The Tate has unveiled their 2015 lineup, which will include sculptor Alexander Calder‘s first retrospective at the Tate Modern, from November 2015 to the spring of 2016. The Tate Modern will also present an a large exhibition of works by the South-African artist Marlene Dumas in Spring 2015 in addition to the show “The World Goes Pop,” an exploration of Pop Art in the ’60s and ’70s. At the Tate Britain, Cornish sculptor Barbara Hepworth will be featured during Summer 2015, and the museum will also present exhibition of works by painter Frank Auerbach during the following autumn season. At the Tate Liverpool, the late work by Jackson Pollock will be exhibited in a summer show titled “Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots”. (more…)

Image: Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1994 via Sotheby’s
Estimate: £9,000,000 – 12,000,000
Sold for: £21,321,250

Sotheby’s just concluded its evening Postwar & Contemporary sale in London on October 12th with a sale total of £44,146,350 ($70,793,087),  the highest total of the three auction houses this week.

Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild, 1994 from the collection of Eric Clapton set a record price at £21,321,250 ($34,297,363). Alongside this work, the second cover lot of the sale was Yves Klein’s RE 9-I from the artist’s most sought-after series: the Relief éponge, which sold for  £3,737,250 with premium.

Image: Yves Klein, RE 9-I, 1961 via Sotheby’s
Estimate: £2,000,000 – 3,000,000
Sold for: £3,737,250

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Shot of the Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Last night in London, Sotheby’s demonstrated a sound Contemporary Art Evening Sale, with sales totaling £69 million, against an estimate of £57-82 million. They possessed a good sell-through rate at 87.3% by lot and 93.4% by value. In a press release, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, was quoted: “The auction this evening was led by blue-chip artists, such as Bacon, Basquiat, Richter and Lichtenstein… With buyers from 15 different countries, the global demand for this area of the market continues to be underlined.” Despite the overall formidable sales of last night, Sotheby’s did not receive quite the same reception as it did in its evening auction in New York in the Spring.

Glenn Brown, The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin) (1998), which sold for £5.2 million with an estimate of £2.2-2.8 million

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‬The FT covers Michael Peppiatt’s new book featuring interviews with artists such as Francis Bacon, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Auerbach, “I [want] to pin experience down before it disappears,” stated Auerbach in an excerpt. A conjoint exhibition of his work and that of Peppiatt’s other subjects will open in London this June.

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Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-portrait) (1985). All images © The Lucian Freud Archive.

Lucian Freud‘s work spans a seventy year trajectory on view now at the National Portrait Gallery in London in the first ever exhibition to focus solely on the artist’s portraiture, curated in collaboration with Freud over his final years. Born the grandson of Sigmund Freud in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, L. Freud passed away at age 88 last July as perhaps one of the most influential and important artists of his generation. The expansive exhibition includes works from as early as 1940 to the last and unfinished painting Freud was working on, highlighting stylistic developments that occurred over the decades. Freud’s subjects ran the gamut from his family, friends and lovers, to celebrities, criminals and aristocrats.

Lucian Freud, Girl in a Dark Jacket (1947)

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Installation view. All images courtesy of Haunch of Venison, London.

Haunch of Venison’s newly renovated four-gallery space in London currently holds an exhibition showing ten of Britain’s more important painters of the post-war era: Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield, William Coldstream, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Leon Kossoff and Euan Uglow. Exploring both personal and artistic relationships amongst the artists, over 40 paintings and drawings are on display, unveiling some works that have not been seen in public for years.
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Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980 (est. 1.3 -1.6 million GBP, realized 1,553,250 GBP), via Sothebys.com

