WHEN ART BECOMES A COMMODITY FETISH
Pablo Picasso painting of muse Marie-Thérèse Walter fetches $67.5M at auction
"Femme nue couchée" is a surrealistic and abstract depiction of Pablo Picasso's lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, in 1932. Photo courtesy of Sotheby's
May 18 (UPI) -- An abstract painting of a nude woman by Pablo Picasso has sold for $67.5 million, leading Sotheby's auction of Modern art that netted $408.5 million total.
With Tuesday night's sale, the 1932 painting, Femme nue couchée (Naked woman lying), became one of the most valuable paintings of Picasso's lover Marie-Thérèse Walter. It was sold as part of Sotheby's Modern evening auction, which also included the sale of Claude Monet's Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute for $56.6 million, a record for one of the French artist's paintings of Venice.
Picasso and Walter were in a romantic relationship from 1927 to 1935, during which time Walter served as the artist's model. He completed more than a dozen paintings featuring her likeness.
Together, they had a daughter -- Maya Widmaier-Picasso.
Femme nue couchée was among the first of a dedicated series of paintings Picasso completed of Walter in 1931 and 1932. The artwork was completed during a period when Picasso was heavily influenced by surrealism, featuring figures with twisted bodies and disorganized faces.
"A crowning achievement of painterly verve, energy and manipulation of the human form, the present work succinctly synthesizes the artist's groundbreaking achievements of the late 1920s and early 1930s into one colorful, dynamic canvas," Sotheby's said of the painting on its website.
Another six artworks by Picasso sold at Tuesday night's auction, including L'Étreinte (The Embrace), a painting of a couple in the middle of a tryst, for $14.1 million, and a sculpture titled Femme debout (Standing woman), for $2.1 million.
Other notable sales at Tuesday's auction included Paul Cézanne's Clairière (The Glade) for $42 million, Willem De Kooning's Leaves in Weehawken for $10 million and Henri Matisse's Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait (Flowers or Flowers in front of a portrait) for $15.3 million.
Grand Canal painting fetches $56.6M, a record for Monet Venice work
"Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute" is one of six nearly identical paintings Claude Monet completed of this particular view of Venice's Grand Canal in 1908. Image courtesy of Sotheby's
May 17 (UPI) -- A Claude Monet painting of the Grand Canal in Italy sold at auction Tuesday for $56.6 million, the highest one of his Venice paintings has fetched, Sotheby's in New York announced.
The 1908 painting, Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute, sold as part of the auction house's Modern evening auction.
The painting is one of six artworks Monet completed of the Grand Canal and the Santa Maria della Salute, a Roman Catholic church near the waterway. All six are from nearly the exact same view and differ only in color palette depending on the time of day.
One is held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, another by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the rest are in private hands. The identity of the buyer in Tuesday's auction has yet to be revealed.
Monet spent several weeks in Venice with his wife, Alice Hoschedé Monet, in the fall of 1908.
He completed dozens of artworks, often painting the same scenes at varying times of day, exploring how the city's waterways combined with the changing sunlight to alter the views' colors. This was a common approach to art throughout Monet's career as seen in his haystacks, cypress trees and water lilies series.
"The work stands as one of the finest paintings ever created by the artist, and the pinnacle of the series produced during the artist's Venetian sojourn," a release from Sotheby's said.
"Channeling the magic of the city on canvas, Le Grand Canal showcases a breath-taking view pure brushstrokes of color and light. As Monet continues to be recognized as one of the key progenitors of abstract art that would develop in the mid-20th century, Le Grand Canal is a pivotal work that bridges the artist's ground-breaking Impressionist innovations and their continued evolution into a more freeform abstract approach."
Other notable sales at Tuesday's auction include Paul Cézanne's Clairière (The Glade) for $42 million, Pablo Picasso's Mousquetaire à la pipe, buste (Musketeer with a pipe, bust) for $8.5 million, Willem De Kooning's Leaves in Weehawken for $10 million and Henri Matisse's Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait (Flowers or Flowers in front of a portrait) for $15.3 million.
Basquiat owned by Japan's Maezawa sells for $85 mn
The Jean-Michel Basquiat artwork sold for $85 million at auction in New York
The Jean-Michel Basquiat artwork sold for $85 million at auction in New York
(AFP/Tolga Akmen)
Wed, May 18, 2022,
Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Untitled" 1982 sold for $85 million at auction in New York Wednesday, well above its pre-sale estimate and netting Japanese billionaire space tourist Yusaku Maezawa a tidy profit.
Phillips auction house sold the 16-foot-wide painting on behalf of Maezawa, who purchased it in 2016 for $57.3 million.
The auctioneers had tipped it to go for around $70 million.
Phillips announced in a statement in March that it would put the artwork under the hammer.
Maezawa, the mega-rich founder of Japan's largest online fashion mall, said in the statement that the past six years of owning the painting were "a great pleasure."
But art "should be shared so that it can be a part of everyone's lives," he added.
Ahead of its sale, the massive artwork went on an international tour, being displayed in London, Los Angeles and Taipei.
Maezawa, who in 2017 set a new auction record for Basquiat works when he paid $110.5 million for another painting by the 20th century giant, has said he plans to create a new museum to exhibit his collection.
He founded the Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo and was on the 2017 list of "Top 200 Collectors" by the ARTnews magazine based in New York.
He has been in the headlines more recently for becoming the first space tourist to travel to the International Space Station with Russia's space agency.
His odyssey is believed to have cost around 10 billion yen ($87 million), and he plans to follow it up with a trip around the Moon organized by Elon Musk's SpaceX.
pdh/wd
Wed, May 18, 2022,
Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Untitled" 1982 sold for $85 million at auction in New York Wednesday, well above its pre-sale estimate and netting Japanese billionaire space tourist Yusaku Maezawa a tidy profit.
