Change is in the air and on the ground as auction giant Christie’s redraws the salesroom boundaries of 20th-century art, in the process upending years of evening sale categories identical to those at Sotheby’s, its longtime rival.
“I’m pleased we did it first,” said Jussi Pylkkänen, global president of Christie’s. “They’re not just auctions anymore; they’re curated exhibitions, and we’re very much going down that track.”
Phillips, newly invigorated by ceo Edward Dolman and a rash of recent hires, has changed its evening sale date to a Sunday—having been all but forced out of its Thursday evening slot by the Christie’s Impressionist and modern art sale—and has rebranded its department as 20th-century and contemporary art. For the moment, Sotheby’s is sticking to the old schedule, offering Impressionist and modern art a week prior to its postwar and contemporary lots.
Just as postwar and contemporary has become the favored category of an immensely deep-pocketed global buying pool, the long, illustrious precinct of so-called Impressionist and modern has lost some of its luster and firepower, due largely to changing tastes and a dwindling supply of prime material. This season, however, collectors will have ample opportunity to fill out their holdings when the estate of A. Alfred Taubman, who died at age 91 in April, hits the block at Sotheby’s. The ghost of the one-time owner of the house, who almost single-handedly changed the auction arena from a closed, wholesale market dominated by dealers to a retail bazaar for the wealthy, is sure to have a grand time rattling the proverbial dishes.
November 4 – Sotheby’s – The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman: Masterworks
The fall season gets off to a heady start with a single-owner sale devoted to the huge and eclectic collection of the auction house’s onetime owner—and major shareholder once he took the firm public—shopping mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman, who resigned in disgrace from his chairman’s role in 2000 as the price-fixing scandal between Christie’s and Sotheby’s unfolded.
Guaranteed by Sotheby’s at a cool and record-setting half-billion dollars, after torrid competition from Christie’s, the estate includes hundreds of works to be sold over the course of four auctions (three this month, and one in January 2016). Top entries include the demure and fully dressed Portrait de Paulette Jourdain, circa 1919, by Amedeo Modigliani, estimated at $25 million to $35 million. Taubman acquired it from Acquavella Galleries in 1983, at a time when the auction record for a Modigliani hovered below $2 million.
Like many of the estate entries, it is fresh to market, as is the case with a stunning Dora Maar portrait from Pablo Picasso, Femme assise sur une chaise, 1938, also tagged at $25 million to $35 million, which depicts the artist’s muse as a lilac-skinned empress, enthroned in a high-back armchair. The retail mogul acquired the picture at Sotheby’s London in December 1999, a very different time in the art market and just prior to his downfall, for £3.3 million ($5.3 million). It hailed from the Gianni Versace collection.
Other highlights in the cross-category sale include Edgar Degas’s large, masterful composition on paper Danseuses en blanc, circa 1878, estimated at $18 million to $25 million, and Willem de Kooning’s rambunctious abstraction Untitled XXI, 1976, pictured at left, tagged at $25 million to $35 million. A key painting from that sought-after period, the latter was acquired from Los Angeles dealer James Corcoran.
“The collection is broad in its sweep,” says Simon Shaw, international co-head of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s. “Taubman trained as an architect and he understood space. It meant he gave a particular vision to the way he put the collection together. Even though it’s eclectic, you can see why it all fits.”
November 5 – Sotheby’s – Impressionist & Modern Art
The star Impressionist offering is the exceptionally rare-to-market Vincent van GoghPaysage sous un ciel mouvementé, a panoramic windswept landscape painted in the fields of Arles in mid April 1889, the year before the artist’s suicide, and estimated at $50 million to $70 million. “It’s the best Van Gogh to come to auction since the 1980s,” declares Shaw, who notes that another Van Gogh landscape, L’Allée des Alyscamps, 1888, sold at Sotheby’s New York this past May for $66.3 million.
The later Arles picture comes from the Belgian collection of Louis and Evelyn Franck, who acquired the painting from Galerie Moos in Geneva in 1955. It has been on extended loan, along with other masterworks from the Franck collection (also on offer here), for some 20 years at Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland. Other notable works from the Francks’ time-capsule collection include Picasso’s melancholic yet sultry, large-scale, Blue Period pastel Nu au jambes croisées, 1903, estimated at $8 million to $12 million; Paul Cézanne’s luscious Fleurs dans un pot d’olives, 1880–82, at $5 million to $7 million; and a spooky yet compelling James Ensor symbolist composition, Les Poissardes mélancoliques, 1892, at $3 million to $5 million.
