This is the second part of Art+Auction's preview of the London auctions following last week's look at the Imp/Mod sales.
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art - June 26
This weel, the focus swings to the contemporary arena. After the mania for abstract works by Gerhard Richter this past winter, Sotheby’s is banking on his "Untitled (687-4)," 1989, a lush waterfall of cascading silver and gray paint with sparks of red pushing to the squeegee-stroked surface. Carrying an estimate of £2.8 million to £3.5 million ($4.5-5.7 million), it is somewhat larger than but similar in style to "Kind" (“Child”), 1989, which the house sold in February for £3,065,250 ($4.8 million).
The house is also presenting a clutch of early-production Damien Hirst works, including the now-iconic medicine cabinet "My Way," 1990–91, whose name is a nod to the Sex Pistols’ cover of the Frank Sinatra classic. Made of glass, steel, multi-density fireboard and vintage pharmaceutical bottles, the piece was formerly owned by Charles Saatchi and is expected to earn between £1.2 million and £1.8 million ($1.9-3 million).
Sotheby’s, perhaps seeking to capitalize on the recent vogue for Surrealism, is also offering a major painting by Glenn Brown, "The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin)," 1998. The dark dreamscape, with its allusion to Martin’s apocalyptic 19th-century works, is estimated to land in the £2.2 million to £2.8 million ($3.5-4.5 million) range. Rounding out the menu is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s densely packed acrylic-on-canvas "Saxaphone," 1986, tagged £2 million to £2.9 million ($3.2-4.9 million).
Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary - June 27
The indisputable star of this evening sale is Jeff Koons’s "Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue/Turquoise)," a high-chromium stainless-stee sculpture with transparent color coating from 1994-2008, estimated to crack £2.5 million to £3.5 million ($4-5.7 million). Although Koons’s auction performance has been somewhat spotty of late, another of the egg’s five versions, in orange and magenta, earned a resounding $6,242,500 at Christie’s New York last November. “It’s great to have the egg in London,” says Francis Outred, the house’s head of postwar and contemporary art, “and this version has arguably the best of the color combinations.”
Christie’s is also offering a fresh-to-market Lucian Freud, the handsome but somber oil on panel "Head of a Greek Man," 1946 (£1.5-2 million; $2.4-3.3 million), consigned by the heirs of John Craxton, who spent five months painting on the Greek island of Porus with Freud. Craxton acquired the portrait after the two artists exhibited their work jointly in London the following year.
The house has also coaxed the owner of a long-held, untitled silkscreen and acrylic paint piece by Basquiat from 1984 to part with the prize. Similar in style to the artist’s contemporaneous collaborations with Andy Warhol, the collage is pegged at £1.2 million to £1.8 million ($1.9-2.9 million).
Phillips de Pury & Company - Contemporary Art Part 1, June 28
The boutique auctioneer has front-loaded its key sale of contemporary art with Andy Warhol’s portrait of Princess Diana from 1982, carrying an estimate of £900,000 to £1.2 million ($1.5-1.9 million). It has been almost 15 years since Diana’s death in a Paris car crash at the age of 36, but this 50-by-42-inch portrait, with her bejeweled and regal in a purple dress, was completed when she was just 21. As Michael McGinnis, the house’s worldwide head of contemporary art, points out, the picture nails a Warholian trifecta: “It’s a disaster painting and a celebrity portrait, and it has a lot of commercial appeal.” At the other end of the formal spectrum, but perhaps equally foreboding, Phillips is offering Anselm Kiefer’s mural-size "Die Woge" (“The Wave”), 1995, a supercharged composition in canvas cloth, paint, ashes, tin, and cotton on board with an estimate of £350,000 to £450,000 ($570,000-731,000).