The $1.5 billion art collection - a new record for a single-session, single-owner sale

If you've ever want to see what an art collection worth $1.5 billion looks like, you can review images on the Christies website of the collection of the late Paul Allen - the co-founder of Microsoft.

It's a truly amazing collection and well worth drooling over. I've seen a number of the artworks before.

60 lots were sold in the evening sale of Part I of the Sale last night - which set a new record for a single-session, single-owner sale

On 9 November in New York, Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection kicked off with Part I, which surpassed the $1 billion mark at the 32nd lot and broke records across categories. The evening saw 60 extraordinary works achieve a total of $1,506,386,000, establishing the Allen collection as the most valuable private collection in history. Five paintings achieved prices above $100 million. Overview

Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection

The e-version of the Christies Catalogue Cover for the Sale of
The Paul G Allen Collection

This is when I find out the name behind the private art collection which lent some of the most famous paintings I've seen in art exhibitions I've visited. Sometimes the collections announce the name of the owner and sometimes they don't - and I don't believe I've ever seen his name on any of the labels I read assiduously! But I could be wrong.....

These are links to:

• the video of Part I of the sale
• browse all lots - wait a while if you just see plain coloured rectangles to start with - the images will appear
• you can organise by artists you like by checking the boxes of the artists listed on the left of the screen
• Results for some of the LOTS sold yesterday in Part I of the Sale
• These are the LOTS being sold today in Part II of the Sale - which you can watch LIVE right now
• This is the e-catalogue on Issuu
• these are different stories about various aspects of the Collection

STORIES from the Paul G Allen Collection

• Tour the Exhibition of the Collection ONLINE - prior to the auction. This is the Gallery Guide
• VIEW the Timeline of the Collection

All of the lots came to market backed by financial guarantees, either secured by so-called third party guarantees or those backed by Christie’s. In that insured sense, the evening qualified as a “white glove” sale, with 100% of the incredible bounty sold. Twenty artists’ auction records were broken and five works sold for over $100m, including fees, a feat in itself.

The Art Newspaper

PS The review I originally planned for today has been usurped partly by this sale and partly due to needing to provide some family support...... It will now be published tomorrow.

From Basquiat to Banksy

If you are a Banksy, Basquiat or urban street art fan you'll be interested in the first Private Sale at Christies in London - following the lifting on most restrictions for all retail

It's titled Off the Wall: Basquiat to Banksy 

"Off the Wall: Basquiat to Banksy" is a private selling exhibition showcasing the contemporary explosion of street art, charting a course through post-punk New York, millennial Britain and beyond. From the illicit and illegitimate to the painterly and political, it celebrates the negotiation between street and studio over nearly half a century.

To find out more you can browse and view the lots in the exhibition and Private Sale

• either online 
• or view them at Christies's King Street Galleries at 8 King Street St. James 's from 12 April–7 May (12-5pm - including weekends) 

I've been to a number of pre-auction exhibitions at Christies and the galleries and viewing opportunities are excellent.

Our London galleries are now open for public viewing, following government guidelines. Private clients and the wider public are able to visit with other members of their household, and trade clients with their working group. 

By classifying it as a Private Sale, each artwork has a predetermined price - and is NOT up for auction. It enables the buying and selling art outside of the auction calendar i.e. it's as if Christies was a gallery for secondary sales.

The Private Sales includes 52 items by the following graffiti and street artists.

(the number of their artworks in the exhibition is indicated in brackets after their name):

• A-One, (1964-2001) (1) - who's not yet made it on to Wikipedia!
• Banksy (11) - nobody knows who he really is. Except he's English (probably from the west country) and he's a street artist, political activist, and film director who has a company which provides Certificates of what is and is not a genuine Banksy!

