Giacometti statue claims highest price ever at auction

A sculpture from the 1960s has achieved world fame overnight after becoming the most expensive artwork ever sold at an auction. Its previous owner, a German bank, already has plans for the profits generated by the sale.

A life-size bronze sculpture entitled "L'homme qui marche I" ("Walking Man I") by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti has been sold by the Sotheby's auction house in London for 65 million pounds ($104.3 million). This is the highest price ever paid for a work of art at an auction.

According to Sotheby's, it only took eight minutes of "fast and furious" bidding between ten prospective buyers before the piece was sold to an anonymous phone bidder. It had been estimated to sell for 12 to 18 million pounds.

The thin sculpture depicts a man in mid-stride with his arms hanging at his side. Commenting on the price achieved in the sale, Helena Newman, vice chairman of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art department worldwide, said, "The price is a reflection of the extraordinary importance of this exceptionally rare work, and the only life-time cast of this iconic subject ever to have come to auction."

The piece broke the price record previously held by Picasso's 1905 "Garcon a la Pipe" ("Boy with a Pipe"), which had sold for $104.2 million at a 2004 New York auction.

German bank's giant asset

Cast in 1961, "L'Homme Qui Marche I" belonged to the art collection of Germany's Dresdner Bank before coming into possession of Commerzbank when it took over Dresdner Bank in 2009.

Following the unexpected price record, Commerzbank is "very happy about this big success," a spokeswoman for the bank told Deutsche Welle. Proceeds from the sale are to go towards supporting Commerzbank's foundations and a number of selected museums.

"Promoting cultural education is one of the key aims of the Commerzbank foundations," said Klaus-Peter Mueller, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Commerzbank and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Commerzbank Foundation."

Established in 1970, the Commerzbank Foundation has an endowment capital of 53 million euros ($73 million) and is the most significant of all foundations operated by the bank. In 2008, the Commerzbank Foundation committed funds of approximately 1.5 million euros, 35 percent of which went to art and cultural projects.

Commerzbank is set to restructure the art collection of the former Dresdner Bank as part of the ongoing integration process. Around 100 outstanding modern and contemporary works will be made available to museums in Frankfurt, Dresden and Berlin on a permanent loan basis.

"We want as many people as possible to be able to see the works in the art collection of the former Dresdner Bank, and are keen to support the museums in expanding the focus of their collections," said Martin Blessing, CEO of Commerzbank.

Johns, Picasso to Top $30 Million Sale of Writer Crichton’s Art

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Christie’s International is to sell four paintings from the collection of the best-selling author Michael Crichton, with a total value of at least $30 million.
A Jasper Johns “Flag” and works by Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein bought by the late Beverly Hills-based novelist will be sold in New York on May 11 and go on show in London today, the auction house said in an e-mail.
Confidence is returning in art sales after record prices, said dealers, such as the 65 million pounds ($103.4 million) paid for an Alberto Giacometti sculpture at Sotheby’s.
“We wanted to capitalize on the marketplace in London,” Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie’s, Americas, said in an interview. “The new emerging buyers such as Russians are much more present. It’s the perfect time to offer a 1960s Picasso.”
Like all four works in the Crichton group, Picasso’s 1961 painting of a woman and two girls, “Femme et Fillettes” (Woman and Children), has yet to receive an individual valuation. The writer’s family beneficiaries have not been guaranteed a minimum price, said Gorvy.
“We’re waiting to see how the London sales perform next week, then calibrate the estimates from there,” said Gorvy. The Crichton works will be shown next to lots that Christie’s will be offering in its Feb. 11 contemporary sale.
Late paintings by Picasso have been in demand from wealthy collectors. At Christie’s Feb. 2 auction, Picasso’s 1963 painting “Tete de Femme (Jacqueline)” was the top lot with a price of 8.1 million pounds with fees, double the upper estimate.
Graff’s Picasso
The painting was bought by the London-based collector Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds Limited, against competition from Russian bidders. The purchase was confirmed yesterday in an e-mail to Bloomberg News from Penny Weatherall, Graff’s personal assistant.
Crichton, who died aged 66 in November 2008, was the author of scientific thrillers that sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, such as “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park.” He was also known for the television series “ER.”
The novelist was an authority on -- and friend of -- Johns, writing the catalog for the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1977.
Johns’s painted newspaper collage “Flag,” dating from 1960 to 1966, is likely to be the most valuable work in the group. The 2-foot-3-inch-wide canvas was acquired by Crichton directly from the artist in 1974 and has never appeared at auction, said Christie’s.
The artist’s ‘Flag’ paintings are recognized as among the first images of Pop Art, challenging the supremacy of Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Much prized by museums and private collectors, they rarely appear at auction.
The 1973 example, “Two Flags,” sold for $12.1 million in Sotheby’s, New York, in November 1989. The price is an auction record for a Johns ‘flag,’ according to the Artnet database.
Rauschenberg’s “Studio Painting (Combine)” dating from 1960 to 1961, and Lichtenstein’s 1965 “Girl in Water” complete the quartet. The paintings are on show in London through Feb. 12.

