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If you ever wanted to buy an Andy Warhol, now is your chance. This fall, thousands of works by the Pop icon will hit the market when the artist’s foundation deaccessions its entire collection through a combination of sales and donations. The paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and printed graphic material — which range in price from over $1 million to under $10,000 — will be sold through Christie’s in a series of single-artist live auctions on November 12 and a spate of online sales beginning February 2013. Private sales of the material will be conducted throughout the season. The entire cache is expected to bring in about $100 million.

The sale marks a shift for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which since 1987 has slowly sold off a handful of artworks per year to finance its grantmaking activities. “We have now chosen to mark the Foundation’s 25th anniversary year by expanding the scope of our art sales in order to increase our future grant-making capacity,” Michael Straus, chairman of the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation, said in a statement. At this point, few major works remain in the collection, but the sum total represents a massive cache of Warhol works never before seen by the public. (This also explains its relatively low price point considering the number of works on offer — a total of 20,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.) Christie's will take varying commissions on each sale, the New York Times reports. 

The foundation hopes selling off the remainder of the collection en masse will quickly grow its endowment from $225 million to $325 million, enabling it to increase its annual grants from $13 million to $18 to $20 million, according to Joel Wachs, the foundation’s president. Why do it all at once? “Over the last two years, we’ve seen cutbacks in funding for all arts organizations,” Wachs told ARTINFO. While the market for Warhol has never been stronger, it’s also never been more difficult to be a small art institution. “We try to be responsive to the constituents we serve and it seems that they need the help now more than ever,” he explained. 

Warhol is typically associated with stratospheric auction prices — the artist’s “Double Elvis (Ferus Type)” sold at Sotheby’s in May for $33 million and his “Marlon” silkscreen is estimated to sell for $20 million at Christie’s this fall. The Foundation's remaining trove of works, however, skews toward the esoteric. It includes pieces that have never been seen publicly before, including the black-and-white screenprint “Three Targets” (1985-86), which carries an estimate of $1-1.5 million and looks more like a Jasper Johns than a Warhol. The smaller items will be sold in online-only auctions similar to those held for Liz Taylor’s jewelry collection. Among the items on offer is a selection of Warhol’s black-and-white Polaroids.

To those who have been following the Warhol Foundation’s moves for some time, the sale might not come as a shock. Last fall, the organization dissolved its authentication board due to mounting legal fees, explaining that it would rather spend millions of dollars per year on grants than on lawyers. But after a year of crunching numbers, cutting spending wasn’t enough. “It became clear that the only way to maximize our grantmaking capacity was partially to cut our expenses and partially to turn our art into cash and monetize our endowment,” Wachs said. He noted that the foundation has not decided precisely which works it will donate and which it plans to give away, but that “we will give away a lot, too.”

For Christie’s, the partnership also serves to cement its position both as an authority on Warhol and a pioneer in the field of online art sales. “Online is now its own medium for interaction with art purchasing,” Steven Murphy, the auction house’s CEO, told the Times.

Is it possible that setting thousands of new Warhol works loose on the market might devalue him in the long run? As it is, works by Andy Warhol comprised a staggering 17 percent of the contemporary art market in 2010, according to art market analyst ArtTactic. Collector Alberto Mugrabi, whose family owns at least 800 Warhols, told the WSJ that the foundation would “dilute” the Warhol brand by pushing the products “out into the market like cattle.” Others diagree. “Warhol is the artist of the second half of the 20th century,” art advisor Wendy Cromwell told ARTINFO. “I think it’s impossible to flood the market.” In fact, she said, the more esoteric pieces might appeal to a collector who is passionate about Warhol but is priced out of his more iconic portraits or soup cans. (She recalled that when Christie’s sold off the estate of Donald Judd in 2006, art market observers also expressed concern that the supply would flood the market, but “if anything, the sale just pushed the market higher.”)

“The interest in Warhol is enormous worldwide,” said Wachs. “We want to be able to broaden our reach as much as possible.” 