Banksy on the Christies website

• Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) (8) an American artist whose themes art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. 
• Blek Le Rat (B. 1952) (3) a French graffiti artist - one of the first in Paris. He used to stencil rats on walls.
• Keith Haring (1958-1990) (3) an American pop/graffiti artist in the 1980s - he frequently drew on New York subways
• Invader, (b. 1969) (4) - a French urban artist. He is known for his ceramic tile mosaics modeled on the pixelated art of 1970s–1980s 8-bit video games. Also a graduate of the Parisian École des Beaux-Arts
• Kaws, (b.1974) (2) - an American artist and designer whose includes repeated use of a cast of figurative characters and motifs.
• OSGEMEOS, (B. 1974) (2) - identical twin street artists Otavio Pandolfo and Gustavo Pandolfo
• Rammellzee, (1960-2010) (3) New York street artist 
• Kenny Scharf (b. 1958) (5) an American Painter active at the same time as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring,
• Stik, (b. 1979) (4) - a British graffiti artist based in London. He is known for painting large stick figures.

It would be interesting to know who's selling!

A new Lowry at Christie's Modern British Art Sale

It's a joy when you get to read the catalogue for an art sale which is both informative and interesting. This post is about some of the interesting artworks and interesting back stories to be gleaned from the online catalogues for the upcoming auction of Modern British and Irish Art Sale in January 2020

Christies has a Modern British Art Sale in January 2020 and you can view the e-catalogues online

• Modern British Art Evening Sale on 21 January e-Catalogue
• Modern British Art Day Sale on 22 January e-Catalogue

I particularly enjoyed the catalogue reflections on the effects achieved in the paintings which were like others in modern art - and art from history.

An example being when a 'new' (i.e. previously unseen, unexhibited and uncatalogued) painting by Lowry is compared to a painting of children's games produced by Pieter Brueghel - a connection I'd not made before but which now makes complete sense as to one of the reasons why Lowry paintings are so popular with the general British public who respond to content not being told why they should "appeciate a painting".

A few highlights from the sale - and why I shall go to the view - are that it includes the following. (Note the links I'm providing have images which are nowhere near as good as those included in the catalogue. You need to click the links above and then agree to the conditions before you can access the e-catalogues)

What I've listed reflects my taste or an interest in the back storey.  The catalogues also provide an insight into who collects and they they collect!

 

Evening Sale

• The Mill, Pendlebury by LS Lowry - previously owned by Dr Leonard D Hamilton the chap who worked out the techniques for extracting DNA which was then tested by Crick and Watson to reveal the double helix structure for which they won the Nobel prize! How about that for a back story! The painting was acquired from the artist shortly after it was painted and includes the Acme Spinning Company Mill which was the first mill in the country to be lit entirely by electrocitiy. I wonder whether that scientific angle to the painting created a special fascination for the scientist. He was certainly a man who went on to build an impressive art collection.  He used to hang his Lowry painting in his rooms at Balliol College Oxford where he was an undergraduate. 
• Hero II by William Turnbull - this is the bronze with a green patina and stone sculpture in the David Hockney painting American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) owned by the American Art Institute of Chicago. For context see this link to the 1960s paintings gallery on Hockney's website - it's the first painting in the gallery. The sculpture comes from the Fred Weisman Collection. It's fascinating to hear the history of the sculpture and its antecedents in the British Museum. It's also interesting to see the texture in the sculpture and to read how it was created given its absence in the painting.
• The Wiring Party by William Roberts RA - who has drawn a group of soldiers building or repairing the defences in "no man's land' in the First World War in a cubist style. He had been a gunner and he became a war artist in 1918. The catalogue contains an excellent narrative about working as a war artist. The work was first exhibited at the 60th Exhibition of Modern Drawings in Watercolour and Black and White by the New English Art Club in 1919. It reminds me of the sort of drawing I look for in exhibitions today - of people doing contemporary and routine but unusual things - but very rarely see.

