LIFESTYLE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013 Features37

This Oct 4, 2013 Record prices expected at photo provided by Sotheby’s shows “Silver Car Crash (Double Disas- ter)” by Andy . –AP NYC fall art auctions photos

“Mousquetaire a la pipe” by artist Pablo Picasso, “Tete, Oiseau, Etoile” by Joan Miro and “L’arbre Rouge” by Marc Chagall are on display.

otential buyers will have to dig it’s expected to sell for up to $55 million. deep as New York City’s frenzied fall It’s one of five monumental balloon dogs Pauction season gets underway with Koons has created in different colors. blockbuster works of art poised to set All are in private hands. It is being records. Among the blue-chip offerings sold by newsprint magnate Peter Brant is ’s “Silver Car Crash (Double to benefit his Brant Foundation Art Study Disaster),” a provocative double-panel in Greenwich, Conn. At the same sale, a painting that Sotheby’s estimates could bright orange-yellow and white painting bring as much as $80 million at its Nov by Mark Rothko could fetch up to $35 13 postwar and contemporary sale. The million. Created in 1957, the large-scale current Warhol auction record is $71.7 “Untitled (No. 11)” oil painting is remi- million for “Green Car Crash (Green niscent of a radiating sunset. Last May, Burning Car I),” set in 2007. A day earlier, Christie’s sold Rothko’s “Orange, Red, Christie’s is offering a 1969 triptych by Yellow” for $86.8 million, a record for any Francis Bacon of his friend and artist Lu- contemporary artwork at auction. cian Freud. The auction house says “Three Picasso’s sculpture, “Tete,” the model Studies of Lucian Freud” could topple the for a prominent outdoor steel artwork $86 million auction record for the artist in Chicago’s Daley Plaza, had been the set in 2008 for his 1976 “Triptych.” expected highlight, and with an estimate It remains to be seen if either can of $25 million to $35 million was poised surpass the nearly $120 million paid to break the artist’s record for a sculpture. at Sotheby’s in spring 2012 for Edvard But the work failed to reach its reserve - Munch’s “The Scream.” The painting is the secret minimum price sellers agree to the most expensive artwork ever sold at accept before an auction - when no bids auction. “The market can absorb all this beyond $19 million were forthcoming. and much, much more,” said art dealer One after another, other top works Richard Feigen. “Liquidity proliferates by artists ranging from Giacometti to all over the world. “Sellers are selling Kandinsky and Miro and bearing esti- because they fear the market may peak mates around $10 million to as high as and they want out, hopefully at the top,” $25 million, failed to sell. The sale of 62 added Feigen, who runs the gallery Rich- works from the collection of art dealer ard L. Feigen & Co on Manhattan’s Upper Jan Krugier took in $92.5 million includ- East Side. ing commission, Christie’s said, against Warhol produced four paintings in a $158 million to $225 million pre-sale Pablo Picasso’s “Tête (Maquette pour la sculpture en plein air du Chicago Civic Center)” is displayed October 31, 2013 at Christie’s in the “Death and Disaster” series. The other estimate. New York. —AFP/AP photos three are in museums. Measuring 8 by Among the sale’s few high points was 13 feet (2.4 by 4 meters), the 1963 silver Picasso’s portrait of two of his children, work captures the immediate aftermath “Claude et Paloma,” a 1950 oil that soared of a car crash, a twisted body sprawled to $28,165,000, or more than twice the across its mangled interior. It has been estimate of $9 million to $12 million, to seen in public only once in the past 26 achieve the evening’s top price. Several years. Sotheby’s also is offering a portrait lower-priced works also saw competitive of Elizabeth Taylor by Warhol. “Liz #1 bidding, selling for many times their esti- (Early Colored Liz)” is estimated to fetch mates. Christie’s officials expressed their between $20 million and $30 million. disappointment. “Obviously we would Christie’s also has an iconic Warhol, have wished for a stronger evening,” one “Coca-Cola (3),” at its Nov. 12 sale with a more in line with the pre-sale interest pre-sale estimate of $40 million to $60 shown by clients, said Conor Jordan, million. The two-week season begins this deputy chairman of Impressionist and week with impressionist and modern modern art in New York who was in works of art. Christie’s Tuesday evening charge of the Krugier sale. sale includes Alberto Giacometti’s “Diego Jordan said the estimate for the in plaid shirt,” estimated at $30 million to Picasso sculpture “was not an issue to $50 million. The 1954 portrait of Giacom- interested parties in the run-up to the etti’s brother, his most frequent subject, sale. We didn’t see any dissent from our has been in a private collection for more clients.” Noting that “things with lower than two decades and has never ap- estimates performed very strongly,” he peared at auction. added that 71 percent of the 62 works Sotheby’s today sale includes an- on offer were sold, which he called “a other major work by Giacometti, “Large reasonable figure.” “And we were thrilled Thin Head (Large Head of Diego),” a to see bidding coming from all across the sculptural representation of his younger globe,” he said. brother featuring an exaggerated profile Asian bidding was especially strong, and knife-edge frontal view. It is ex- with the Picasso bought by an Asian cli- pected to bring between $35 million and ent bidding via telephone. The auctions $50 million. The auction record for any continue today, with Christie’s wrapping Giacometti work is $103.9 million, set by up the Krugier sale ahead of its Impres- “Walking Man I” in 2010. On Nov 12, Jeff sionist and modern art auction, followed Koons’ whimsical “Balloon Dog (Orange),” by Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and a 10-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture re- modern art.—AP sembling a twisted child’s party balloon, “Grande tete de Diego” by artist Alberto Giacometti is on dis- An auction house worker poses for the photographers in is going on the block at Christie’s, where play during a press preview of Sotheby’s auction of impres- front of a 1962 Andy Warhol casein on cotton painting enti- sionist and modern art. tled ‘Coca-Cola (3)’ in central London.