newsfromchristies201011

Christie's New York evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art sets 5 new artist records, and realizes US$272,873,000 / £169,181,260 / €199,197,290

Roy LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)

Ohhh...Alright..., signed and dated 'rf Lichtenstein '64' (on the reverse)
Oil and magna on canvas, 90.2x96.5cm

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$42,642,500 (£26,438,350) (€31,129,025) (Christie's NY, November 10th 2010, Lot 5)
Lot Sold Anonymous

***WORLD AUCTION RECORD FOR ARTIST***

Painted in 1964, Roy Lichtenstein's Ohhh...Alright illustrates the brash comic styling of his most celebrated period of artistic production. As with all his greatest images, Ohhh...Alright...is at once striking and subtle, humorous and highly serious. Lichtenstein lifted the stunning blue-eyed, flame-haired beauty that fills the frame from the pages of a romance comic and rendered it larger-than-life. She forms part of the much admired cast of dreamgirls painted between 1961 and 1965 that saw Lichtenstein attain international prominence as one of America's most exciting and controversial artists. Created in conjunction with his explosive war paintings, these images of love-struck women reflect the artist's formal interest in a generic style of representation, while simultaneously addressing the cultural dichotomy between male and female stereotypes.

The visage of this 1960s sweetheart represents a single panel from a graphic love story that Lichtenstein dilated to the scale of a 36" x 38" easel painting. He presents this image without context, the narrative flow frustratingly incomplete. The solitary, emblematic figure leaves us guessing as to why she looks so crestfallen, as she mutters into the phone clutched at her ear. It captures the Pop master's innate gift for editing, capturing the telling gesture of an emotive moment. In his hands, the subject's corny theatricality has become an image of mystery, where the past and future events of the storyboard can only be surmised. It disrupts our desire to engage with the scenario and forces the viewer to analyse the image on its own terms. The work owes its vivid monumentality to the careful scrutiny and distillation of a pre-existing image selected from thousands of random possibilities. Lichtenstein then adapts his source, removing distracting details, lines, figures, or words to present his compositions with the ultimate clarity. [...]

Andy WARHOL (1928-1987)

Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), signed and dated 'Andy Warhol 62' (on the stretcher); signed again 'Andy Warhol 62' (on the reverse)
Casein and graphite on linen, 182.9x132.1cm

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$23,882,500 (£14,807,150) (€17,434,225) (Christie's NY, November 10th 2010, Lot 8)
Estimate US$30,000,000-50,000,000
Lot Sold Anonymous

Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener, from the renowned collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, is a highly important and rare early painting by Andy Warhol showing the great icon which quite literally changed the course of Post-War Art: the Campbell's soup can. This large picture dates from early 1962 - it was acquired by Emily and Burton Tremaine, the great collectors, in May of that year, and in July was exhibited at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, becoming the first picture by Warhol to be shown in a museum. There are only ten large scale Campbell soup cans and the majority are in museum collections including the Menil Collection, Houston, the Kunsthaus, Zurich, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dsseldorf, and two in The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

In May 1962, Warhol had been featured in an article alongside three other perceived protagonists of Pop, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Wayne Thiebaud, in an article in Time magazine entitled "The Slice-of-Cake School". In that article, Warhol was shown in his Lexington Avenue studio, eating soup out of a can of Campbell's Scotch Broth, standing next to a group of paintings including Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener. 'I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about. I'm working on soups, and I've been doing some paintings of money. I just do it because I like it' (A. Warhol, quoted in "The Slice-of-Cake School", Time, May 11, 1962, p. 52). It comes as no surprise that, when he was asked in 1977 by Glenn O'Brien what his favorite work was, he said, 'I guess the soup can' (G. O'Brien, 'Interview: Andy Warhol", High Times, August 1977, in K. Goldsmith, ed., I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962-1987, New York, 2004, p. 242). [...]

Provenance from the renowned collection of the Seattle collector Barney A. Ebsworth, who has owned it since 1987

Jeff KOONS (b. 1955)

Balloon Flower (Blue), executed in 1995-2000
High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 340x285x260cm This work is one of five unique versions (Blue, Magenta, Yellow, Orange and Red).

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$16,882,500 (£10,467,150) (€12,324,225) (Christie's NY, November 10th 2010, Lot 23)
Estimate US$12,000,000-16,000,000
Lot Sold L & M Arts LLC

Balloon Flower (Blue) is a distinctly Koonsian creation, a monumental paean to pleasures of all kinds - sentimental, playful, erotic - which mingles both irony and pure earnestness in equal measure. Based on the type of a balloon toy that would be concocted by a clown or performer to entertain children, Koons transforms this humble source into an immense sculpture that is both formally sophisticated and technically dazzling in its construction. Towering over the viewer, it captivates one's gaze, which is impelled to move ceaselessly across the rhythmically undulating curves of its impossibly glossy metallic surface. Indeed, the polished blue surface captures one's own reflection, so that the viewer and the surrounding environment become an integral part of the work itself. Perpetually inflated and seemingly buoyant thanks to its stainless steel incarnation, the balloon seems to transcend any limitations of time and gravity-as well as taste, in its almost miraculous transformation of a lowly toy into an aesthetically sophisticated sculptural entity. The effect is nothing short of sublime.

This sculpture belongs to Koons's renowned Celebration series begun in the 1990s, comprised of paintings and sculptures dedicated to the trappings of holidays, birthdays and other special occasions, which Koons rendered in glitzy and colorful ways, suggesting a perpetual cycle of happiness and optimism. He was inspired to focus on such subject matter following the birth of his son Ludwig. The innocent, joyous imagery of the Celebration series became especially important to him when he was separated from his son, for he used it as a way to express his love and convey that he was thinking of him. Balloon Flower, for Koons, specifically commemorates the springtime when blossoms begin to grow, and the optimism that accompanies that moment of the year. Alongside other large-scale sculptures in the Celebration series, such as the hanging hearts, diamonds, and balloon dogs, Balloon Flower is distinguished as arguably the most abstract of the entire series. One of five unique colors in this series, the blue Balloon Flower echoes both the common blue shade of balloons, but also the spiritual and ethereal dimensions of the color blue that artists such as Yves Klein famously evoked in their work. Images of flowers have played an especially important role in Koons's work over the course of his career. [...]

Provenance from the Daimler Art Collection