Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Postwar and Contemporary Sale Is Stunning Success at Christie's

NEW YORK — A rage to buy is running through the art market. On Tuesday evening, Christie’s sale of Post-War and Contemporary art was bolstered by a wave of enthusiasm rarely witnessed at any time.

While the score, $231.9 million, was by no means the biggest ever, a session in which the first 56 lots sell in a row, many of them far above the high estimate, is by any standard a stunning success. Only five of the 79 works offered failed to find takers. This represents a negligible 6 percent failure rate, particularly remarkable in a field widely perceived to be more fragile than most.

A sensational world auction record was set in the first few minutes. “Flag,” done between 1960 and 1966 by Jasper Johns, using encaustic and printed paper collage on a paper support eventually laid down on canvas, climbed to $28.64 million, far above the $10-to-$15-million estimate. The work is a faithful reproduction of the Stars and Stripes.

Later, another world record was set when “Middle Blue,” painted by Sam Francis in 1957, went up to $6.35 million. By contrast, “Middle Blue” is a purely abstract composition. But the two paintings share one common feature. They both are products of the New York school as it developed between the late 1950s and the late 1960s, a period now seen as the golden age of American art in the second half of the last century.

But neither the financial total nor the world records reflect the unaccustomed vigor with which bidders jumped into the contest each time a painting or a three-dimensional piece with a familiar name attached to it came up.

During the first part of the sale, the atmosphere of intense competition could in part be accounted for by the fact that the first 31 works came from the collection formed by the late author Michael Crichton, the man who graduated from Harvard Medical School and used his knowledge of biology to the create the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park.”

In the opening pages of the catalog, Mr. Crichton, who died in 2008, was quoted as having said: “My collection is really a visual extension of my life. It influences my work. I constantly change the pictures in my study, depending on what I’m writing.”

If the buyers did not necessarily dream of turning into Michael Crichton-style fiction writers under the influence of their acquisitions, many are likely to have found reassurance in knowing that the works they coveted had belonged to one of the most famous Hollywood figures.

The works on offer were so disparate that one would be hard put to find any other common denominator, or indeed any aesthetic explanation, for their unwavering success.

The first lot, “Jim Beam — Model A Ford Pick-Up Truck,” made of stainless steel, looked like a toy for a very rich kid. Credited to Jeff Koons, it was executed in 1986 in an edition of three plus an “artist’s proof,” whatever that phrase may mean in this particular instance. The Koons went up to $602,500, more than expected.

Next, Ed Ruscha’s “Boulangerie,” a small panel in oil on paper dated 1961, had the French word “boulangerie” (bakery) painted in red lettering on orange ground. It could be easily mistaken for a design submitted to the owner of a shop. Bidders responded by running up “Boulangerie” to $1.14 million, almost double the upper end of the estimate.

With Frank Stella’s “Honduras Lottery Co. (Smaller Version),” a square geometric composition of 1962 resembling a target, yet another genre was given a warm reception. The Stella brought a steep $698,500.

Figuration in the pseudo-naïve manner of Pop Art was equally popular. “Girl in Water,” executed in 1968 by Roy Lichtenstein, combines drawing in ink and graphite with paper collage on paper image. Done in black and white, the composition lacks the bright colors that are the most sought-after, distinctive mark of Pop Art. Yet, the Lichtenstein could not have done much better than the $1.87 million that it realized, exceeding the huge estimate by one third.

Most remarkably, the zest displayed by contemporary art buyers as the Michael Crichton pieces came up continued during the second part of the sale, which dealt with works from various consignors.

Paintings which in any other context could have seemed difficult to sell passed the test with flying colors. Andy Warhol’s tough “Little Electric Chair” is not just grim in subject. It is also painted in dark blackish blue. This did not stop it from shooting up to $3.83 million, above the high estimate, as it followed on the heels of the cheerful, brightly colored Sam Francis that set a record for the artist.

The sale then switched to “Blue Fool,” an enormous panel with blue enamel lettering on aluminum which breaks up the word “fool” into two superposed blocks. Painted in 1990 by Christopher Wool, it seems to proclaim the artist’s contempt for buyers fooled by his own pranks. But the buyers loved it. They competed so hard that the panel climbed to $5 million, more than doubling the high estimate.

Figuration, which followed in the next two lots, was appreciated with the same equanimity, whether in a naughty-schoolboy-at-the-blackboard manner, or on the contrary in the sleek style of a poster for beauty products. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Man Struck by Lightning — 2 Witnesses” thus brought $4.78 million and Andy Warhol’s “Silver Liz,” dated [19]65, furiously disputed, went up to an astonishing $18.33 million.

As the auction pendulum swung from abstraction to figuration and back, the tempo of the sale did not slacken. Two lots down from the Warhol “Figure 0,” a virtually abstract essay in colored curving strokes around the digit zero, painted by Jasper Johns in 1959, brought $4.11 million. It was followed by Robert Rauschenberg’s “Untitled” work of 1954, part painting and part collage, which fetched a generous $4.56 million.

There have been larger sales in the past, but none in which postwar and contemporary art seemed to hold such a wide appeal to such a consistently determined public. A new stage appears to have been reached in the acceptance of a field in which the definition of quality criteria is notoriously elusive.

No comments:

Post a Comment