Mark Grotjahn’s work is profiled in the New York Times this week, and the artist’s aggressive business strategies that have kept his works consistently in-demand. “He’s probably an artist who’s in more demand today than any other,” says Alberto Mugrabi. “He’s so good that he controls everything. He controls when galleries make shows, he controls who they sell a painting to — he’s on top.” (more…)
Andy Warhol, 20 Pink Maos (1979), via Phillips
Complementing the offering of new works across town at Regent’s Park, Phillips London has opened a week of auctions around Frieze Week, closing out its 30-lot sale this evening with a consistent sale, seeing 6 of the evening’s 30 lots go unsold to reach a final tally of £17,867,750. (more…)
Mark Grotjahn, Pink Cosco (Installation View), All artworks © Mark Grotjahn. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Installation photography: Mike Bruce
Continuing his inquiries into the modes of perspective, constraint and repetition at play in the modes of contemporary art practice, Los Angeles-based painter Mark Grotjahn brings a new series of works to Gagosian Gallery in London, under the title Pink Cosco. Reprising several of his previous forms, particularly his painted “mask” sculptures, executed in bronze and covered in varied layers and styles of paint, Grotjahn again insists upon the beauty and precision to be discovered in variations on a theme. (more…)
Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Captain America Drawing in Ten Parts 41.17) (2008–09) (part three), Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio © Mark Grotjahn
After exhibiting this body of work at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo in 2010, Gagosian Gallery is presenting Mark Grotjahn’s ten part surrealist drawing exercise Untitled (Captain America). The title of this show is a play on the original comic book series, where Captain America was intended to fight against the Axis Powers during World War II. Seventy years later, the motif of Captain America is still significant and commonly used as a symbol of fighting for the American Dream. (more…)
Mark Grotjahn, Miller (Green) (Date TBC), via Rae Wang for Art Observed
Mark Grotjahn doesn’t stay in one place for too long. Despite the honed abstraction techniques illustrated in his long-running series like Butterfly Paintings, his recast, painted cardboard box sculptures, and the swirling figuration of his Face works, Grotjahn has also spent countless hours on small-scale projects, conceptual exercises and intriguing asides. There is, for one, his Instagram account, a free-wheeling aesthetic testing ground where the artist has obsessively posted album covers, sets of reflexive iPhone screenshots, and bizarre scenarios culled from both his own life and printed media. (more…)
Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Orange over Mountain Walk, Italian Mask M30.g) (2014), via Anton Kern
Twisting the formal language of both his chosen objects and the painterly signifiers he has built up over the course of his career, Mark Grotjahn returns to Anton Kern Gallery for his fourth solo exhibition with the New York Gallery. Building on the sculptural objects presented last year at the artist’s exhibition at the Nasher in Dallas, the works on view take Grotjahn’s interest in cast-off materials and repurposed objects, the show turns the artist’s frequently reoccurring subject, the cardboard box, into a container for his own aesthetic interests. (more…)
Christie’s saleroom photo by ArtObserved
Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale broke the record for the highest ever grossing Contemporary Art auction in history, totaling over $412 million in sales. The auction came on the heels of Sotheby’s Postwar & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, which broke its own record for highest-grossing auction in Sotheby’s long history ($375 million). Christie’s achieved an astounding 92% sell by lot and 93% sell by value – of the 73 lots offered only 6 failed to sell.
Records at auction were broken for Richard Diebenkorn, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Franz Kline, George Condo, Jean- Michel Basquiat, and Mark Grotjahn. Additionally, Jean Dubuffet, Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat set new records for their artworks on paper. A record was set for an Alexander Calder wire sculpture at auction with Policeman, which sold for $4.2 million.
Yves Klein, Le Rose du bleu (1960) which sold for £23.5 million (£3.5 million over its high estimate)
Last night in London, Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction experienced a stellar sale. Totaling £132.8 million against an expected excess of £120 million, it was the highest grossing contemporary art sale in Europe. Achieving sales with an 87% sell-through rate and 98% sold by value – Christie’s sold all but 9 on it’s 71 lots – save for the 2 withdrawn. Four of the lots sold above £10 million, and five lots boosted over $10 million. Christie’s Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Europe, Francis Outred, was quoted in a post-sale press release: “Following the record result achieved at Christie’s New York in May, we are delighted with tonight results which established a new record for an auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art in Europe… Overall we brought together consignments from four continents, reached buyers on four continents and benefitted from a depth and strength of bidding from across the room and on the phone.”
Sotheby’s staff preparing for the sale. Photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer unless otherwise noted.
After Tuesday night’s multi-record breaking sale at Christie’s, last night’s Contemporary Evening Sale at Sotheby’s seemed to hold a somewhat lower energy, possibly a result of the second consecutive week of auctions and fairs wearing on the collectors. Yet the sale totaled $266 million—within Sotheby’s pre-sale estimate of $215–300 million—a number considerably higher than last May’s Contemporary Evening Sale total of $128 million. Seven of the artworks sold at more than $10 million, and there was an overall sell-through rate of 80.7%. In a post-sale press conference, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art, Alex Rotter, commented “the market is very healthy with active bidding.”