Rare, old painting of N.Y. Harbor to be auctioned

BRANFORD — The old, nautical painting, donated to the James Blackstone Memorial Library many years ago by one of the town’s old families, sat for decades in storage. Then, during library renovations a few years back, it was rediscovered. The library brought in an expert to clean and restore the painting and research its origin. As it turns out, the painting proved to be a rare view of New York Harbor around 1884 by Danish-American painter Mathias Jakob Frederik Lutken, who lived from 1841 to 1905, spent the last 25 years of his life in this country and specialized in painting maritime scenes.

Now it’s being offered up to the world. It will be auctioned off Tuesday as part of a major auction of maritime art and antiques by Bonhams & Butterfield, which bills itself as “the world’s oldest and largest auctioneer of fine art and antiques still in British ownership. ”Proceeds from the sale — which Bonhams, as it is known, estimates is likely to bring $8,000 to $12,000 — will help support the libary. Douglas Armistead of The Frame Gallery in North Branford, who cleaned and restored the painting, called it “ an unusually large and impressive waterscape.

“It’s a major work by this artist,” said Armistead, who donated his services to clean and restore the painting, but will be paid a percentage upon its sale. “No one’s seen one this big — most of the other works that we know about are much smaller. This one is 31 by 49 without the frame, which is very large.”

“Anyone who is interested in the history of sail would be interested in this,” Armistead said.

“This particular view is really a time capsule because it shows four different types of watercraft: the main one is a barkentine, second is a schooner-pilot boat, the third is a cat boat, and the fourth is a sidewheeler steamboat ferry,” which “speaks to the age of steam” and sets the painting in time, he said.

The view “appears to be off the Battery, looking south toward Governor’s Island,” with “boats ... rounding the tip of Manhattan,” Armistead said. “A storm has just cleared and the water is just beautiful.”

The painting can be viewed and bid on online by navigating fromhttp://www.bonhams.com. Look for marine paintings and decorative arts under “Sales This Week.”

According to Armistead, who often works with the Branford Historical Society, the L�tken painting was one of 15 to 20 “that had accumulated over many years” in the Blackstone Library. “Most were sold off earlier.”

“This one, they couldn’t really tell what it was,” Armistead said. “It was so dirty and the varnish was so dark that you needed a halogen light to see it at all.”

When Library Director Kathy Reiger called Armistead in through Jane Bouley of the Branford Historical Society, “they said they wanted to do something with it. They wanted to move it along,” he said.

“I really have no idea how the library ended up with it,” said Library Director Kathy Rieger, who has been with the library for six years. “It had been in storage for many years.”

She said that proceeds from the sale would most likely go into the library’s endowment fund, although she had no idea how much it really might fetch. Initially, “we were in an area of the auction world where things had slowed down considerably,” said Armistead. But then, “we found that things had opened up a little” and he found someone interested in selling it in Gregg Dietrich, an auction house veteran and authority on maritime paintings who was putting together Tuesday’s maritime auction for Bonhams.
 