Other highlights include a radical and pristine 20th-century masterpiece—Kazimir Malevich’s Mystic Suprematism (Black Cross on Red Oval), 1920–22, right. Estimated at $35 million to $45 million, the painting, along with four others from the artist’s revolutionary series, resided at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum from 1958 to 2008, when the group was restituted back to the artist’s heirs after protracted negotiations with the city of Amsterdam. On behalf of those heirs, Sotheby’s sold Suprematist Composition, 1916, for $60 million in New York in November 2008, and Suprematism, 18th Construction, 1915, for £21.4 million ($33.6 million) at Sotheby’s London this past June.
What implications might there be for Sotheby’s, which holds the sole Imp/mod sale of the week, since Christie’s decided to hold its sale in that category alongside postwar and contemporary offerings the week following? According to Shaw, “there’s no simple answer, but we’ve got the week all to ourselves.”
November 8 – Phillips – 20th-Century and Contemporary Art
Surprise, surprise! Phillips has carved out a new, hybrid category that further shakes the old alignments between 20th-century and contemporary art, and it is staging its rebranded sale on a Sunday evening, about as big a change as when department stores decided to open their doors on the seventh day. “It’s a strategically well-placed sale date,” says August Uribe, deputy chairman of the Americas at Phillips, explaining the change to a Sunday evening slot, “where we’re able to dovetail buyers from both markets.”
The house is offering Giorgio de Chirico’s Neoclassical Gladiateurs au repos, 1928–29, left, which depicts a brawny crew of scantily clad Roman gentlemen who appear to be admiring one another. Estimated at $4 million to $6 million, it appears on the block for the first time, having been originally commissioned by de Chirico’s Paris dealer, Léonce Rosenberg, for his bespoke apartment. That commission consisted of nine large-scale gladiator paintings that have since been dispersed around the world in various museums and private collections, including the Barnes Foundation and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
November 9 – Christie’s – The Artist’s Muse
Following May’s headline-making “Looking Forward to the Past” curated sale, which totaled $705.8 million, Christie’s plans another cross-category offering. The delectable headliner this round is Modigliani’s rare and unassailably sexy reclining odalisque Nu couché, 1917–18, expected to achieve in excess of $120 million. The current artist record stands at $70.7 million, set by Tête, 1911–12, a stone sculpture that sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2014, trailed slightly by Nu assis sur un divan (La belle Romaine), 1917, a vertical-format nude that made $68.9 million at that same house in November 2010. Nu couché is in the preferable and more languorous horizontal format, depicting the raven-haired beauty propped by a pillow with arms spread, cactuslike. “It’s truly one of the artist’s greatest examples,” says Brooke Lampley, New York head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, “and in the last five years, a Modigliani nude has been on the top of every collector’s wish list.” Speaking of this example, Lampley adds, “She’s a very sensual woman.”
Other notable lots include Pablo Picasso’s Homme à l’épée, below, depicting a wild-eyed musketeer and dated July 25, 1969. The large-scale canvas, which carries an unpublished estimate in the region of $25 million, last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 2009 for a mid-estimate £6,985,250 ($11.5 million).
Alberto Giacometti’s iconic painted oil portrait James Lord, 1964, depicts a celebrated chronicler of artistic life in Montparnasse who died in 2009. It is estimated at $22 million to $30 million. Lord sat for 18 days in Giacometti’s cramped Paris atelier and wrote about the experience in his 1965 volume, A Giacometti Portrait, published by the Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the Giacometti retrospective there.
November 10 – Christie’s – Postwar & Contemporary Art
The evening sale is rich in British works, with Lucian Freud’s The Brigadier, 2003–04, a life-size portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles—better known as the former husband of Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall—shown seated in full-dress uniform. It is estimated at $25 million to $35 million and was featured in the “Lucian Freud: Portraits” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2012. The work comes from the estate of financier Damon Mezzacappa, the former vice chairman of Lazard Frères. The estate also includes Jasper Johns’s stunning Gray Painting with Spoon, 1962, above right, complete with ruler, magnet, and spoon and estimated at $8 million to $12 million.
The blue-chip names continue with Agnes Martin’s six-foot-square Minimalist abstraction Happy Valley, 1967, bearing the faintest of perfectly inscribed lines. It too carries a $5 million to $7 million estimate. Martin is still undervalued in the scheme of unassailable masters; only five of her paintings have sold for more than $4 million at auction, topped by The Beach, 1964, which fetched $6.5 million at Sotheby’s New York in November 2013. “It’s exactly what the market wants, especially coming on the heels of the Tate retrospective,” says Sara Friedlander, head of the postwar and contemporary evening sale at Christie’s.