Tobias Meyer giving a press talk about the sale. (more…)
Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Geo Abstract Reveal Face 41.61) (detail), (2011) All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.
Pulling visual and technical elements of different past works into a single series, Mark Grotjahn has mounted his latest groupings of face paintings at Anton Kern Gallery. The exhibition comprises nine large-scale pieces that project highly stylized elements of the visage. Nine Faces is on view through June 25.
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Untitled 1, Julie Mehretu. Estimated: $600,000—800,000. Price Realized: 1,022,500.
118 artworks that once hung in the corporate offices of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sold to bidders at Sotheby’s auction house in New York today for $12.3 million, exceeding the high-end estimate of $12 million. The sale comes almost exactly two years after the investment bank filed the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States and its proceeds will be used to pay off the $613 billion owed to creditors. Today, Kimberly Macleod, spokesperson for Lehman Brothers commented: “We are delighted that Sotheby’s delivered the value we sought on behalf of the creditors and that the result was at the top of the pre-sale estimate.”
More images, results and related links after the jump….
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Ed Ruscha’s ‘That Was Then This Is Now’ sold for £713,250, falling between estimates of £600,000-800,000, via Phillips de Pury
Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale realized £5.1 million last night, missing its low estimate of £5.4 million. With a much smaller and deeply discounted offering compared to last year’s sale, Phillips sold 30 out of 39 lots for a 77% sold-by-lot rate, beating last year’s rate of 66%. However, this year’s totals represent a 79% decrease in value as last year’s sale brought in £24.5 million. Conservative estimates helped, with many lots selling above their estimates. The highest selling lot was Ed Ruscha’s fittingly titled ‘That Was Then This Is Now,’ going for £713,250, including buyer’s premium, putting it in the middle of estimates of £600,000-800,000.
Contemporary Art Evening Sale [Phillips de Pury]
Ruscha Canvas Leads a London Sale [NY Times]
Phillips Contemporary: That Was Then, This Is Now [Artinfo]
Phillips Sells 77% of Contemporary Art in London on Discounts [Bloomberg]
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Encased — 5 Rows (6 Spalding Scottie Pippen Basketballs, 6 Spalding Shaq Attaq Basketballs, 6 Wilson Supershot Basketballs, 6 Wilson Supershot Basketballs, 6 Franklin 6034 Soccerballs) (1993) by Jeff Koons. Lot unsold. Estimate range: £1,800,000 to 2,200,000.
Phillips de Pury & Co. raised a total of £4.2 million at their February 12th auction of contemporary art, with 35 of 53 lots selling. The entire sale was expected to realize £6.8 million – £9.3 million. The higher priced lots were shunned in favor of those with estimates under £500,000.
The highest priced lot was Martin Kippenberger’s Portrait of Paul Schreber (Designed by Himself), which sold for £432,000, at the low end of its presale estimate of £400,000 to £600,000. The 8-foot high oil, lacquer and silicone is an abstract portrait of Paul Schreber, an early 20th century German judge who suffered several nervous breakdowns, and was the subject of a seminal clinical psychology paper by Sigmund Freud. The portrait is based on a sketch in Schreber’s autobiography, where he draws what he imagines his brain to look like: one healthy side and one ill side. Dan Colen’s Untitled (Going, Going, Go. . .), of a candle whose smoke spells out the painting’s title, sold for £92,500, more than double the high estimate. This sale also set a new auction record for the artist.
Zeng Fanzhi’s Huang Jiguang, from 2006, sold for £360,000 against pre-sale estimates of £200,000 to £250,000. The 11 foot wide depicts a Chinese war hero from the Korean War, who is famous for having sacrificed himself in a crucial battle. Mixing historicity and myth with an abstract landscape as background, Fanzhi is one of China’s foremost contemporary artists and is known for his Mask series.
A Jeff Koons sculptural installation featuring a glass-encased vitrine stocked with various basketballs and soccer balls failed to sell. It was the only lot priced higher than £1 million, and failed to generate a single bid despite being the cover lot by a prominent name.
The auction results were unimpressive on the whole, reflecting the general sense of ambivalent malaise that still plagues the art market. The consensus among many dealers and collectors is that it is a buyer’s market, and many sellers have not adjusted their pricing expectations to reflect the ongoing correction–until this mismatch is corrected, there will continue to be anemic auction results.
Auction Page: Phillips de Pury Contemporary Art Evening Sale
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Koons Work Snubbed for Cheaper Art in London as Bargains Sought [Bloomberg]
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Phillips Sale Misses the Mark [ArtInfo]
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ART MARKET WATCH: £4.2 million at Phillips London [Artnet]
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Phillips de Pury & Company’s London Contemporary Art Sale Results Confirm Market Demand for Quality Works [ArtDaily]