New English Art Club, '60th Exhibition of Modern Drawings in Watercolour and Black and White by the New English Art Club', Maddox Street Galleries, summer 1919 (Burying the Dead after Battle 1919, The Wiring Party 1918)

• Marynka pregnant by RB Kitaj - has an interesting story behind it which involves a visit to the Henri Roche shop in Paris to buy some pastels
• Square Form by Henry Moore in the auction - reminds me of why photos of your work in your studio can help provide provenance and also data a piece!
• Red and White Tulips by Samuel John Peploe - I always like to see a Peploe - and always interesting to see how an artist paints white flowers.... If you're using a 27" screen like me and click the catalogue you get an up close view of the brush strokes used - which to me always indicate the difference between somebody who paints and an artist who knows how to paint flowers

Other artists include Dame Elizabeth Frink, Howard Hodskin, Leon Kossoff, David Bomberg, Lynn Chadwick, Mark Gertler,  Allen Jones, Peter Lanyon, Ben Nicholson as well as other sculptors

Day Sale

This includes

• Postcards written to Felicity Hellaby by Lucian Freud - I just sat and stared! Quite unlike anything I've seen from Freud before.
• Gregory by David Hockney - one of his line drawings in ink which I adore. Gregory was Hockjney's Assistant and Companion through most of the 1970s. You can see more of Hockney's drawings in the 1970s on his website.
• Celia, Hollywood, May 1984 by David Hockney - another line drawing in pen and ink. These are other drawings by Hockney in the 1980s (I just love his drawings!)
• Church at Cassis by SJ Peploe - evocative of Cezanne - but not quite the same
• Barnet Fair by Walter Richard Sickert - almost a 'history painting' - recording what happened at the time - in 1928-30
• Maquette for Draped Reclining Woman and Maquette for Reclining Figure by Henry Moore - His website provides a record of the series of full size sculpture series developed from this maquette (and others, I guess). Moore is one of a few modern sculptors who "gets drapery" right. I've visited Hoglands and seen the studio where he made his maquettes and how he used them to upscale to his larger works - see my Flickr set Henry Moore Sculptures, Hoglands, Perry Green. 
• Eleven ideas for Sculptures and Figures in Settings by Henry Moore provides great insight into his working process and the importance of his drawings to his 3D works

Other artists include Frank Bowling, Dame Elizabeth Frink, Maggi Hambling, Leon Kossoff, Frabnk Auerbach, Sie Edward Paolozzi, Patrick Caulfield, RB Kitaj, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, Eric Ravilious and lots of minor (and not so minor) artists

Viewing is at Christies in King Street, St. James from Monday 13th January to Tuesday 21 January

• 13 Jan, 6pm - 8:30pm
• 14 Jan, 9am - 4:30pm
• 15 Jan, 9am - 4:30pm
• 16 Jan, 9am - 4:30pm
• 17 Jan, 9am - 4:30pm
• 18 Jan, 12pm - 5pm
• 19 Jan, 12pm - 5pm
• 20 Jan, 9am - 4:30pm
• 21 Jan, 9am - 3pm
• 22 Jan, 1pm (Lots 101 - 210)

More auctions

There's also what look like they might be interesting auctions in the early New Year

• Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on the 5th and 6th February
• Post-War and Contemporary Art on the 12th and 13th February

I'm now going to take a look at those e-catalogues!

San Geremia by John Singer Sargent

This is a painting of Venice by John Singer Sargent which I saw at the preview exhibition of the Rockefeller Collection Auction at Christies in London (until 8 March). I highly recommend a visit!

It's worth taking a close look at how Singer Sargent conveys people in this paintings of Venice.

So here's the painting - and the details.

San Geremia (1913) by John Singer Sargent

Details of the painting

This is a side long look at the bottom left corner where the three gondolas are the foreground one is moving away from our view towards the left. The two behind are moving parallel towards the right.

The painting photographed from the side - focusing on the gondolas

Then close ups of what the brush work is actually doing to convey both gondola and the people in it

This is the left hand gondola which we see moving away from our perspective

just a very few strokes to indicate both gondola and gondalier

....and these are two parallel running gondolas moving left to right

suddenly the gondolas which are so clear at 3-4 feet have started to disappear at 3-4 inches

Interesting isn't it?