Dietrich said he thinks the painting has a good chance of selling. “First of all, I think it’s a beautful painting.,” he said. “While very dark, it’s beautifully painted.” The subject, New York Harbor, “always draws a lot of interest, regardless of who the painter is...because a lot of these older paintings document details” of things that no longer exist, but which still interest people, Dietrich said. Lutken “is well-known,” he said. “He has quite a few different sales records.”

But “based on the square inch, it’s a very good value ... and we have had a fair amount of interest in it,” Dietrich said. “We do have a couple of (absentee) bids on it already.”

EXPO ON PAINTINGS OF MYSORE'S HERITAGE BUILDINGS

Mysore, Jan. 25 (KMC)- Nanna Preethiya Mysooru, a solo painting exhibition by artist Nanda R. 

Putty, dedicated to her father Raghothama Putty, an accomplished artist, was inaugurated by 

Dr. R. Gopal, Director of Archaeology, at Prathima Gallery opposite Zoo in city yesterday.

Speaking on the occasion, he suggested that a University must be set up in city exclusively for 

The three-day exhibition displays most of the heritage buildings of Mysore depicted in colourful 


paintings, 47 in all. The expo will be open to public from 10 am to 7 pm till Jan. 26.
identifying and developing drawing and painting skills among the art enthusiasts.

"Despite being called as a cultural capital of Karnataka, Mysore does not have an adequate 

(art) gallery," regretted Dr. Gopal and suggested that the land near Chamundi Vihar Stadium 

could be used for the proposed art gallery for which there was ample funds with Archaeology 

Department. He suggested that a committee be constituted for the project.

Van Gogh Painting in $150M Court Dispute

For MT

“The Night Cafe” was painted in Arles, France in 1888 by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, who once described it as “one of the ugliest pictures I have done.”

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — A Van Gogh painting at the center of a dispute between Yale University and a man who believes that the artwork was stolen from his family during the Russian Revolution is worth $120 million to $150 million, the man's attorney said.

The evaluation is the first public estimate of the painting's value, and the lawyer, Allan Gerson, said Friday that it comes from a top auction firm.

Gerson represents Pierre Konowaloff, the purported great-grandson of industrialist and aristocrat Ivan Morozov, who bought "The Night Cafe" in 1908. Russia nationalized Morozov's property during the Communist revolution, and the Soviet government later sold the painting.

The artwork, which shows the inside of a nearly empty cafe with a few customers seated at tables along the walls, has been hanging in the Yale University Art Gallery for almost 50 years.

A Yale spokesman said the university could not offer a value of the 1888 painting, saying the goal is to have it on public display for perpetuity.

Yale filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in March to assert its ownership rights over "The Night Cafe" and to block Konowaloff from claiming it.

Yale claims that the ownership of tens of billions of dollars of art and other goods could be thrown into doubt if Konowaloff is allowed to take the painting. Any federal court invalidation of Russian nationalization decrees from the early 20th century would also create tensions between the United States and Russia, Yale argues.

The university says former owners have challenged titles to other property seized from them in Russia, but their claims were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court and state, federal and foreign courts.

"Yale is confident that the court will see through Konowaloff's latest rhetoric and recognize that he is asking a U.S. court to turn back the clock 90 years and undo the Russian Revolution," Yale said Friday.

Gerson said in court papers Thursday that Yale was engaging in "scare tactics." He said neither Russia nor the United States expressed any concerns about the case and that any ruling would not affect Russian paintings.

Gerson says the trend by U.S. courts has been to

invalidate confiscations of art. He said in court papers that Yale's argument amounted to compelling U.S. courts to "rubber-stamp good title on any dictator's plunder."

Yale received the painting through a bequest from Yale alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark. The school says Clark bought the painting from a gallery in New York City in 1933 or 1934.

Konowaloff has filed court papers calling Yale's

acquisition "art laundering." He argues that Russian

authorities unlawfully confiscated the painting and that the United States deemed the theft a violation of international law.