On Monday, the VIP Art Fair announced that it was abandoning its twice-a-year fair model and joining fellow e-retailers Paddle8, Art.sy, and Artspace to sell artwork online full-time. But before this ever-expanding influx of net-art startups, there was 20x200, New York dealer Jen Bekman’s pioneering print project that’s celebrating its fifth anniversary this week.

In 2007, Bekman launched her site for affordable art prints — the online market’s most successful medium — with two friends in her living room. By 2009, she was making $1 million a year and securing high-profile investors of Flickr and Vimeo fame. This year, having sold nearly 200,000 prints to 70,000 collectors, she expects to break the $7 million mark.

ARTINFO spoke with Bekman about where she’s seen the virtual art world go in the past five years.

How did you raise the money to launch 20x200?

We didn’t raise any money in the beginning; it was totally bootstrap. I approached a couple friends and we kind of planned and executed it in my living room. I didn’t make money for the business until 2009.

Why did you decide to start seeking investors that year?

We were already doing more than $1 million a year in revenue at that point. We had grown significantly, but our motto is “art for everyone,” and when we say art we really mean art and when we say everyone we mean everyone. It was very clear to us at that point that we were going to need financial backing to realize the bigger vision and grow more quickly.

Why didn’t you adopt an auction model?

On the one hand, everybody knows eBay, but an art auction is fraught with a lot of meaning, and it might be more intimidating to people. We think a lot about what a regular person’s expectations are about making a purchase. The least expensive prints are the gateway drug to the art world. We try to create as few barriers to entry as possible, and we try to get people to take the leap. We figured that once people got art in their hands and started to feel like collectors, they’d feel more confident and comfortable. One thing people like about us is that we’re very transparent — there’s no insider knowledge you have to glean.

Did you have experience in the online world before opening Jen Bekman Gallery in 2003?

I basically did a combination of content and community stuff online for 10 years. I worked at small startups and big companies, like Disney and Netscape. My title ranged from director of creative development to chief creative officer. So when I opened a gallery it was a total departure from everything I’d done up until that point.

Does the business on 20x200 overlap with your gallery?

The site’s a great support for the gallery because it gives it a global, unlimited audience instead of sending out 300 postcards and hoping people show up.

Have your prices gone up in the last five years?

We have a wider price range — as low as $18 and as high as $10,000. And we have introduced new sizes, the most important being the 11x14 edition.

Now sometimes a single edition can go up to $100,000 for a single image. That’s a powerful engine for the business and good for the artist as well. We did a recent edition with William Wegman that would be in that range.

How do you set yourself apart from other young online art businesses?

First of all, it’s been great that there’s so many because we’re very proud of the fact that we’re pioneers. It’s a big category and the more activity there is online, the better. It was definitely a little frustrating when there were pretty obvious copycats. But compared to others in the category, our customers are collectors or artists, while other sites’ customers are art dealers or institutions. We see our customer as a consumer and our mission is to turn consumers into collectors.

The art market is huge and there’s a lot of money being made, but the number of individual galleries and dealers and collectors who spend over “x” amount per year, well, we’re talking about tens of thousands, and I’m interested in millions and millions really being collectors.

After that sleepy summer, shows that blur the lines between art and design abound in New York galleries this fall. ARTINFO has picked our five most eagerly anticipated exhibitions of the season. 

“AFTER” at R20th Century Gallery, 82 Franklin Street, September 20-October 27

Interior designer Kelly Behun and artist Alex White take over the Tribeca space with murals and functional art that “take after” — that is, sample, reference, praise, and deconstruct — works of old favorites; their one-of-a-kind tables, for example, hardened versions of free-flowing resin, pay homage to the lava-like wax sculptures of Lynda Benglis.

“AUGMENTED” at Gallery R’Pure, 3 East 19th Street, October 25-31

Looking through your smartphone, works by architects and designers — the likes of Dror Benshetrit, Joe Doucet, and Todd Bracher — take on a new life with the help of augmented reality technology. No 3-D glasses required.

