News Articles Library Event Photos Contact Search


Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:36

Stellar Auction at Sotheby's for Some Classics of Contemporary Art

A record 17 works by Wayne Thiebaud, all part of the estate of the New York dealer Allan   Stone, were part of the Sotheby’s auction, including ‘‘Pies,’’  from 1961, which sold for $4 million. A record 17 works by Wayne Thiebaud, all part of the estate of the New York dealer Allan Stone, were part of the Sotheby’s auction, including ‘‘Pies,’’ from 1961, which sold for $4 million. Sotheby’s

The auction of 42 works from the collection of the late New York dealer Allan Stone held at Sotheby’s on Monday evening is one of those events that announce the advent of an era. The antiquities of Contemporary art were on sale.

To drive the point home, Sotheby’s did not use the word “contemporary” on the covers of the two catalogs printed for the occasion.

On volume one, the uncharacteristically small title states merely “The Collection of Allan Stone.” An inside page proclaims in white on black (a discreet hint at Mr. Stone’s death in 2006) “Allan Stone is a Celebration of art collecting and an insight into the sophisticated eye of this renowned New York dealer.” There follows a seven-page chronology of artistic development on the New York scene from the 1940s to 2006 illustrated with pictures in the sale. If you were not absolutely dense, you knew that you were being confronted with Cultural History in capital letters.

The message got across. The attendance was galvanized.

The first lot was a small sheet of paper with additional bits of paper pasted on, and most importantly, the New York artist Franz Kline’s signature followed by a date, 1957. Kline had violently smeared the paper with black paint. Although “Untitled,” as Sotheby’s dubbed it, was only 11 by 83/8 inches, or 27.9 by 21.2 centimeters, the experts had given it a $90,000 to $120,000 estimate plus a sale charge of more than 20 percent. Dazzled, the room sent it flying to $446,500.

Another “Untitled” followed, signed by John Chamberlain in 1961. Scraps of painted steel, crushed and welded, are attached together with discarded shreds of fabric to a sturdy backing board. It made you briefly wonder whether the artist, rummaging in a scrap heap, had tried to pay homage to the victims of some ghastly car accident. Bidders responded to this monument of old Contemporary art. It doubled expectations at $662,500.

That work served as a prelude to Chamberlain’s big jumble of painted and chromium-plated steel fragments that came up moments later. Executed in 1958, it conjured far more realistically the image of a car wreck. Here, the artist had coined a title, “Nutcracker.” The Cleveland Museum of Art had included “Nutcracker” in a brief Chamberlain exhibition in January 1967. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum gave it the ultimate accolade, when the crushed steel jumble was featured in “John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition” in the early 1970s. After that, it was impossible to mistake “Nutcracker” for a haphazard assemblage of scrap metal. Bidders ran it up to $4.78 million.

Other hefty prices followed. Willem de Kooning’s “Event in a Barn,” done in 1947 in oil, enamel and paper collage on board, was likewise reassuringly set in the concrete of art history. It had traveled the United States in 2006 and 2007 as part of the show “Picasso and American Art.” De Kooning’s picture realized $4.56 million.

Additional Info

Events