SALE: Urban Art at Bonhams
DATE: March 29, 6pm
LOCATION: London
ABOUT: While Bonhams's Urban Art sale isn't the kind of contemporary art auction with eight-figure estimates, it is still likely to be a hot category. The sale is estimated to bring in £460,000-680,000 ($730,000-1.1 million), with seventeen works by semi-anonymous British street artist Banksy included. The trendy category, with an evening start time, could draw out celebrity street art fans like Kate Moss — who is the subject of one of the offered works — and Brangelina (that is, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).
Many of the Banksy works on offer were purchased by the current owner at the artist's first Los Angeles show, "Existencilism," at 33 1/3 Gallery in 2002. They include "Leopard and Barcode" (est. £60,000-80,000, $95,000-127,000) — which features a large cat leaping out of a barcode cage — "Bomb Hugger" (£40,000-60,000) and "Love is in the Air" (£40,000-60,000).
A 2005 eponymous work of Kate Moss in the colorful pop-art style of Andy Warhol's Marilyns could bring in £30,000-50,000. There are also a host of less well-known Bansky works with estimates below £5,000.
Will the market absorb such recent work at auction? Recent history suggests it might. In February, a 2006 Banksy work entitled "Fetish Lady," depicting a prim-and-proper portrait of an aristocrat with her face covered in a black leather mask, fetched £265,250 ($417,000) at Christie's post-war and contemporary evening auction in London — one of the highest prices ever paid for the artist's work at auction, though not a record.
The sale also includes work by Blek Le Rat, Shepard Fairey, and KAWS.
OTHER INTERNATIONAL SALES:
Sale: A Celebration of Burgundy
Location: Hart Davis Hart Chicago (Tru Restaurant)
Date: March 24, 9am
Sale: Period Art and Design
Location: Bonhams San Francisco
Date: March 25 and 26, 10am
Sale: Modern and Contemporary Prints
Location: Bloomsbury London
Date: March 29, 10:30am
Sale: The Classic Cellar from a Great American Collector IX
Location: Sotheby's Hong Kong
Date: March 31, 12pm
Sale: Tribal Art
Location: Lempertz Brussels
Date: March 31, 2pm
To see work from Bonhams "Urban Art" sale, click on the slide show.