“Ivy Style” at The Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street, September 14, 2012-January 5, 2013

The enduring and infinitely influential “Ivy League look” was surprisingly avant-garde in its heyday. This historical exhibition — conveniently scheduled to fill the post-Fashion Week void — surveys the evolution of letterman sweaters, khaki pants, and tweed jackets from cutting-edge statement pieces to quotidian menswear staples.

“John M Armleder: Selected Furniture Sculptures 1979–2012” at the Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster Street, September 13-October 28

Because most paintings are inevitably bound for the domestic environment, to be displayed in close proximity to the couch, the coffee table, and the ottoman, Fluxus artist John M. Armelder preemptively pairs his canvasses, dating back to 1979, with the modernist and art deco furnishings (or in some cases, guitar amps, surfboards, and mirrors) that enhance each other’s form and function.

“Moss, the Auction: Dialogues Between Art & Design” at Phillips de Pury, 450 Park Avenue, October 6-15

Following the gestalt theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, design maven Murray Moss pairs highlights from his venerable design collection — pieces by Maarten Baas, Hella Jongerius, and Studio Job, for example— with various blue-chip artworks to create thought-provoking vignettes. A 10-day viewing provides the opportunity to ogle these intellectual fugues before they hit the auction block.

To see works from these fall design exhibitions, click the slide show.

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At the U.S. Open this week, mixed doubles player Brian Battistone managed to snag a bit of the spotlight — albeit, not for his tennis skills. What caught viewers’ attention was the pair of hedge clippers he appeared to be slinging on the court.

Well, what looked like a dangerous set of gardening tools was actually a double-handled tennis racket. The story behind the distinct design (created by inventor Lionel Burt, produced by Natural Tennis) is that the two handles, fixed in right angles in relation to the head, allow players to play the same strokes on either sides of the body. In theory, it strengthens the muscles bilaterally, developing them at an equal pace. Battistone and brother Dann Battistone, seemingly the only two players who use it, became investors in Burt’s invention six years ago. But as the old saying goes, a racket is only as good as its player. While Battistone has risen over the years in doubles rankings as high as 88th, he and partner Nicole Mellichor, unfortunately, didn’t make it past the first round.

The U.S. Open concludes Sunday, September 9. 

Big ears; melting faces; hollow eyes; blurry nudes; top-hatted showmen; jeering caricatures; ghoulish nomads; and apparition-like Christian deities, all sketched and spray-painted with sloping expressive curves in a fleshy, acid-tinged palette.

Alessandro Pessoli is largely known as a painter, and a figurative painter at that (regardless of how abstract his figures tend to get). But the artist has long worked in three dimensions, his singular aesthetic and haunting subjects extending deep into the unexpected realm of ceramics. And with two major bicoastal outings this month, Pessoli’s interdisciplinary nature will be very much on display. The artist has a new show of painted ceramic sculptures opening at New York’s Anton Kern Gallery on September 6. The exhibition coincides with Pessoli’s first West Coast museum solo show, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from September 28 through January 21, 2013, which will include dozens of intimately scaled pencil drawings and several ceramic pieces.

Wandering and restlessness are major themes in the work, says sfmoma curator Jenny Gheith, as if his subjects “have just emerged from this dream, and there’s no real definition of what’s between them and around them.” In that sense, Pessoli’s figures seem to migrate both formally and conceptually from clay to page. What connects the artist’s handling of the two mediums is his approach to shape, composition, and color: glazing ceramics being yet another outlet for his painterly instincts and, the artist says, a way to marry color and form. Above all, the works are united by the critical presence of the artist’s hand, be it sketching furiously on paper, spray-painting an aluminum sheet (which he sometimes uses in place of canvas), or kneading a resistant slab of clay.

“I’ve tried to maintain and widen the anarchic side of my imagination and the process of creating,” Pessoli says. “I’d like a feeling of freedom and vitality to emerge from the new works.”

“It’s very personal,” Gheith notes. “You really get that from the ceramics—the importance of his touch and his understanding of how the materials work.”

