Flash News

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news.

Alberto Giacometti: two new bids in his Top 5

Two works from 1954 – a sculpture sold at Sotheby’s and a painting sold at Christie’s – now join Alberto GIACOMETTI‘s Top 5 bids after sales of Impressionist and modern works on 5 and 6 November 2013 in New York.
The finest bid at the Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern sale went to edition no. 6/6 of Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego). Acquavella Galleries of New York spent a little over $50 million including the buyer’s premium on this scarce commodity: a portrait of the artist’s brother produced in 1954 and cast a few months later. Two editions of the bronze had previously gone to auction. Three years ago, no. 3/6, from the Sidney F. Brody collection, actually posted $3 million more on the clock (hammer price: $47.5 million, and thus $53.28 million including the buyer’s premium, on 4 May 2010 in New York). No. 5/6, knocked down at Sotheby’s in 2002, changed hands for $12.5 million ($13.7 million including the buyer’s premium), so between its first appearance at auction in 2002 and its current price, the portrait of Diego has risen by 260%.
At Christie’s, the oil on canvas Diego en chemise écossaise, with a high estimate of $50 million, went for less than its low estimate at $29 million ($32.645 million including the buyer’s premium, on 5 November). Nevertheless, it gains fourth place in Giacometti’s top scores, behind three bronzes, and sets a new record for a painting by the artist.

Yayoi Kusama in Shanghai

The eccentric, psychedelic world of Japanese artist Yayoi KUSAMA (born in Matsumoto, Nagano, in 1929) is on show in her first major retrospective in Shanghai from 15 December 2013 to 30 March 2014 (Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA Shanghai; an exhibition entitled A Dream I Dreamed).
This unclassifiable artist, whose nonconformity is famous the world over, floods her world with polka dots. But to move from the visual intoxication produced by this obsessively repeated motif to a state of mental intoxication, you need to look below the surface, on the other side of the mirror. Everything started with an initial hallucination the artist suffered at the age of 10, when floral motifs emerged from the tablecloth in the family home and invaded everything in their path: the walls, the floor, the ceiling – and her mind. Since then, these hallucinations have been recurrent, illustrating a fear of self-dissolution, where the ego, “a dot submerged among thousands of other dots,” is dispersed and lost. At the age of 28 the artist went to New York, where she melted into the underground milieu of the time. She now expressed herself in larger formats, and covered naked bodies in spots during a series of “happenings”.

In 1959, the Brata Gallery of New York staged her first exhibition, where she presented her Infinity Net paintings. Since then, the intoxication aroused by her creations has made her the highest-rated Japanese artist in the world after Takashi Murakami and Tsuguharu Foujita. Her record at auction has now risen to $5.1 million (the painting No. 2, 1959, sold at double its estimate on 12 November 2008 at Christie’s New York). However, as this rhizomic work comes in the form of prints and limited editions, 20% of her pieces can be bought for less than $2,000 at auction.

Brassaï and Paris

A Brassaï exhibition recently opened at the Hotel de Ville in Paris (until 8 March 2013), curated by Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, who has selected the prints with consummate care. One of the chief qualities of this exhibition lies in the fact that it does not only feature contemporary prints by BRASSAÏ himself. Visitors will make several discoveries, like a never-before-exhibited Notre Dame Cathedral in a reflection, and find iconic pictures by the photographer enamoured of Paris, like La fille de joie du quartier Italie or the kiss in Au bistrot. Brassaï is not an overpriced artist given the extraordinarily rosy state of the photography market today. His top bid for a photo is the equivalent of $108,000 for an early Thirties silver halide print of paving stones at night in the electric lamplight of Paris, which seem to undulate like a calm sea (Pavés, Millon & Associés, 3 December 2006). Brassaï, a leading light in modern photography, is a safe investment. 20% of his prints can be obtained for under $2,000, and half his photographs sell for less than $5,200. French and Hungarian collectors (the artist was born in Hungary) compete fiercely for his works, and Americans have a particular penchant for his romantic views of Paris between the Thirties and Fifties. His top bid in America went in 2012 to a vintage print, Le pont du Carrousel, which sold for $70,000 after a high estimate of $50,000 at Phillips de Pury & Company (4 April 2012).