Pablo Picasso: Femme a la Guitar
Update, 11:35 a.m. Thursday: The first and most prominent of four auctions for Al Taubman's art fetched $377 million, short of what was anticipated, Nate Freedman of Art News reports:
It was a somewhat rocky start to the New York sales Wednesday night at Sotheby’s, as the lots from the estate of its former owner A. Alfred Taubman—breathlessly hyped due to the $500 million guarantee plunked down by the house to win it from its arch-rival Christie’s—often sold at below or barely over their low estimates, with some big-ticket lots not selling at all. The final total came to $377 million, inching past the low estimate for the sale by a few million and casting doubts on whether the auction giant can make back its record investment with the rest of the Taubman sales.
The overall sell-through rate for the auction was a healthy 89.6 percent by lot, with 69 of the 77 lots finding buyers, but a full 22 of those 69 lots—almost a third—sold for below their low estimates, even with buyer’s premium figured in. (Estimates are calculated sans premium.)
There are three more sales in the next week and a half, but none contain big-ticket works like those that were on the block tonight, the publication reports.
Original article, Thursday morning:
The first of four Sotheby’s auctions for A. Alfred Taubman’s impressive art collection, kicked off Wednesday in New York, with some bids brining in more than expected, and other less, The Detroit News reports.
Fortune magazine writes that the 500-lot collection is estimated to fetch $500 million, which makes it it the most valuable private art collection ever at auction. (To see the art click here)
Taubman passed away in April at 91.
Michel Hodges of The News writes:
Frank Stella’s powerful red geometric, “Delaware Crossing,” which Taubman bought in 1982, pulled $12 million, hitting the high end of Sotheby’s estimate, and nearly doubling the artist’s previous all-time record of $6.7 million.
But one of the evening’s big surprises was the failure of Picasso’s “Femme Assise sur une Chaise” to meet its price spread of $25 million to $35 million, selling for a gavel price of just $17.7 million, despite the earnest efforts of Sotheby’s tuxedoed auctioneer, Oliver Barker.
One art world insider, Asher Edelman, former chairman of the Brooklyn Academy of Music who now runs a firm that finances major art purchases, called the Sotheby’s estimates “insultingly high,” suggesting ultimate sales figures may have been destined to fall short in too many cases.
