All posts tagged: Jackson Pollock

Sotheby’s Private Auction of Arne Glimcher’s Jackson Pollock Appears to Fail

Sotheby’s Private Auction of Arne Glimcher’s Jackson Pollock Appears to Fail

Published by Jenni Sidey

For much of Tuesday, June 2,, the second floor of Sotheby’s headquarters at Manhattan’s Breuer Building was off limits. Security guards turned away employees hoping to access the floor, which, when not used as a traditional gallery, is where the auction house stages its biggest and most closely watched auctions—including the $236 million Gustav Klimt painting that last year broke the record for any work of modern art sold at auction. According to sources familiar with the matter, even senior staff were left wondering what exactly was going on upstairs. Related Articles The answer, it turns out, was a Jackson Pollock. According to multiple sources, Sotheby’s had quietly organized a private auction for Number 19, 1951, a monumental Pollock owned by Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher. Measuring nearly five feet tall and four feet wide, the muscular oil-and-enamel work is filled with thick ropes of black paint coiling around each other before colliding into bold abstractions. The asking price, I’m told, was $50 million. The sale was conducted with an unusual degree of secrecy. Oliver Barker, …

Abstract Expressionism’s Tortured American Master

Abstract Expressionism’s Tortured American Master

Published by Jenni Sidey

Pollock and Krasner moved to a house at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road in Springs, East Hampton, which they’d purchased with a $2,000 down payment from Guggenheim. Unlike today’s playground for the rich, East Hampton back then was rural, and the property had been a farmstead with a small barn that became Pollock’s studio. The barn’s interior was barely large enough to accommodate the canvases Pollock rolled out onto the floor, restricting him to working along a shallow perimeter between the walls and the painting. In winter he could work just a couple of hours each day, since the space was unheated. Pollock used household enamel diluted to a syrupy consistency, using stirring sticks as tools along with brushes. Thinned pigments and drips weren’t exactly new: Whistler had used a washy concoction he labeled “sauce,” while Max Ernst had developed a technique called oscillation in which he hung a paint-filled can above a canvas, swinging it back and forth as pigment trickled through a hole punched in the bottom. There was also the little-remembered, self-taught painter Janet …

A Guessing Game: Who Bought the 1 Million Pollock at the .1 Billion Christie’s Auction?

A Guessing Game: Who Bought the $181 Million Pollock at the $1.1 Billion Christie’s Auction?

Published by Sam Flores

Those two sales amount for new auction records, and mind-boggling amounts of capital expended on culture. What’s remarkable is how, in the room, things felt a bit anticlimactic. For the Brâncuși, Christie’s had brought in a secret weapon: Oscar-winning actor Nicole Kidman. In a spectacle orchestrated by Tobias Meyer, Kidman was chosen because she bore a striking resemblance to the model for Brâncuși’s Danaïde, and she danced around the sculpture in its specially designed cupola. But it’s not clear the marketing moved the needle. In the room, it appeared that the winning bid was placed on behalf of the third-party guarantor, following a series of chandelier bids from Adrien Meyer—meaning that the prearranged price offered ended up being the final hammer. (Reports leading up to the sale indicated that the entire Newhouse collection was guaranteed by the same collector. I asked one source, a former Christie’s specialist, if it was the house’s owner, François Pinault. They said that was unlikely.) Sources struggled to initially pinpoint who guaranteed, and then bought, the Brâncuși. When asked on …

The Met is Treating Lee Krasner as Pollock’s Equal—Will Market Follow?

The Met is Treating Lee Krasner as Pollock’s Equal—Will Market Follow?

Published by José Betancourt

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says its upcoming exhibition, “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous,” is a “story of equals.” Set to open in October, the survey brings together 120 works  by more than 80 lenders, with an explicit focus on considering Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner “on their own terms” while also placing them in relation to one another.  Related Articles That is the museum’s version of the story. But the art market’s version is harsher, simpler, and much more familiar: Pollock remains one of the great trophies of 20th-century art. Krasner, his wife, widow, and interlocutor, and one of the most formidable painters of the New York School, still has to fight for every inch of price recognition. The price gap between these two long dead artists is sizeable: Pollock’s auction record sits at $61.2 million, while Krasner’s is just under 20 percent of that figure, at $11.7 million, set at Sotheby’s in 2019 …

Christie’s Nabs 0 M. Newhouse Cache, Led by Pollock, Picasso, and Brancusi

Christie’s Nabs $450 M. Newhouse Cache, Led by Pollock, Picasso, and Brancusi

Published by José Betancourt

Treasures priced at $100 million by 20th-century masters Jackson Pollock and Constantin Brancusi will lead Christie’s New York’s marquee May art sales, coming from the collection of media magnate S. I. Newhouse, Artnet News has revealed. While Christie’s has yet to confirm Artnet’s report, those two estimates, if met, would far exceed those artists’ current auction highs. Numbering as many as 40 works, the collection encompasses examples by giants like Jasper Johns and Pablo Picasso, and is reportedly valued at $450 million.  Related Articles The late Newhouse and his wife Victoria appeared regularly on ARTnews Top 200 collector list, which notes that they are said to have spent as much as $700 million on their art holdings. When Newhouse died in 2017, his family entrusted his collection to the care of art advisor Tobias Meyer, previously principal auctioneer at Sotheby’s, reported the New York Times, adding that the collection included such works as Andy Warhol’s 1964 painting of Marilyn Monroe, Shot Orange Marilyn, and Lucian Freud’s 1993 self-portrait Painter Working, Reflection. Still ahead, noted the …

Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock to Star in Blockbuster Show at the Met

Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock to Star in Blockbuster Show at the Met

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host a major exhibition for two major artists who have never been subject to such treatment by the institution before: Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. The famously married artists each established a legacy that stands on its own. This show, to open in October and run through January 2027, will survey those legacies both on their own and side-by-side. In a press release, Met director Max Hollein said, “With its distinctive premise and scope, Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous exemplifies The Met’s commitment to reexamining modern art through rigorous scholarship and fresh perspectives. By considering each artist on their own terms while also foregrounding their consequential relationship, the exhibition situates Krasner’s and Pollock’s work within a broader cultural and artistic context.” Hollein went on to call the approach integral to the vision he foresees for the Met Department of Modern and Contemporary Art’s forthcoming new wing, scheduled to open in 2030. Related Articles Krasner and Pollock met as young artists when they were included in a …