In the department’s first New York evening sale since the departure of star auctioneer Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art offerings reflect in part the generational change coming with Alexander Rotter, 40, the house’s new co-head of contemporary art worldwide, who characterized the business-getting season as a “fresh start for my team.”
Signaling that broadened interest, on May 14 the house will offer Chris Ofili’s seminal Afrodizzia, 1996, the elephant dung-anchored work tattooed with map pins on linen that helped make Ofili a star of the “Sensation” show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1997 and a 1998 Turner Prize winner. Estimated at $2 million to $3 million, it is part of a trove of works being sold by Sotheby’s over the next 18 months from the former hedge fund magnate Adam Sender.
Other Sender collection highlights include Cindy Sherman’s alluring C-print Untitled #93, 1981, from her “Centerfold” series, with its seemingly abused ingenue defensively clutching a black satin sheet over her nightgown. Like the Ofili, it is estimated at $2 million to $3 million. Also on offer is a major Martin Kippenberger, Untitled, 1981, from the series “Lieber maler male mir.” Executed by a hired sign painter in a photorealist-styled and billboard-scaled way, it is pegged at $3 million to $4 million.
Less-traveled evening sale candidates include Rosemarie Trockel’s machine-knit wool standout, Untitled, 1985-88, featuring feminist crossfire between the Playboy bunny symbol and the more domestic cotton symbol, at $1.5 million to $2 million, and a rare-to-market James Rosenquist, Be Beautiful, a 54-by-84 1/2-inch oil on canvas from 1964 that riffs on a Noxzema skin cream contest from the era. It is estimated at $3 million to $4 million.
Still blockbuster-friendly, Sotheby’s is offering de Kooning’s oil Untitled, 1975-77, in a format larger than that of the Christie’s entry. Bristling with energy and created following a period where the artist stopped painting and made sculpture, it is estimated at $18 million to $25 million. The house is also offering a grand and early example from Richard Diebenkorn’s most sought after abstract series. Ocean Park #20, 1969, estimated at $9 million to $12 million, was consigned by Los Angeles collectors and museum patrons Jane and Marc Nathanson.
In the same high-end vein, a huge, five-part, text-driven Basquiat composition, Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta, 1983, executed in acrylic, oil stick, and paper collage on canvas, is expected to fetch $20 million to $30 million—not unrealistic since six Basquiat paintings have exceeded $20 million at auction since June 2012.
A version of this article appears in the May 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine.