A unique phosphorous-bronze sculpture by Bruce Nauman, Untitled (Hand Group), 1997, composed of a double row of otherwise cut-off outstretched hands that fairly shout with Nauman’s imprimatur, is expected to bring $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
November 11 – Sotheby’s – Contemporary Art
With so much contemporary firepower discharged from the Taubman single-owner sale selections on November 4, Sotheby’s reserved one of the season’s standout offerings, Cy Twombly’s astonishing blackboard painting Untitled, 1968 (New York City), seen at right, for this evening. Expected to realize in excess of $60 million, the painting comes from the collection of Audrey Irmas, the Los Angeles–based philanthropist who has pledged $30 million from the offering to benefit the Wilshire Boulevard Temple and its campaign for a new building designed by the Rem Koolhaas–led Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The rest will benefit the Audrey Irmas Foundation for Social Justice, making this lot a charitable bonanza.
The 68-by-90-inch abstraction, executed in oil-based house paint, wax crayon, and pencil on canvas, is one of approximately 35 so-called blackboard paintings, of which 14 are large-scale, and 8—the most desirable, including one in Jasper Johns’s collection—bear Twombly’s fully and beautifully formed chalklike loops that race across the black background. This looped example, acquired by Irmas 25 years ago, is the largest in the series. A somewhat smaller version (61¼ by 74¾ inches), Untitled from 1970, sold at Christie’s New York in November 2014 for a record $69.6 million. The seller was Nicola Del Roscio, the artist’s longtime studio assistant.
Sotheby’s is also offering a satyrlike Francis Bacon painting, Portrait, 1962. Featuring a naked man dead center on a heart-shaped couch in a typically barren Baconesque chamber, it is estimated at $12 million to $18 million.
“I’m a little more cautious this season on the very young front and staying more focused on the classic contemporary,” says Alexander Rotter, co-worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. “Freshness to the market is more crucial now than it ever was. As for our Twombly, it is the biggest and the best and blows everything else out of the water.”
November 12 – Christie’s – Impressionist & Modern Art
Sculpture leads the evening with an impressive grouping, including a 19-inch-long Henri Matisse bronze, Nu couché II, from a 1951 cast and consigned by Jacquelyn Miller Matisse, daughter of New York dealer Pierre Matisse and granddaughter
of the artist. It carries a $1.5-million-to-$2.5-million estimate. The house is also offering a group of European bronzes from revered San Francisco collectors Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson (better known as Hunk and Moo in the collecting community) that includes Max Ernst’s lifetime bronze Un ami empressé, 1957, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000, and Jacques Lipchitz’s monolithic Tête, a lifetime bronze conceived in 1915 and cast before 1968, pegged at $300,000 to $500,000. The Andersons acquired it from a Los Angeles dealer in 1971.
The sculpture parade continues with a rare Expressionist figure by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tänzerin mit gehobenem Bein, 1913. The unique, 26-inch-high piece, in scored, carved, and painted oak and depicting a posed and costumed ballerina, is pegged at $3 million to $6 million.
There’s also an unusual Picasso bronze, Le bouquet, 1953–54, just in market time for the Picasso sculpture retrospective at moma. With a surface incised in Abstract-Expressionist fury and bearing a brown and green patina, it is estimated at $1.5 million to $2.5 million. “Picasso sculpture,” says Brooke Lampley, New York head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, “is relatively undervalued and under-explored, compared with his paintings and drawings.”
There are also plenty of Picasso offerings on canvas, including the early and pretty Tête de femme, 1900, bearing the telltale signature “P Ruiz Picasso” and estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million, and an ominous and imposing Le hibou sur la chaise, 1947, still bearing the darkness of the war years, at $3.5 million to $4.5 million.
Impressionist selections are rather thin this season, though Christie’s has a first-rate Camille Pissarro, Le jardin de Maubuisson, Pontoise, 1881, depicting the verdant surroundings of the beautiful townscape, expected to bring $3 million to $5 million.
The Pissarro originally came from Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie in Paris, whose founder, Paul Durand-Ruel, was the subject of an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that closed in September. There is also a late Claude Monet oil, Iris jaunes au nuage rose, 1924–25, left, which is estimated at $6 million to $8 million.
A version of this article appears in the November 2015 issue of Art+Auction.