image. This  work sold at Sotheby’s in 2012 for $37m which means were going to see another test of the Warhol market. The original Elvis series consisted of 23 works. MoMA in New York has a version of the Double Elvis [Ferus Type] with a sharp, vivid double printing that was donated by Jerry and Emily Spiegel in 2001. A substantial portion of the Spiegel’s collection has been a driver of the top of the Contemporary art market in the last few years.

Here’s Christie’s release on the work:

On May 17, Christie’s will offer Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963 as a central highlight of its Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art (estimate in the region of $30 million). The silver Elvis paintings that Warhol made in the summer of 1963 represent the culmination of several series of celebrity portraits that Warhol made in the early 1960s..

Warhol’s Double Elvis does not portray Elvis the hip-shaking musician but rather Elvis the actor playing a role in the 1960 movie Flaming Star, a liberal-themed Western in which Presley plays Pacer Burton, a half-Kiowa youth torn between two cultures. The painting is a unique variation from a group of portraits of single and multiplied Elvises created especially for Warhol’s second solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles—the centre of America’s entertainment industry. Of the twenty-two extant ‘Ferus Type’ Elvis works, eleven are in museum collections, including the canvas Bob Dylan insisted on taking in exchange for his presence in a Warhol film, now housed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Double Elvis features two black screen-printed images of the King on a silver painted ground. A bold, high-contrast figure is accompanied by its ghostly duplicate, collapsing Warhol’s strategy of serialization into a single frame, while also providing an eerie reminder that Presley was a twin, his brother being lost at birth. When the crowd of cloned Elvises were shown at the Ferus Gallery, the paintings were both confrontational and an almost anonymous backdrop.

The Ferus Gallery’s director, Irving Blum, had tried to press on Warhol the idea of a mini-retrospective, writing, “your exhibition should be the most intense and far reaching composite of past work, and the Elvis paintings should be shown in the rear of my gallery area.” Warhol, however, insisted on focusing on his new work and planned to utilize the gallery’s physical space as part of a highly conceptual installation. Before his arrival, Warhol instructed Blum to line the front room with his series of Elvis paintings and the back room with portraits of Elizabeth Taylor.

The repetition of the image created an impression of mass production that had rarely been seen before in an artistic context. The effect was of great interest to artists like Larry Bell, who wrote in response to the exhibition: “It is my opinion that Andy Warhol is an incredibly important artist; he has been able to take painting as we know it, and completely change the frame of reference of painting as we know it, and do it successfully in his own terms. These terms are also terms that we may not understand … In any event, nothing can take away from it the important changes that the work itself has made in the considerations of other artists.”

Six Small Fright Wigs at Christie’s Provide Warhol Market Test

February 13, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s is taking another run at the restrained Warhol market with a series of small late self portraits, the so-called Fright Wigs. The work on offer last appeared on the market in 2014 which was the peak year for Warhol in terms of market volume and average prices. This work comes back with an estimate range that only tops out at the previous sale price. The work also carries a guarantee which means we know it will sell—and provide the rest of the Warhol market with a reference point:

Andy Warhol, Six Self-Portraits (1986), estimate on request

A rare masterpiece completed just months before Andy Warhol’s sudden death in 1987, Six Self-Portraits stands among his last great artistic gestures. Taking on the grand tradition of self-depiction in a manner unprecedented within art history, the artist assembles six distinct variations of his iconic 1986 ‘fright wig’ self-portrait, creating a unique sequence that stands alone within his oeuvre. Few of Warhol’s original silkscreen groupings remain intact, rendering the present work exceptional. His disembodied face emerges from darkness in six intimate 22 x 22-inch canvases, alternately pink, pale blue, lilac, orange, green and cobalt against a void of black. Within a practice punctuated with complex self-portraits, the ‘fright wigs’ are widely considered to represent Warhol’s most deeply personal revelations. They are stark, rarefied exposures of an artist who ultimately became a greater cultural icon than his most famous celebrity muses. Six Self-Portraits was unveiled at Anthony d’Offay’s London gallery between July and August 1986 – the first and only self-portrait exhibition of Warhol’s career. Works from this exhibition now hang in the collections of Tate, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. The work’s remarkable six-fold format brings the faces into a chorus of technicolour synergy, dominated by no single hue. Placing himself alongside the great masters of the genre – from Dürer and Rembrandt to Picasso and Bacon – Warhol charges his self-image with a poignant sense of his own mortality. Rendered in immaculate high definition, his sculpted, mask-like face resembles a skull, bathed in dramatic chiaroscuro contrast; his body fades into obscurity beyond. ‘I paint pictures of myself to remind myself that I’m still around’, Warhol once claimed (A. Warhol, quoted in V. Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, London 1989, p. 480). Nearly thirty years after his death, these images are vivid reminders of the twentieth century’s greatest artistic enigma.

