So, over the past few days, the major auction houses Christie’s (May 16 & 17) and Sotheby’s (May 15 & 16) each held a series of auctions featuring Post-war and Contemporary Art. Some of the prices received are no less than astounding.
For a great view into this world, click on the following link to Christie’s website (http://www.christies.com/features/may07/pwc/pwa_video.asp) which shows the auction on May 16, 2007 for Warhol’s “Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I),” from 1963 that starts at 17 million and works its way up 64 million dollars in the video (the piece was eventually sold for 71 million).
The Warhol image above is from yahoo ( http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070516/482/151d48c9dcd4462d9a39b6e3b0c78008;_ylt=AiJXSgyVmSo1ZFI.OZi4v1ZnhVID).
While I don’t always love Warhol (which is sacrilege to say— I just prefer Johns and Rosenquist more often as “pop” artists), this series is my favorite. There is something so great about combining Warhol’s style and eye for culture with the gruesome nature of the car crash (which are images we are presented with in the media and as parts of our contemporary life).
I bet at some point, Warhol was just a guy in a studio keeping a diary from time to time and working on creating images. Just think, if you’d invested in his career then. OK, that’s the end of my subliminal commercial for investing in my art.
Other highlights from the Christie’s auction:
-a Jasper Johns canvas, "Figure 4," that sold for $17.4 million; (see above for an image as found on Christies.com)
-an Arshile Gorky painting, "Khorkom," that went for about $4.2 million;
-and a Cindy Sherman photograph, "Untitled No. 92," bought for about $2.1 million.
I think the sale of the Jasper Johns is especially amazing as he is still alive.
The Sotheby’s auction has similar success:
-Mark Rothko's "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," from 1950 sold for $72.84 million (see image above from http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/16/arts/melik17.php)
-Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled from 1981, sold for $14.6 million
-Francis Bacon’s 1962 Study from Innocent X, sold for $52.6 million
-Lichtenstein’s ‘Girl with Mirror” from 1965 sold for $4 million
-de Kooning’s “Figure in Landscape No. 1” from 1951 sold for $4 million
For more information on both auctions you can check both Sotheby’s (http://www.sothebys.com/) and Christie’s (http://www.christies.com/) websites.
During the Whitney Retrospective in 1998 I saw the painting “White Center” by Rothko that just sold. It is painting beyond words to describe in its mastery and emotional impact. In fact, attending that retrospective was likely one of the most important events in my development as an artist. It was incredible, and the image of all those gorgeous Rothkos reflecting off the glossy floor will be with me forever. There was a part of me that wanted to look behind the canvases to find the light that must have been on behind each of them. I often describe seeing them like the moment after light passes through stained glass and before it lands on any surface. This image, so moving to me and impressed upon my being, has been included in poems of mine like “St. Augustine’s,” “Retrospective,” and others.
I actually have been working on a poem recently about the things that were most important in my artistic development (tentatively titled “Essential Moments In My Development As An Artist”). I just opened the file in progress and number one on the list was: “Seeing Rothko’s retrospective at the Whitney on a Thursday in 1998.”
Other items so far include:
-My parents, meeting in a bar in Falmouth called the Black Swan.
-May 8, 2007 when I realized you have to write every poem as if it was your last.
-Flathead Lake forming by glaciers.
-The girl I just saw in the crosswalk.
-De Kooning:
a. Walking in New York City
b. Stowing away on a boat named the SS Shelley
-James Rosenquist— the Swimmer in the Econo-mist. MassMOCA.
-Drawing on a cocktail napkin and as the pen seeped into paper and the lines retained themselves, realizing that I’d just drawn an exact replica of Picasso’s Guernica.
-Watching the airplanes leave jetwash lines all across the sky from my apartment on East 7th Street, and realizing they had just drawn an exact replica of Guernica.
-Frank O’Hara’s “Why I am Not a Painter," and being dyslexic.
In honor of Mr. Rothko’s stunning success over the past few days, I am including a piece of my poem “You’re Probably in Japan By Now.” Not only can Rothko paint amazingly, he was also part of the inspiration for this poem, which I am fairly sure single-handedly won me a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in 2004.
Here is an excerpt:
Just yesterday I realized I’d turned Mark Rothko into a character for my poems,
and how interesting paint and sound are compared to abstraction.
What a terrible tragedy to turn light— breaking to black fog— settling against
a wall— or creating a wall— into a caricature or a person even. Love.
I do this to all things I love, which should be flattering, but is not—
and now I have a strained relationship with Untitled from 1958.
Some of it is because Rothko was afraid of water and some of it
is because I’m afraid of Rothko who bought an old YMCA and painted
until orange was exhausted. There’s something about looking
a painting onto canvas that is very different from painting, cigarette in mouth.
It’s easier to look at a massive block of light melting like a molten ice cube
than to look at a man dissolving into paint.
**************************************
To end this post: In the midst of all this success by some of my artistic heroes, there was another interesting connection to my blog from The International Herald Tribune Article on the Sotheby’s Auction (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/16/arts/melik17.php).
Kind of interesting how it connects to the post I did recently:
“The phenomenal success scored by Sotheby's was not entirely immune to glitches.
The most severe one affected Jackson Pollock's "Number 16, 1949," an abstract composition in oil and enamel on paper mounted on masonite. Bidding stopped at $17.5 million, missing the $18 to $25 million estimate, which seemed wild. But then it was not the only wild estimate that night, and others, like Rothko's $40 million to $50 million, were wildly exceeded.
The Jackson Pollock failure thus serves as a mild warning that in the current Alice-in-Wonderland world of contemporary art, occasional rude awakenings are possible.”
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