Warholphilia Forever: Andy’s $38.4M ‘Self-Portrait’ Bidding War

Yesterday, Christie’s Rockfeller Center salesroom “booed and hissed, applauded and laughed” in an “epic 16 minute bidding battle” for Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait, 1963-64. Oh journalists, I do declare, that sounds most riveting indeed… but looks kinda womp womp on video. Hmm. Maybe I’m spoiled after that Orgy of the Rich at Sotheby’s. Anywho, some proper person took home Mr. Photo Booth Mug for $38.4 million because Andy’s still hot hot hot. Will New Yorkers ever stop worshiping Warhol? Judging by the sacrificial pile of Campbell’s Tomato Soup cans at the feet of his chrome monument in Union Square, neve-e-e-e-er.

How to Hide $28.6 Million in a Jasper Johns Painting

It took Christie’s two minutes to sell “Flag” by Jasper Johns yesterday, fetching a new Johns auction record of $28.6 million. “Flag” was part of the late writer Michael Crichton’s personal collection. He purchased the work in 1973 and hung it in his Beverly Hills home bedroom. Read more »

‘Da Vinci’ Goof Might Cost Christie’s $150 Million

A former owner of a 15th-century ‘da Vinci’ valued at $150,000,000 is suing Christie’s. She claims that the drawing was negligently misrepresented as a 19th-century German picture and sold for $17,000, less than 0.01% of its potential worth, in July. She wants full compensation. Can Christie’s afford it? The auction house raked in $335.54 million last Tuesday, its highest total since 2006, mostly because of their record sale of the ‘Eat, Shoots & Leaves’ Picasso painting of his muse sadomasochist sex toy. Read more »

Picasso’s Painting of Blond Mistress Sets Record, Is Fug

Yesterday Christie’s set the auction record by selling a Picasso for $106.5 million to an anonymous bidder, breaking Sotheby’s record for a $104.3 mill Giacometti. The reclining Coco-esque blond in “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” is his young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, so that’s twisted, post-coital smugness you’re looking at. She also looked like this, before he knocked her up and exchanged her for a fresher assortment of mistresses/wives/furniturized female forms. There’s not much to this painting aside from its assigned value, really, and the artistic process may have sounded something like this: “Want to be part of art history? Ok, lie down next to this curtain.” |NYT|

Art Market Hopes to Profit from Profiteers

Looks like the art market is looking up again, at least according to “experts” who point to another noticeable spike in the wealth of their target collectors – bank advisors and hedge fun managers. Those sorts usually have an appetite for big ticket items that Christie’s and Sotheby’s are hoping to unload at their upcoming auctions. Read more »

Record Estimate for Picasso’s Absinthe Sipper, Also: Drinking Talk

Christie’s highest European pre-auction estimate is $45-$60 million for Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period portrait of party-boy artist Angel Fernandez de Soto visiting the Green Fairy. Disputed as Nazi loot, the 1903 Picasso brings up the subject of absinthe at Washington Post.

Absinthe is “falsely subversive” and “uncool” as of 2009 according to NYT (along with lower back tattoos and Interpol). The olde-turned-new trend has passed, friends (Mansinthe, anyone?). Read more »

Bid On Dash Snow’s Couch, Other Treasures

Christie’s is auctioning off a collection of contemporary art that includes Dash Snow’s cheap leather sofa and other oddities. A gift from his friend, photographer Ryan McGinley, the old couch lived in Snow’s LES apartment where it was excavated in a fruitless search for a mythical bag of coke. Snow later planted a palm tree and various other drug den decorations in the hole he and McGinley dug and titled it “This Was Your Life.” The party mess was exhibited at the now closed Rivington Arms Gallery in 2005, sold to collector Charles Saatchi, and is estimated to be worth between $40,000 and $55,000. Also up for bid at the Post-War & Contemporary Art auction on October 17th in London is a tattooed pig by Wim Delvoye, a couple of trashy fucking rats, a $30k FAILE painting and Damien Hirst’s statue of a girl with a broken leg, featured after the jump. Read more »