Phillips auction house sold the 16-foot-wide painting on behalf of Maezawa, who purchased it in 2016 for $57.3 million.
The auctioneers had tipped it to go for around $70 million.
Phillips announced in a statement in March that it would put the artwork under the hammer.
Maezawa, the mega-rich founder of Japan's largest online fashion mall, said in the statement that the past six years of owning the painting were "a great pleasure."
But art "should be shared so that it can be a part of everyone's lives," he added.
Ahead of its sale, the massive artwork went on an international tour, being displayed in London, Los Angeles and Taipei.
Maezawa, who in 2017 set a new auction record for Basquiat works when he paid $110.5 million for another painting by the 20th century giant, has said he plans to create a new museum to exhibit his collection.
He founded the Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo and was on the 2017 list of "Top 200 Collectors" by the ARTnews magazine based in New York.
He has been in the headlines more recently for becoming the first space tourist to travel to the International Space Station with Russia's space agency.
His odyssey is believed to have cost around 10 billion yen ($87 million), and he plans to follow it up with a trip around the Moon organized by Elon Musk's SpaceX.
pdh/wd
Sketch breaks Michelangelo record, selling at auction for €23 million
Issued on: 18/05/2022
Text by: NEWS WIRES
A recently rediscovered sketch by Michelangelo, the artist's first known nude, sold at auction at Christie's in Paris on Wednesday for 23 million euros ($24 million), a record for one of the Italian master's drawings.
Representing a naked man with two other background figures, the late 15th-century sketch in pen and brown ink recently resurfaced in a private French collection after more than a century.
Including the buyer's premium, the sale price far outstripped the Renaissance artist's previous record for a drawing of 9.5 million euros for "The Risen Christ" at Christie's in London in 2000 but fell short of the list price of 30 million euros.
"There are fewer than 10 drawings by Michelangelo which exist in private hands," Helene Rihal, director of Christie's ancient and 19th-century drawings department, told AFP ahead of the auction. The sketch was last put up for sale in 1907 at Paris's Hotel Drouot.
The nude, partly based on a fresco by Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel in Florence, had thus far managed to "escape the attention of specialists", according to Christie's, which has declared it to be very well preserved.
It was only in 2019 that experts identified it as the work of the Italian Renaissance genius (1475-1564) during an inventory of a private French collection.
In September that year it was declared a "national treasure of France", which prevented its exit from French territory for 30 months, while giving the French government and museums the opportunity to buy it.
No offer was forthcoming, however, and recent weeks saw the work exhibited in Hong Kong and New York to drum up interest ahead of the auction.
The sketch is the size of an A4 sheet of paper (eight by 12 inches, 21 by 30 centimetres) and closely resembles a figure in Masaccio's fresco "The Baptism of the Neophytes" (1426-27).
But "it's so much more than a copy", Christie's Old Masters expert Stijn Alsteens said on the auctioneer's website.
"Michelangelo has decided to make the figure into something that corresponded more to his aesthetic by making him much more robust and monumental, while at the same time keeping the fragility of the figure, who is exposed and shivering" as he awaits baptism, he said.
Alsteens added that the artist might have made the sketch aged around 21, on the cusp of his high-profile career.
(AFP)
Issued on: 18/05/2022
People sit during the auction of a recently rediscovered drawing by Michelangelo, the artist's first known nude, that was adjudicated 20 millions euros, at the Christie's auction house in Paris on May 18, 2022.
© Emmanuel Dunand, AFP
Text by: NEWS WIRES
A recently rediscovered sketch by Michelangelo, the artist's first known nude, sold at auction at Christie's in Paris on Wednesday for 23 million euros ($24 million), a record for one of the Italian master's drawings.
Representing a naked man with two other background figures, the late 15th-century sketch in pen and brown ink recently resurfaced in a private French collection after more than a century.
Including the buyer's premium, the sale price far outstripped the Renaissance artist's previous record for a drawing of 9.5 million euros for "The Risen Christ" at Christie's in London in 2000 but fell short of the list price of 30 million euros.
"There are fewer than 10 drawings by Michelangelo which exist in private hands," Helene Rihal, director of Christie's ancient and 19th-century drawings department, told AFP ahead of the auction. The sketch was last put up for sale in 1907 at Paris's Hotel Drouot.
The nude, partly based on a fresco by Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel in Florence, had thus far managed to "escape the attention of specialists", according to Christie's, which has declared it to be very well preserved.
It was only in 2019 that experts identified it as the work of the Italian Renaissance genius (1475-1564) during an inventory of a private French collection.
In September that year it was declared a "national treasure of France", which prevented its exit from French territory for 30 months, while giving the French government and museums the opportunity to buy it.
No offer was forthcoming, however, and recent weeks saw the work exhibited in Hong Kong and New York to drum up interest ahead of the auction.
The sketch is the size of an A4 sheet of paper (eight by 12 inches, 21 by 30 centimetres) and closely resembles a figure in Masaccio's fresco "The Baptism of the Neophytes" (1426-27).
But "it's so much more than a copy", Christie's Old Masters expert Stijn Alsteens said on the auctioneer's website.
"Michelangelo has decided to make the figure into something that corresponded more to his aesthetic by making him much more robust and monumental, while at the same time keeping the fragility of the figure, who is exposed and shivering" as he awaits baptism, he said.
Alsteens added that the artist might have made the sketch aged around 21, on the cusp of his high-profile career.
(AFP)
No comments:
Post a Comment