FINE ART FOR AUCTION
Christie’s
Christie’s has its New York gallery and auction headquarters in Rockefeller Center. Thanks to a tip from our son, we went down to see a wonderful Rousseau and other marvelous works. We walked into a wide lobby space, a coat check and coffee bar tucked in on the left. No one spoke to us, and no one asked for identification or what our business was. We wandered into a transverse hall and saw the first pieces of art.
Everything on display was from private collections. All were here to be auctioned off during a week of high-profile sales. The art ranged from Impressionism to Contemporary and 20th and 21st century pieces.
Shown in the top photo, this beautiful Rousseau of flamingos by a shore (Les Flamants, 1910) sold for $43.5 million on May 11 in the largest sale price ever for this artist and as the highest price piece in the 20th Century Evening Sale. That same week, the third chapter of Masterpieces from the S. I. Newhouse Collection was also very successful with its inclusion of notable works by de Kooning and Picasso.
We wandered from gallery to gallery as the intertwined spaces opened to us with more walls of art. I especially liked a portrait by Alice Neel (having seen her work on exhibit at the Met two years ago); two portraits by Alex Katz, one on a vibrant orange background; Bonnard’s Au Casino; a church streetscape by Utrillo; several gloriously colorful landscapes by David Hockney; and a white rose by Georgia O’Keeffe. It was a marvelous experience!
Part of the fun was the people watching—the very professionally suited Christie’s staff with their notebooks and usually a small clutch of exhibit catalogues under their arms–and the mix of potential buyers and just lookers like us. Dress in the latter groups ranged from an elegant black pants suit on an elegant white-haired woman to jeans and a white shirt, to khaki pants, and even the occasional rumpled sweater.
ARTY SUMMER READ
The Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe
By happenstance, I read this early novel by Karin Tanabe just after being at Christie’s. The Price of Inheritance is about the fine art industry and provides a detailed look at how dealers go about evaluating and acquiring pieces from private collectors. Carolyn Everett, ambitious and intense, is a young star in the Furniture Department at Christie’s in Manhattan. Botching her career after a record-breaking sale, Carolyn returns to small-time art buying and begins a questionable romance with a magnetic Marine. Romance that is tied up with the inside world of buying and selling art. A fast, suspenseful read!
Note: Art photos by JWFarrington. Header photo is Ada by Alex Katz.
