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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Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), 5 Türen II (5 Doors II) via Christie’s
Sold for: £2,169,250 ($3,466,462)
Estimate: £1,500,000 – £2,000,000 ($2,397,000 – $3,196,000)

Postwar & Contemporary Evening Sale
Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction on October 11th realized a sale total, including buyer’s premium, of  £23,177,900 ($37,158,809) with 47 of 64 lots sold. The Evening Auction featured three artists whose work has not previously been included in an evening sale: Idris Khan, Rebecca Warren and Jonathan Wateridge.  It also included a group of important self-portraits by Martin Kippenberger that include his seminal work on canvas Untitled (from the series Hand-Painted Pictures), twelve self-portraits on paper and his sculpture Immer an der Wand Beißen bei Susan.  Also notable was Gerhard Richter’s 5 Türen II (above), a masterwork from 1967 which has never been at auction or offered privately. 5 Türen II is related in theme to 5 Türen I (1967), which is at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.  The auction also highlighted figurative sculpture from the early 80s onward.

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Courtesy of Pace Gallery, Alexander Calder’s Tripes (1974), a 19 foot tall steel sculpture, will be on display at the St. Pancreas Renaissance Hotel in London. This sculpture coordinates with both the London Olympics and Pace’s expansion to London.

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Yves Klein, Le Rose du bleu (RE 22) (1960)

This week in London, the focus will shift towards Contemporary Art, for the second consecutive week of  summer auctions. According to the Telegraph, these contemporary sales hold the highest pre-sale estimates ever offered by the London houses. Total sales expected from Sotheby’s range from £57.51 – 82.48 million, while Christie’s are in excess of £120 million. Last week’s Impressionist and Modern Sales were more subdued than the record breaking auctions held in New York this past May. Based upon these record pre-sale estimates, there may be similar hopes for this week’s round of sales.

Yves Klein, Rélief éponge bleu (RE 51) (1959)

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‪‬Amalia Dayan of Luxembourg & Dayan and wife of collector Adam Lindemann profiled in her Manhattan town house decorated with works by Basquiat, Chamberlain, and Calder

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‪‬Two Alexander Calder works, ‘Untitled’ (1957) and ‘Snow Flurry’ (1950), from the home of the late architect Eliot Noyes join three other Calders at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale May 8th, individually estimated at $3–4.5 million

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Installation view. All photos via Pace Gallery Site and the New York Times.

1941 marked both a beginning and ending for Alexander Calder. The artist was forced to give up aluminum as one of his key materials in support of the war effort—but not before having one of the most productive years of his life. That year, Calder dug into a number of approaches and techniques he had explored over the past ten years to create some of his best work. Now, the Pace Gallery in Manhattan is hosting a large-scale retrospective on Calder’s work from 1941, featuring some of his most well-known pieces as well as some rarely shown.

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FIAC 2011 at the Grand Palais in Paris. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

FIAC 2011 (The Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain) opens this weekend in Paris for its 38th year. The international art fair, which boasts an impressive array of 168 galleries from 21 countries, will show the work of some 2,800+ artists. Running October 20–23rd, the exposition comes at the tail end of Frieze Art Fair, drawing artists, collectors, gallerists, and enthusiasts eastward from London. While the focus of Frieze leans toward contemporary, FIAC includes both contemporary and modern, including works from Picasso, Calder, and Matisse. The fair has been building momentum since 2006; Jennifer Flay, appointed general director in 2010, credits this boost to the fair’s move to the Grand Palais, one of the city’s most cherished architectural gems. The fair also expands this year to the Jardin des Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, the Museum of Natural History, and other venues around the city. Another innovation, a mobile application (in French) is available through Windows Phone which enables visitors to book tickets directly from their phone, as well as receive realtime news updates from the fair, find exhibitors and artists, and access videos and photos of the show.

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Jay Jopling of White Cube, which is exhibiting Damien Hirst’s Where Will It End.

