Pablo Picasso did not paint only chefs d'oeuvre. This mandoline on a table painted in 1922 is rather a boring picture (81.6 x 100.1 cm.) that will bring me to sleep rather than to ecstasy. It was in the property of the late Evelyn Annenberg Hall - a long-time Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC)- and a famous art collector herself. She had a weakness for the handsome Pablo of whom she acquired her first picture in 1940, an acquisition qualified of remarkable for the epoch. Mrs. Annenberg Hall passed away in 2005 at age 93 in her home in Manhattan, NYC. With her second husband, William Jaffe, a corporate lawyer, she assembled an outstanding private art collection that included European paintings, sculpture and antique furniture, Chinese porcelain, pre-Colombian artifacts and Renaissance drawings.
This Picasso's picture which was estimated by the autioneer between $3,500,000 - $4,500,000 barely reached 3,1 million includind buyer's premium. The present still-life was painted during the winter of 1922 in the apartment on the fashionable rue La Boétie that Picasso shared with his wife, Olga Khokhlova, and their infant son, Paulo. Like the guitar, the mandolin is a recurrent motif throughout Picasso's work of the 1910s and 1920s. It appears in one of his most important cubist portraits, Fanny Tellier, a painting that some asserted would change the course of cubism.Well this picture is not going to change the course of my life and has certainly not changed the course of the auction at which it was sold in November 2008.
Egon Schiele, 1890-1918, was a great Austrian artist, an a protégé of Gustav Klimt, and a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic that claimed more than 20,000,000 lives in Europe reached Vienna. His wife Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease on 28 October : he died only three days after her. During the three days between their deaths, Schiele drew a few sketches of Edith; these were his last works.The sketch on the right made in 1917 is a black Conté crayon on paper and represents his wife Edith laying on his side in a very suggestive position. Estimated before the sale between $150,000 and 200,000, the work went on auction at Christies NYC in November 2008 for $314,500 including buyer's premium. I personally think this picture is awful and I would never pay that amount of money to hang this horror on my walls. Désolé Egon !!
Having said that another crayon on paper, gouache, watercolor by Schiele (left picture) was sold on the 6th of November 2008 for $ 1,594,500. It has been estimated before the sale between $700,000 and 1,000,000. Collectors know the price of the artist but still I have difficulty to understand how in such a period of economic difficulties such prices can be reached without being drawn to the floor one of those days.
I love Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) who was a great Austrian painter, the lover of the wife of Walter Gropius, boss of the Bauhaus, and a degenerate painter according to the Nazis.
But I usually prefer his full of colour canvasses on oil although it seems that a lot of people love OK for no reason except that he appears to be a sound investment.
However do not talk to me about art but about money when I learn that this sketch of Frau Stehender signed with initials 'OK' - watercolor and pencil - on buff paper, 17¾ x 12½ in., executed in 1907 was sold today 7 of November at Christie's NYC for $ 74,500.
It has been estimated prior to the sale between 40,000 and 60,000 dollars. Obviously the economic crisis we hear so much about has not yet reached the pockets of the wealthy collectors, or maybe they reached for safety before a general collapse of assets.
There are moments where I seriously wonder whether Hitler was not right to deem that sort of painting "entarte". Anyway the most entarte must be the people who are snobish enough to pay 74500 dollars for this obscenity. Hung that on the wall of your dining-room and none of your guests is any longer hungry. But don't tell them you paid 75 grants for it they would laugh their ass on the floor for good.
Mahjoub Ben Bella was born in 1946 in Maghnia (Algeria). After some studies at the Fine Arts School in Oran (Algeria), he moved to the Fine Arts School of Tourcoing in the North of France and then at the Fine Arts School in Paris before to go eventually to the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.He is the painter of Lille and of the North of France and is widely considered in this region where he painted 12 kilometers of cobble stones of the infamous hard road of the Paris-Roubaix cycle race. His repute is now international and his work sells everywhere notably in the Emirates where his style illustrates the meeting of two words in a pacific way, the North and the South, the East and the West of the Mediterranean. Ben Bella's work creates a remarkable fusion between signs based on Arabic calligraphy, and Abstract Expressionism in European painting.This painting is an oil on canvas painted in 2005 and measures 76¾ x 51 1/8in. (195 x 130 cm.) .
It was offered on auction at Chrisitie's in October 2008 and reached the low level of its estimate, i.e. $ 40,000.
The second most expensive painting of the Christie's sale on the 19th of October 2008, a realistic study of Francis Bacon's face done more than 50 years ago by Lucian Freud realized £5.42 million ($9,4 million), barely above the low estimate - but, again, a huge price.
It was the sale that saved the day because due to the economic crisis transactions were slim and became sticky.
By the end of the sale, 27 percent of the works remained stranded. At the press conference held in a subdued atmosphere, a Sotheby's spokesperson revealed that the auction house had worked hard to persuade consignors to bring down their reserves.The work is an oil and charcoal on canvas measuring 14 x 14in. (35.5 x 35.5cm.) and was painted in 1956-57. It was only natural that these two painters, in each other's company so much, would begin to feature in each other's pictures, Freud appearing in Bacon's oils for the first time in 1951 and Bacon appearing in three drawings by Freud executed in 1951, two paintings of 1952 and 1956-57 and a later drawing from 1970.
Bacon passed away in 1992 and Lucian Freud will celebrate his 86th birthday on the 8th of December.