Pessoli relocated from Milan to Los Angeles in 2009, and Gheith says the move seems to have had a major impact on his work. His palette has lightened, and gone, for the most part, is the religious iconography that propelled him to international renown during his outing at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Now Pessoli appears to be embracing elements of a uniquely SoCal visual language. His last show, at L.A.’s Marc Foxx gallery, included a rainbow-hued painting of a graffiti-riddled Mercedes sedan. The title of the exhibition, “110 to Hellman,” referred to something deeply embedded in the Angeleno lifestyle: the artist’s home-to-studio commute.

The psychedelic colors carry over to several new ceramic works. Bathers, to be shown at Kern, is a painted majolica sculpture comprised of two nebulous multicolored forms on either side of a mounting wave. Abstract and figurative ceramics bearing a similar palette will be on view at Pessoli’s sfmoma exhibition as well.

“The move to L.A. certainly has had an influence on my work,” he says. “But explaining exactly how is difficult. True transformations always need a long time.”

To see works by Alessandro Pessoli, click the slide show.

This article appears in the September issue of Modern Painters magazine.

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Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Architecture, Fashion & Style, and Performing Arts, September 3-7, 2012:

ART

— We picked our 40 most anticipated gallery shows in New York City this fall, and provided helpful itineraries for seeing the ones opening this week.

— The Andy Warhol Foundation announced that it will begin selling off all 20,000 Andy Warhol works still in its possession through Christie's in November.

— Julia Halperin and Coline Milliard profiled 10 powerful young dealers working in the U.K.

— Chloe Wyma recapped the fourth episode of Bravo's art world reality TV show “Gallery Girls,” which included a visit to the PAD fair and a strikingly sexist bowling analogy.

— Ashton Cooper provided a handy guide to the best post-gallery food spots in Chelsea, from fancy joints to cheap takeout.

DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE

— Kelly Chan spoke to architect Preston Scott Cohen about his futuristic new Taiyuan Museum of Art, which is due to open this fall in China.

— Designer Nigel Coates took inspiration from classical Greek and Roman motifs for a series of new housewares he's premiering at Paris's Maison & Objet trade show this week.

— Janelle Zara previewed five major fall design exhibitions in New York, from the Swiss Institute's John M Armleder retrospective to a Murray Moss-curated show at Phillips de Pury.

— Kelly Chan surveyed five major architecture exhibitions coming to New York galleries and museums this fall, including an Occupy Wall Street show at the Center for Architecture and the Museum of the City of New York's historical look at the development of Staten Island.

— Tennis player Brian Battistone wowed the crowd at the U.S. Open with a strange two-handled racket invented by Lionel Burt and manufactured by Natural Tennis.

FASHION & STYLE

— Thursday was Fashion's Night Out, and ARTINFO was on the scene snapping shots of all the stylish celebrations.

— Caitlin Petreycik and Chloe Wyma looked at rising designers who are participating in New York Fashion Week for the first time this year.

— Designer Wes Gordon offered some insights into his new collection of tarot-inspired clothes, premiering at New York Fashion Week.

— Caitlin Petreycik compared Michelle Obama's outfits from the Democratic National Convention in 2008 with what she wore at this year's DNC.

— Oscar de la Renta received the 2012 Couture Council Artistry of Fashion Award at a star-studded gala on Wednesday, prompting Katharine K. Zarrella to survey the 80-year-old designer's career.

PERFORMING ARTS

— On the occasion of the centennial of his birth, Alanna Martinez recommended five John Cage events happening in New York this month.

— Patrick Pacheco chronicled the 25 people under 35 who are reshaping Broadway.

— New media artist Ben Rubin explained the inner workings of his LED light sculpture “Shakespeare Machine,” which will hang from the ceiling in the Public Theater's newly refurbished lobby.

— Graham Fuller was lukewarm on husband-and-wife filmmaking duo Todd Louiso and Sarah Koskoff's new indie rom-com “Hello I Must Be Going.”

— Larry Blumenfeld gave jazz guitarist and singer Lionel Loueke's new album “Heritage” a listen, noting that it had “a harder edge” than his previous records.

VIDEO

— Tom Chen interviewed the Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao on the occasion of her first major U.S. show, which opened this week at New York's Asia Society:

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