A Basquiat painting changed hands for $28.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction with low bids
A large chandelier by French-American sculptress Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) sold for $32.8 million on Thursday (30.4 million euros) at auction in New York and became his most expensive work. The sculpture, about 3 meters high and 5.5 meters wide, was the star of Sotheby’s contemporary art sale and started with an estimate between 30 and 40 million dollars, but interest stagnated when that minimum range was reached, at to which commissions and interest were added.
The sculpture is dated 1996, it is one of the first spiders created by Bourgeois and, after being exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial (Brazil) that same year, it was quickly bought by the Itaú Cultural Institute, which today got rid of it for finance their cultural activities. There were expectations that she would smash records, but this Bourgeois chandelier settles for being the third most expensive work by a female artist, a list that includes three other of her chandeliers, which sold for between $14 million and $32 million. In 1996 another Bourgeois chandelier was auctioned for 32 million, a figure that has been surpassed today by little and that maintains in her hands the status of the “most expensive” sculptress. American modernist painter Georgia O’Keefe has the record for any work by a woman artist thanks to the sale, in 2014, of one of his emblematic flower paintings, ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1’, from 1932, by $44.4 million.
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois, who was born in Paris and moved to New York at the age of 27, is famous for her large-scale sculptures and installations, particularly her giant bronze chandeliers, which have been exhibited in major museums. Although spiders are a source of disgust for many, Bourgeois evoked with them the memory of her mother, a tapestry weaver who died when the artist was 21 years old, and in an interview she compared the capacity of both, the spider and her mother, to “repair” and “protect”. Bourgeois’s spider also has an important psychological component behind it, since the sculptress thus faced the trauma of the loss of her mother and the betrayal of her father, who had a long extramarital affair.
A Basquiat for 28.6 million
In the same auction, a notable painting in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career, ‘Now’s the time’, sold this Thursday for 28.6 million of dollars. Basquiat’s work, one of the most sought-after artists in recent years and which has surpassed 110 million, was a circular piece of wood painted black with the inscription ‘Now’s the time’ and ‘PRKR’, which recreated a vinyl record by jazz musician Charlie Parker from 1945. Despite everything, it was the second most expensive work of the afternoon, behind Bourgeois’s spider, which, although it broke the artist’s record, was far from the highest expectations. optimistic. In third place, with 21.8 million, was the painting ‘4096 Farben’ by Gerhard Richter, which evokes a pixelated screen with thousands of colored squares and put an end to his ‘Color Chart’ series, but which also remained behind. below the estimated maximum range of 25 million. The only other work above $10 million was Wayne Thiebaud’s “Candy Counter,” a painting of a modern still life with candies, sweets and a scale, which at $14.7 million was close to its highest estimate.
The thirty pieces of contemporary art from today’s Sotheby’s sale raised 165.6 million dollars in total, closer to the expected minimum of 144 million than the maximum of 193 million. The prudence of the buyers was also seen in the previous sale, of ultra-contemporary art, with another twenty works that were sold for a total of 37.2 million -between 29 and 42 million were expected-, although they accumulated several records, led by by Simone Leigh (3.1 million).