Richard A Jacobson: Sotheby's Sells Group of Clyfford Still Paintings for $114 Million

By KELLY CROW

Clyfford Still, Detail, "PH-1033" (1976). Sold for: $19,682,5000.

Sotheby's

Sotheby's rounded out New York's major fall auctions Wednesday by selling a quartet of Clyfford Still paintings for $114 million, nearly twice their combined asking price.

Still, a lanky artist born in North Dakota in 1904, visited New York after World War II and fell in with the city's leading Abstract Expressionist painters like Mark Rothko. Unlike Rothko's pulsing rectangles, Still gained a reputation for slathering his own canvases with jagged shards of color.

Before he died in 1980, Still asked his wife, Patricia, to hang onto some of his early works in case a city ever built a museum devoted to his art. On Nov. 18, Denver will open its Clyfford Still Museum—and receive the proceeds from the sale of these four works at Sotheby's. That's because Ms. Still agreed to give the works to the city of Denver, and the city sold them to boost the museum's endowment. (The museum has at least 825 additional Still paintings in its collection.)

Collectors, who bided their time as the Still estate and museum were sorted out, pounced Wednesday. Only 11 works by the artist have come up at auction over the past decade, which makes Still rarer than, say, Rothko whose works have come up for sale over 100 times during the same period. In a volatile market, such rarity only adds to Still's luster. At least four bidders chased the artist's rust, black and butter-colored abstract "1949-A-No. 1," and a telephone bidder won it for $61.6 million, soaring past its $35 million high estimate. The price also eclipsed the artist's prior auction record of $21.2 million.

Minutes later, the buyer of the $61.6 million Still paid another $19.6 million for the painter's orange "PH-1033," which evokes a freeze-frame fire. That work was only expected to sell for up to $15 million.

Still's creamy canvas threaded with rivulets of black, blue and orange paint, "1947-Y-No. 2," also fared well, selling for $31.4 million. It was priced to sell for up to $20 million. Gabriela Palmieri, a Sotheby's specialist who handles clients from Latin America, fielded the winning telephone bid. The last of the Still group -- an earlier, less-ragged work from 1940, "PH-351" -- sold for $1.2 million, just under its $1.5 million high estimate.

After the sale, Christopher Hunt, president of the Denver Museum's board, hailed the prices paid for Still's art, adding that the sale "confirms Clyfford Still's rightful place as a leader" in 20th century art.

The early frenzy over the Stills helped stoke the competitive energy in Sotheby's York Avenue saleroom, which included everyone from Miami collectors Don and Mera Rubell to tabloid favorite and oil heir Brandon Davis. The atmosphere was also lively outside the auction house's doors, as art handlers involved in a labor dispute with Sotheby's protested by bleating air horns.

The protests didn't seem to deter bidders, though. In all, Sotheby's sold 315.8 million worth of art—well over its $270 million high estimate and the third-highest sale total ever achieved by its contemporary art department. (Its peak remains a $362 million evening sale in May 2008.)

Elsewhere in the sale, a telephone bidder paid $19.6 million for Francis Bacon's emerald-green triptych, "Three Studies for a Self-Portrait," which the British artist painted in 1967. The work was priced to sell for up to $20 million. Two other Bacons also came up for bid: Bacon's moody-blue scene of an "Elephant Fording a River" from 1952 sold for $5.6 million, and his powdery pastel "Study for Portrait" from 1979 sold for $4.3 million. Bacon's performance here could soothe some of the recent jitters over his pricing levels, an uncertainty exacerbated by Christie's failure on Tuesday to sell his 1981 "Study of a Man Talking," which had been priced to sell for at least $12 million.

Sotheby's sale also amounted to a test of Gerhard Richter's market. With seven pieces on offer, Richter played a Warholian role in this sale in that bidders had a choice of pieces at varying sizes and price levels. Their top pick? Richter's fuschia-blue "Abstract Painting," a wall-sized work from 1997 that sold for a record $20.8 million, over its $12 million high estimate. The German artist's scraped, neon-hued "Abstract Painting" from 1992 also sold for $14 million; his 1987 "Gudrun" sold for $18 million. Altogether, the group of Richters totaled $74 million, over their combined $27 million estimate.

Mark Rothko was also present in these sales: "Untitled (Plum and Dark Brown)," a large, somber work from 1964 that Sotheby's said it owned as inventory. But either the work's owner or its palette failed to sync with bidders' appetites, and the Rothko attracted no bids. It had priced it to sell for at least $8 million.

Late-era works by Andy Warhol continue to filter into these sales, with varying results. A telephone bidder paid $6.5 million for his 1986 "The Last Supper," a salmon-colored depiction of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece that Warhol silk-screened twice on his own canvas, lining one "Supper" above the other like a film reel. It was priced to sell for at least $5.5 million. Warhol's 1981 "Mickey Mouse (Myth Series)" also sold for $3.4 million, just over its $3 million low estimate.

