Inspired by Richard Prince’s 1990 monochrome painting If I Die, Christie’s chose the title “If I Live, I’ll See You Tuesday” for its May 12 evening sale, which champions artists whose fame crystalized in the 1980s and the generation that learned from them.
“It’s a risky mission,” says Loic Gouzer, an international specialist at Christie’s who also organized the $33 million “11th Hour” charity sale last May at Rockefeller Center. “These evening sales have become so big, a classic from the 1980s almost has no room to be in them anymore, and we had very little space for very contemporary art.”
Among the five Prince offerings that form the backbone of the sale, the artist’s still-controversial Spiritual America, 1983, a 24-by-20-inch Ektacolor photograph of a prepubescent Brooke Shields in a come hither nude pose, stands out at $3.5 million to $4.5 million. At least five of today’s top contemporary art collectors own a version of Spiritual America, a kind of touchstone image for the edgy 1980s. The aforementioned 96-by-75-inch If I Die is estimated at $3.5 million to $5.5 million.
After reaching a sizzling high of £4.2 million ($8.4 million) for Overseas Nurse, 2002, at Sotheby’s London in July 2008, the Prince market took a sharp dive. It is only now looking brighter, given the recent settlement of the five-year-old copyright case involving the French photographer Patrick Cariou’s charges that Prince illegally used Cariou’s photographs of Rastafarians for a series of paintings. That impression of revitalization is reinforced by the offering of Nurse of Greenmeadow, 2002, at $7 million to $9 million.
Among the offerings from budding blue-chip artists—apparently selected as examples of the most desirable names of the moment—is Wade Guyton’s Untitled (Fire, Red/Black U), 2005, done in Epson UltraChrome ink-jet on linen. Featuring flames licking the bottom of the black composition with floating letter Us above the conflagration, it is pegged in the region of $3 million. Another version sold last November at Christie’s New York for a record $2,405,000. Gouzer wryly observes, “The guy who’s going to buy the Guyton is not going to buy the Diebenkorn,” a reference to an upcoming offering at Sotheby’s two nights later.
Works by other artists whose secondary markets have soared in recent seasons include Dan Colen’s emblematic candle painting, Untitled (Boo Fuck’n Hoo), 2005, at $2 million to $3 million, more than double the $1,085,000 artist record set last May—and Mark Grotjahn’s richly surfaced, 88 and 3/8-inch-high face painting abstraction, Untitled (In and Out of the Darkness Face 43.01), 2011, at a steeply estimated $3.5 million to $4.5 million.
The one-off sale will also include “older” work, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Made in Japan I, 1982, a skeletal head set against a jet-black background, executed on paper laid down on canvas; its estimate is $7 million to $9 million. There is also a fantastic and rare-to-market wall relief, David Hammons’s detritus-sourced Untitled, 1978, comprising found bamboo, phonograph record fragments, colored string, and hair, and estimated at $3 million to $4 million.
If it appears that Christie’s is taking a big gamble in offering a stand-alone tranche of pushily estimated works, rest assured: At least 65 percent of the offerings will carry third-party guarantees.