More on site coverage and images after the jump… (more…)

Yves Klein all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

This year marked the 2nd iteration of the House of the Nobleman, a privately sponsored exhibition which took place at the Boswall House, 15,000sqft  mansion at 2 Cornwall Terrace, overlooking Regent’s Park and the Frieze 2011 Art Fair.  Art Observed was on site for the private viewing.  On view were works by Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, Max Ernst,  Damien Hirst, Marlene Dumas, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Sigmar Polke, Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Nick Hornby, Matthew Day Jackson, Cecily Brown, Lucian Freud, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Longo, Alexander Calder, Eugenia Emets, Francesco Clemente, Salvador Dali,  Peter Doig,  Olafur Eliasson, George Condo, Takashi Murakami,  Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gerhard Richter.

Monet, Claude “ Chemin dans le brouillard”, (1879)

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Google Doodle commemorates Alexander Calder’s 113th birthday [AO Newslink]

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Centre Pompidou permanently installs Calder’s Horizontal in front of façade [AO Newslink]

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Alexander Calder, Blue and Yellow Sickles (1960). All images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Larry Gagosian brings yet another big-ticket artist to his London location with a survey of Alexander Calder’s sculptures made between 1939 and 1960.  The exhibition occupies one long gallery and consists of three of Calder’s iconic mobiles: Triangles, Blue and Yellow Sickles, and an untitled composition.  Each work reflects the artist’s facility with wire and metal used to create tenuous “drawings” which float in mid-air.

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Roy Lichtenstein, Ohhh…Alright…, 1964 (est. not published, realized $42.6 million), via Christies.com

This week’s Contemporary Art sales in New York ended with a bang at Christie’s Contemporary Evening Sale on Wednesday night. Seventy-five lots offered brought in $272 million with a sell through rate of 93% by lot and 92% by value. As was the case earlier this week at the Phillips and Sotheby’s sales, Pop Art sold exceptionally well. Roy Lichtenstein‘s Ohhh…Alright… was the evening’s top lot and set the record for the artist when it sold to an anonymous bidder for $42.6 million – smashing the previous record of $16.3 million set at Christie’s in 2005.

AO Onsite photo by J. Mizrachi

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Image still from Christies.com video In the Salesroom: Andy Warhol’s Silver Liz, via Christies.com

The results of Christie‘s Post-War and Contemporary Art auction in London last night are a relief after this week’s lackluster Sotheby‘s auction and the let-down at Phillips de Pury & Co. on Thursday. The sale earned £45,640,200 against the pre-sale estimate of £40.9-58.1 million for 63 lots, selling 84% by lot and 85% by value (totals realized include buyer’s premium, estimates do not). The combination of higher-quality works, lower starting prices, and a greater variety of material presented is thought to have contributed to the success of the sale, even amidst a drop in the stock market.

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Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction, Installation view. Image via L & M Arts.

In 1942, Peggy Guggenheim wore one earring by Yves Tanguy and one by Alexander Calder to the opening of Art of This Century; a year later, Pierre Matisse presented the artists in adjacent rooms of his gallery.  In the 1940s, critics began to notice the aesthetic likeness of the artists’ work, including mutual biomorphic designs in paintings and sculptures.  The colloquy and stimulus inspired by the pair’s mutual Connecticut community is explored in this extensive, two-floor exhibition.  Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction at L & M Arts celebrates the creative relationship between these two artists, presenting their works from the 1930s-1950s alongside photographs and previously unpublished documents that testify to the collaborative aspect of their rapport and seamlessly harmonizing abstraction and Surrealism.
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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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At PMA, “Head of a Woman” (1937-38). Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

AO visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which are both showing survey exhibitions of the avant-garde in Paris in the early twentieth century. “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris,” at PMA, is an exhaustive display of thirty years of Picasso, from 1905 to 1945, following him through the development of Cubism and artist communities in Paris. The Guggenheim’s show is smaller and less concentrated on Picasso; it includes thirty works by Picasso, Léger, Chagall, Braque, and more, where the PMA’s 200-strong exhibition includes works by Picasso collaborators and contemporaries as they interact with his own.