In a battle of currencies that feels current, Sotheby's also offered up two different versions of Warhol's silkscreen of the American dollar sign. As expected, the bigger, 7-and-a-half foot version of "Dollar Sign" from 1981 won out, selling for $3.6 million, while Warhol's laptop-sized "Dollar Sign" from the following year sold for $698,500.

To raise funds, the Swiss bank UBS tried to sell off a quartet of works from its corporate art collection, but no one wanted its untitled Willem de Kooning drawing, which was priced to sell for at least $1.2 million, or its untitled Robert Rauschenberg work on paper. Its Ellsworth Kelly collage, "Study for Tiger," fared better, selling for 686,500.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, another seller, got $494,500 million for Josef Albers's "Homage to the Square: Two Grays Between Two Yellows." It was priced to sell for at least $500,000.

Overall, 62 of Sotheby's 73 offerings found buyers, helping the house achieve 94.7% of it total potential value. Records were also reset for seven artists, including Still, Richter, Cady Noland, Joan Mitchell and David Hammons. On Thursday, Sotheby's daylong sale of lesser-priced contemporary artworks will conclude the city's two-week auction series.

http://online.wsj.com

The Pasadena Museum of California Art opens a retrospective of artist Edgar Payne Edgar Payne, The Rendezvous (Santa Cruz Island, CA), 1915. PASADENA, CA.- The Pasadena Museum of California Art presents Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey, a retrospective of artist Edgar Payne (1883–1947), one of the most gifted of California’s early plein-air painters. Payne’s work exemplifies the power and dynamism that separate California Impressionism from the picturesque French Impressionism of the 18th Century. One of the first exhibitions of his work in over forty years, the retrospective features nearly 100 paintings and drawings, as well as photographs and objects from the artist’s studio; the exhibition will be on view from June 3 - October 14, 2012. Born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri in 1883, Payne began his art career by painting signs, stage sets, and murals. He considered himself completely self-taught—his training lasted only two weeks at the Chicago Art Institute—and believed that nature was his best teacher. He ultimately settled in California and from there travelled widely. He exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad to create paintings of the Southwest, won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon, and was a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association. Payne utilized the animated brushwork, vibrant palette, and shimmering light characteristic of Impressionism, but his employment of powerful imagery was unique among artists of his generation. While his contemporaries favored a quieter, more idyllic representation of the natural landscape, Payne was devoted to its raw, rugged beauty. His majestic and vital landscapes are informed by his reverence for the natural world. The exhibition traces Payne’s artistic development as he traveled the world in search of this grandeur: the Southern and Central California coast, the Sierra, the Swiss Alps, the harbors and waterways of France and Italy, and the desert Southwest. “In the course of his painting expeditions, Payne was determined to rediscover a broad and epic landscape that captured and conveyed the ‘unspeakably sublime,’” said Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., the exhibition’s curator and associate director and chief curator at the Crocker Art Museum. “In each locale, he sought vitality, bigness, nobility, and grandeur, which he turned into unified, carefully calculated compositions with brushwork that seemed to pulsate with life.” This exhibition was organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art and curated by Shields.

Bookmark and Share The Pasadena Museum of California Art opens a retrospective of artist Edgar Payne Edgar Payne, The Rendezvous (Santa Cruz Island, CA), 1915. PASADENA, CA.- The Pasadena Museum of California Art presents Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey, a retrospective of artist Edgar Payne (1883–1947), one of the most gifted of California’s early plein-air painters. Payne’s work exemplifies the power and dynamism that separate California Impressionism from the picturesque French Impressionism of the 18th Century. One of the first exhibitions of his work in over forty years, the retrospective features nearly 100 paintings and drawings, as well as photographs and objects from the artist’s studio; the exhibition will be on view from June 3 - October 14, 2012. Born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri in 1883, Payne began his art career by painting signs, stage sets, and murals. He considered himself completely self-taught—his training lasted only two weeks at the Chicago Art Institute—and believed that nature was his best teacher. He ultimately settled in California and from there travelled widely. He exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad to create paintings of the Southwest, won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon, and was a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association. Payne utilized the animated brushwork, vibrant palette, and shimmering light characteristic of Impressionism, but his employment of powerful imagery was unique among artists of his generation. While his contemporaries favored a quieter, more idyllic representation of the natural landscape, Payne was devoted to its raw, rugged beauty. His majestic and vital landscapes are informed by his reverence for the natural world. The exhibition traces Payne’s artistic development as he traveled the world in search of this grandeur: the Southern and Central California coast, the Sierra, the Swiss Alps, the harbors and waterways of France and Italy, and the desert Southwest. “In the course of his painting expeditions, Payne was determined to rediscover a broad and epic landscape that captured and conveyed the ‘unspeakably sublime,’” said Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., the exhibition’s curator and associate director and chief curator at the Crocker Art Museum. “In each locale, he sought vitality, bigness, nobility, and grandeur, which he turned into unified, carefully calculated compositions with brushwork that seemed to pulsate with life.” This exhibition was organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art and curated by Shields.

Richard A Jacobson

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sotheby's Sells Group of Clyfford Still Paintings for $114 Million

By KELLY CROW

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