Sotheby’s Sells Jean Stein’s Art Collection

October 30, 2017 by Marion Maneker

It has been an extraordinary season for estates coming to market. Last week, Sotheby’s added to the cacophony of collector’s stories with the works once owned by Jean Stein, daughter of Hollywood legend Jules Stein, and major New York cultural figure until her suicide earlier this year:

Sotheby’s is honored to announce a series of sales celebrating Jean Stein – author, editor and oral historian, who chronicled the lives and work of cultural and political figures in New York, Paris, Hollywood and beyond. A cultural connector, who brought together creators in literature, theater and the visual arts, such as William Faulkner, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and others, Ms. Stein created a world that seamlessly combined her involvement in groundbreaking events in 20th century America with her intellectually curious tastes and sprawling network of friends and admirers.

Her property will be spread out among various sales. Next week, her eclectic but superior taste will be on display with works by Magritte, Richard Prince and Giacometti (above, left to right.)

  • Alberto Giacometti’s 1946 oil, Femme Assise (La Mère de l’Artiste) (estimate $4/6 million). Femme Assise was originally in Ms. Stein’s father’s collection, who had acquired it from Pierre Matisse in 1955. Ms. Stein was so enamored with the work that she, in her early twenties, purchased it from him just two years later, in 1957, for $750.
  • René Magritte’s La Voix du Sang, an enchanting gouache on paper executed in 1947 (estimate $600/900,000)
  • Ed Ruscha’s Light Leaks (estimate $1.5/2 million) was commissioned for Stein’s magazine, Grand Street, but she acquired it a year later.
  • Andy Warhol’s Flowers (estimate $150/200,000) was a gift from the artist and is dedicated on the overlap: “To Jean V Love Andy Warhol”
  • Richard Prince’s Untitled (Protest Painting), acquired from the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York (estimate $400/600,000)
  • John Baldessari’s Buffalo and Deer (With Void), exhibited at Sonnabend Gallery’s exhibition of John Baldessari: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (estimate $120/180,000)

Brillo Box (3¢ Off): A Documentary About Art Collecting

August 2, 2017 by Marion Maneker

On Monday, August 7, HBO will debut Lisanne Skyler’s documentary Brillo (3¢ Off) about the Andy Warhol sculpture her father bought in 1969 from Ivan Karp at the OK Harris Gallery. The smaller, yellow Brillo box sculpture was only $1000 but even then buying it was an act of cultural courage.

The film is framed as a wistful search for lost opportunity and a study of how works of art increase in value. The Skyler’s Brillo Box, which sat in a protective plexiglass case in the family living room, was eventually sold to Charles Saatchi. He, in turn, sold it to a collector who also gave the work up to the dealer Robert Shapazian who ran Larry Gagosian’s LA outpost until his death in 2010.

When Shapazian’s estate was sold at Christie’s later that year, there was a bidding war for the Brillo Box driving the price to $3m. Would the Skylers have gotten so much money for their Brillo Box had they held on to it? After all, Saatchi and Shapazian are big names to conjure with in the art market.Continue Reading

Is Tepid Hong Kong Sale of Warhol’s Mao a Sign of the Chinese Market’s Lack of Interest?

April 4, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Warhol, Mao (1973) (12-15m USD)

Did it work? Did Sotheby’s decision to bring Western Contemporary art to Hong Kong (since Asian buyers are very active in the London and New York sales) stimulate sales there this week? The South China Morning Post’s excellent arts reporter, Enid Tsui, delved deeply into the question:

on Sunday, demand for Western art valued at above US$1 million was tepid. Warhol’s Mao, executed in 1973 and one of his many works of the former Chinese leader, was estimated at HK$90 million (US$11.6 million) to HK$120 million (excluding fees) before the sale, and Sotheby’s laid the groundwork to help it sell. The eye-catching portrait in red was one of three works in the evening backed by a guaranteed, irrevocable bid and even chief executive officer Tad Smith chipped in to make a bid at HK$84 million on behalf of a client.

This led Tsui to the conclusion that, “A portrait of Mao Zedong by Andy Warhol sold for less than its pre-sale estimate and a work by Keith Haring failed to sell at Sotheby’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in Hong Kong on Sunday, casting doubt on Asian collectors’ appetite for top-end Western contemporary art.”

But the story isn’t pat, as Tsui tells:Continue Reading

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