hyde or die

» Lehman Bros art under the hammer

Works by Lucien Freud and Gary Hume are in the company’s European collection, which is to be sold for an estimated £2m by Christie’s in London.

That will follow a similar sale of art from the firm’s US headquarters, which is expected to fetch $10m (£6.3m).

Pieces by Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter and Felix Gonzalez-Torres will go under the hammer in New York on 25 September.

The proceeds will go towards repaying the creditors of the investment bank, which was the biggest bankruptcy in US corporate history when it collapsed in September 2008.

A company sign from its offices in Canary Wharf, London, will be among the objects sold at the London auction on 29 September, as will Lehman Brothers cigar boxes and tea caddies.

August 10, 2010, 11:31am  

» Christie's Sued Over "Fake" Painting Sales

July 27, 2010, 2:31pm  

» Christie's to Sell Property From the Collection of Dennis Hopper

July 20, 2010, 5:50pm  

How many articles need to be written about some indicator that the “CONTEMPORARY ART MARKET IS BACK”?  It’s as if everyone is vying for credit for fixing the economy, when in reality, this is all happening at the same time because the economy is slowly rebounding. So, what is the big indicator?

• A Bustling Armory! Or is it…
• An amazing auction at Sotheby’s..
• No, it was Christie’s auction, but maybe…
• It was actually ARCOMadrid, more likely though,
• It really was everything together.

March 04, 2010, 9:53am  

Yves Klein Relief éponge

This sucker went for over $9 million last night at Christie’s…Now I don’t want to get all picky, but if I was going to spend that kind of dough on a Klein, I would want it to be IKB, you know?

February 12, 2010, 9:05am  

Laura Vere-Hodge of Christies walks along a gallery containing Picasso’s “Femme et Fillettes” (L) and “Flag” by artist Jasper Johns at the auction house in London.

LONDON.- Christie’s is honored to announce that it will offer at auction this spring in New York major works from the collection of the late Michael Crichton. Best-selling author and screenwriter, film director and producer, Crichton is renowned for his terrifying and sometimes controversial scientific thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Timeline, The Lost World, Rising Sun, and State of Fear, and for creating the television series ER.

Crichton is also acknowledged as a leading authority on the American artist Jasper Johns.

…

Early in his career, Crichton developed a keen interest in contemporary art and friendships with David Hockney (who made a portrait of Crichton in 1976), Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg. In the 1970s, Crichton also became a close friend and an avid collector of Jasper Johns. He was asked by Johns to write the catalogue for his major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1977. This publication and its revised and expanded edition are considered one of the preeminent studies on America’s foremost living artist. via…

February 08, 2010, 3:46pm  

Edgar Allan Poe Tamerlane and Other Poems First Edition

A volume of poetry and a partial poem handwritten by Edgar Allan Poe also set world records during an earlier auction Friday, Christie’s said.

A bidding war over the poem was won by an American collector who bid $830,500, a world record for a 19th-century literary manuscript, Christie’s said. The eight verses of the 16-verse poem “For Annie” was estimated to sell for $50,000 to $70,000.

A rare first edition of Poe’s first book, “Tamerlane and Other Poems,” sold for $662,500 at the same auction, the highest price ever paid for a 19th-century book of poetry.

Only 12 copies of the 40-page volume of poetry, published in 1827, are known to remain. It had a pre-sale estimate of between $500,000 to $700,000.

A Christie’s spokeswoman did not immediately have a previous auction record for works by Poe.

The metal Olivetti typewriter Cormac McCarthy used while writing his novels, including “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men,” sold at the afternoon auction for an eye-popping $254,500. It had been estimated to sell for $15,000 to $20,000.

McCarthy also invited the winner to join him for lunch at the Sante Fe Institute. The 76-year-old writer donated the auction’s proceeds to the nonprofit institute in New Mexico. via…

See guys, print isn’t dead, it’s just really, really old.

December 07, 2009, 1:46pm  

» Saatchi to Sell in China and at Christie’s

LONDON—Charles Saatchi certainly knows how to read the fine print. Despite a widely publicized partnership that he forged with Phillips de Pury & Co. last year in which he agreed to sell predominantly through the auction house, the super-collector has now stated that he will sell some of his Chinese contemporary art in China and unload a handful of other works at Christie’s in London.

A spokesperson for Saatchi defended the moves, explaining that there are no Western auction houses competing in China and that the sales at Christie’s are designed to fulfill “obligations we already had.” Martin Kippenberger’s Paris Bar Berlin (1993) will be among the works to hit the block in London.

I’m a little sick of all this Martin Kippenberger hoopla.

September 10, 2009, 9:00am