Christie's November Sales of Post-War and Contemporary Art Total $470.5 Million Today’s results, combined with the $325,006,000 achieved last night, and the $52,423,400 fetched by Selections from the Allan Stone Collection, brings Christie’s November auctions of Post-War and Con
News-Antique.com - Nov 16,2007 - Evening, Morning, Afternoon - throughout the week, Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Sales revealed the same ebullient mood, the same confidence, the same commitment. Coming after the second most valuable evening sale ever in the field, the day sales had a tough act to follow and yet the Morning and Afternoon Sessions succeeded in continuing the strong performance of the previous night with apparent ease. The Morning Session set a new world auction record for Robert Indiana's irresistible LOVE at $3.5 million while candidly lauding such powerhouses as Warhol, Ruscha and Thiebaud. The Afternoon Session saw Basquiat soar and catapulted several Asian artists into the top-10. Both Day Sales witnessed participation of new clients whose activities were clearly sparked by a large presence of traditional buyers and their combined total is $93,072,650.
Today’s results, combined with the $325,006,000 achieved last night, and the $52,423,400 fetched by Selections from the Allan Stone Collection, brings Christie’s November auctions of Post-War and Contemporary Art to a grand total of $470,502,050.
SELECTIONS FROM THE ALLAN STONE COLLECTION
TOTALS $52.5 MILLION AT CHRISTIE’S NEW YORK
New York – This evening, a packed and busy room saw Selections from the Allan Stone Collection, a group of Post-War and Contemporary Art; tribal and folk art; and Art Deco works of art, realizing $52,423,400, selling 94% by value and setting 12 new world auction records. Following last week’s highly successful sales which totaled $472 million and witnessed the second highest fine art auction result ever at $395 million for the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, the sale of the Stone Collection showed the strength of the art market and the commitment of connoisseurship and capital from around the world. Vibrant and energetic, the sale was a bold prelude to tomorrow’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. New records were set for artists including Wayne Thiebaud and John Chamberlain, Antoni Gaudí and Carlo Bugatti and for an American folk art piece attributed to Thomas V. Brooks.
“This evening, we enjoyed fantastic participation from around the world, including our first evening sale lot sold through Christie’s LIVE™,” said Christopher Burge, Honorary Chairman and the evening’s auctioneer. “It was Christie’s honor to celebrate Allan Stone’s passion and visionary connoisseurship with such a successful sale.”
The Allan Stone Gallery gave Wayne Thiebaud his first one-man show in 1962. The success of that show led to the artist’s first single-artist museum exhibition, just a few months later, at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco. Thiebaud highlights in the sale were the record-setting Seven Suckers, 1970 ($4,521,000); Tie Rack, 1969 ($3,401,000) and Blue Hill, 1967 ($1,721,000).
One of the important changes in Willem de Kooning's art occurred in 1963, when the artist left New York for a studio on the light-filled eastern end of Long Island. From this period, Man combines two of the strains of his art until that time: the bravura landscapes of the late 1950s and the celebrated Women of a decade before. The painting fetched $4,521,000