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London today brought in 13.3 million GBP against a low presale estimate of just under 10 million GBP.  Of the 39 lots offered for sale, 4 were bought in, 15 lots sold above their high presale estimates, and 2 works sold for under their low presale estimates. Andy Warhol‘s Diamond Dust Shoes, never before seen at auction, realized 1,553,250 GBP against a high estimate of 1.6 million GBP and was the highest earning lot of the night.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1965 (est. 1.5-2 million GBP, realized 2,281,250 GBP), via Sothebys.com

more images and story after the jump…

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Lucian Freud, Eight Months Gone, 199700–>

Jerry Hall, the American model and ex-wife of legendary rocker Mick Jagger, will send 14 works from her collection to auction next month at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sale in London. Hall’s lots are estimated to fetch at least £1.5 million, and include works by Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst, Robert Graham, Ed Ruscha, Francesco Clemente, R.B. Kitaj, and Frank Auerbach.

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Sotheby’s Evening Contemporary Art Auction in Progress, via Sothebys.com

With the audience being described as “dazed” and “fatigued,” excitement was sparse at yesterday evening’s Contemporary Art auction at Sotheby’s in London. The sale realized a total of £41,091,800, well within the £32-52 million estimate (total realized includes buyer’s premium, estimates do not).  The sale had a sell-through rate of 83% by lot and 87.3% by value, while 45.4% of lots sold above their high estimates.

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Yves Klein, MG 42, 1960 (estimate £200,000-300,000, realized £481,250), via Sothebys.com

The headlining work, Yves Klein’s RE 49, sold for just over £6 million (estimate £4.5-6.5 million) after three minutes of bidding from four interested buyers.  The other Klein canvas for sale yesterday evening, MG 42, realized a price of £481,250, above its pre-sale estimate of £200,000-300,000. Though the works performed reasonably well, there is still concern that the market might be tiring of them. “There are too many Kleins and Fontanas in these auctions,” Dusseldorf-based art adviser Jorg-Michael Bertz said, in conversation with Bloomberg reporter Scott Reyburn. “We need a rest from them.”

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Untitled XIV, Willem de Kooning. Estimate: £2-3 million Price Realized: £4 million

Sotheby’s auction house worked its magic again last night at their London contemporary art evening sale that totaled £54.1 million – three times the total of the equivalent sale last year and comfortably higher than its pre-sale estimate of £32.2 – 45.1 million. Of the 77 lots on offer, fifteen sold for over a million pounds and only three failed to sell. Measured in financial numbers, this is the second most successful contemporary auction ever held at Sotheby’s. 21 new artist records were set, a large number but slightly dicieving given that nineteen of these were realized by Zero Group-era artists, many of whom have never appeared in the big evening auctions. Discussing the results, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, said: “The outstanding sell-through rates, depth of bidding across the sale – particularly for Lenz – and strong prices we achieved this evening are a clear sign of renewed confidence in this market and build on the positive and strong results of our New York sale in November.

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Frank Auerbach, “Summer Building Site,” 1952, Via NYTimes. For Auerbach, building sites became pictorial motifs.

Currently showing at Courtauld Gallery in London is an exhibition of paintings and sketches by German-born British artist Frank Auerbach. The work captures London’s wounded infrastructure after World War II and the rebuilding that went on throughout the city from the 1950’s into the early 60’s.  Fascinated by scenes of deconstructed materials and bomb sites in the aftermath of the war– which destroyed  some 80,000 buildings in the city– Auerbach documented London’s physical recovery through sketches and paintings that he reworked for months at a time, creating built-up, painted surfaces of over an inch. The exhibition brings the complete series of fourteen building site paintings together along with several, rarely seen oil sketches. The collection stands as some of the most significant painting in post-war Britain, representing a profound response to the wounded, post-war landscape. Ladders, cranes, scaffolding, steel frames–all wonders of construction sites and symbols of modernity–provided Auerbach with a plethora of lines to work with, and they materialize through his paintings into abstract and highly tangible structures that emphasize chaos.

“Construction of One New Change Street,” behind St Paul’s Cathedral in 1965, Via NYTimes

More text, images and related links after the jump…

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