At the Guggenheim, Pablo Picasso, “Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare)” (1924). Oil with sand on canvas Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York  Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Five Points/Triangles by Alexander Calder, 1957
All images via Gagosian Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, New York is an exhibition of the large-format sculptures of Alexander Calder, produced between 1957 and 1970. The exhibition pays tribute to the late oeuvre of this renowned American sculptor, illuminating the period when Calder almost exclusively dedicated himself to sculpture of monumental proportions – the genre that brought him the international acclaim.

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Untitled, Ellsworth Kelly (1959) via Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Currently showing at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England are a selection of early, unseen drawings by one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century – Ellsworth Kelly. Executed by Kelly between 1954 and 1962, the drawings have traveled to Middlesbrough directly from the artist’s New York studio where they have been hidden for more than 50 years. The 23 works are all studies for larger pieces and have been presented now, for the first time ever, to illustrate an important period in the artist’s career during which he pioneered his much-admired abstract style that has been integral to the evolution post-war American art.

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La Grande Vitesse (1969) by Alexander Calder via Palazzo delle Esposizioni

Currently on view in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, through February 14, is a complete retrospective on Alexander Calder (1898-1976) that surpasses any show dedicated to the artist in Italy during the past three decades. Running concurrently with the Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition Monumental Sculpture (through January 30) and borrowing works from the Museum of Modern Art, Foundation Solomon R. Guggenheim, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Center Pompidou and Calder Foundation collections, the exhibition pays tribute to the American master’s legacy, framing him chronologically through more than 150 works. Alongside the artist’s highly recognizable, deftly engineered wire mobiles and sculptures are lesser-known works, including installations, toys and paintings circa 1930, to provide theoretical counterpoints and pivot points in his career.

Blue Feather (1948) by Alexander Calder via Palazzo delle Esposizioni

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Kehinde Wiley’s portait of Michael Jackson entitled Equestrian Portrait of King Phillip II at Deitch Projects

It is rumored that in years gone by determined collectors were dressing as janitors in order to sneak into Art Basel Miami Beach prior to its official opening in order to snatch the most coveted pieces before their rivals. While this kind of vigor has not returned to the fair since the economic crash stalled the art market in 2008, the mood at today’s VIP preview seemed to be reflect the the vote of confidence that was delivered to the American art market when active bidding returned to the floor of the Post-war and Contemporary Auctions in New York last month.

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Rouge Triomphant (Triumphant Red) (1959-1963) by Alexander Calder, via Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at the Gagosian gallery in Rome is ‘Monumental Sculpture’ by Alexander Calder.  Taking place at the same time as the current Calder retrospective at the Scuderie Quirinale, also in Rome, the Gagosian Gallery displays an exhibition of the artist’s monumental sculpture created between 1948 and 1964.

Press Release [Gagosian Gallery]
Alexander Calder: Monumental Sculpture [In Rome Now]

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200 One Dollar Bills, Andy Warhol

Last night’s Postwar and Contemporary Sale at Sotheby’s, New York easily outmatched their rival Christie’s sale the night before with a total of $134,438,000 and only 2 lots unsold. While 59% of works sold over their pre-sale estimates, it was Andy Warhol‘s 200 One Dollar Bills, which sold for $43,762,500 over an estimate of $8-12million, that catapulted the total sales revenue way over the initial estimate of $67-97 million.

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Violins, Violence, Silence, Bruce Nauman. Record for a neon by Nauman – $4,002,500

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Large Vase of Flowers, Jeff Koons. Sold by Benedict Tashcen to Dominique Levy for $5,682,500. All images via Christie’s

Last night Christie’s, New York brought-in a total of $74,151,500 from the sale of 39 lots at their Post War & Contemporary sale. While this figure falls within the pre-sale estimate of $64 – 88 million, and an impressive 21 lots sold for over the $1million mark, the sum is still a strong step down in comparison to that acquired from last year’s Fall Contemporary Auction at Christie’s which brought in $113.6million for a 43 lot sale.  In the end, major marquee works went unsold.  After a remarkable Impressionist and Modern auction at Sotheby’s last week, rumors were flying that the Art Market was flourishing once again – however, it now appears that the art world may have spoken too soon.

Reflection (What does your soul look like),Peter Doig

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