Displaying items by tag: consignment

By way of Instagram and a showing in Hong Kong, Sotheby's unveiled yet another blockbuster consignment for the upcoming fall contemporary season, Andy Warhol's massive Mao, an 82-by-57-inch silkscreen executed in 1972.

The work, which is expected to realize $40 million at Sotheby's evening contemporary sale on November 11, is the earliest iteration of the cycle that marked Warhol's return to painting after a seven-year hiatus following his "Flowers" series.

Christie's and Sotheby's jump-started the fall season last week with announcements of respective blockbuster consignments including a $100 million Modigliani nude and the roughly $500 million collection of illustrious former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman's estate.

According to the 8-K SEC filing Sotheby's made on September 9, the publicly traded auction house is betting big on the $500 million Taubman collection, having given estate overseer and Taubman's son Robert a financial guarantee "for the collection at approximately that level." The SEC Filing was first flagged by the Art Market Monitor's Marion Maneker in a post this morning.

The French government has imposed an export ban on three items which descendants of France's former royal family consigned to auction at Sotheby's Paris, Yahoo News reports.

France's culture minister Fleur Pellerin designated the items as pieces of “national treasure" to stop them from going under the hammer and from leaving the country.

As auction houses gear up for the major fall sales, news of several blockbuster consignments is starting to trickle out. Following the revelation from Sotheby’s last week that it has secured a rare Vincent van Gogh still life that is expected to sell for between $30–50 million, the house has revealed it will offer two extremely rare and iconic sculptures—by Amedeo Modigliani and Alberto Giacometti—that have never appeared at auction before and will undoubtedly be among the leading lots at the November 4 evening sale of Impressionist and modern art.

Giacometti’s "Chariot" (conceived and cast in 1950) is a unique painted cast depicting a goddess perched  atop a chariot with large wheels.

Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “A key factor in tonight’s successes was our longstanding relationships with top collectors, and our partnership with them throughout the sale process – the three works from the Private American Collection that led our sale, Monet’s Le Pont japonais, and more were non-competitive consignments. It was a privilege to offer Picasso’s spectacular Le Sauvetage exactly a decade after we last auctioned it in New York, and we are thrilled to see its price double in that time. We are pleased to once again deliver exceptional results on behalf of a great American institution, with Monet’s Sur la Falaise à Pourville selling for well over its high estimate to benefit the Acquisitions Fund of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

Scottish artist, Douglas Gordon, who won a Turner Prize in 1996 and represented Britain at the 1997 Venice Biennale, was told Wednesday, November 28, that his solid gold sculpture, The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another (2007), had gone missing from Christie’s London. Worth approximately $800,000, Christie’s was unable to tell Gordon when the piece had disappeared from their warehouse or where it had gone.

The piece had been part of an exhibition curated by Michael Hue Williams and organized in part by Christie’s. Though Gordon owns the work, it was out on consignment when it disappeared and Williams is being held responsible for any information surrounding its disappearance.

Disconcertingly, Christie’s failed to notify Gordon of the work’s disappearance until two weeks after they realized it had gone missing. Christie’s confirmed that the sculpture was returned to its vault on May 24. On August 14 the work was transferred to a small box from its vault and sometime after that, an art handler or technician noticed that the box had no weight. Christie’s reported the work missing to officials on November 8, but a proper investigation did not begin until November 12.

Composed of nearly 9 pounds of gold, Gordon believes that his work was melted down, as it would be easier to sell that way, although the value would decrease. The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another was supposed to be prominently featured at an upcoming exhibition of Gordon’s work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.