LiveAuctioneers bidders spend $338K at Phillips de Pury art auction

Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, ‘Liz, 1964,’ an offset lithograph in colors by Andy Warhol, sold for $42,500 inclusive of premium. The 22-inch-square print was signed and dated in black ballpoint pen. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.
Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, ‘Liz, 1964,’ an offset lithograph in colors by Andy Warhol, sold for $42,500 inclusive of premium. The 22-inch-square print was signed and dated in black ballpoint pen. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.
Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, ‘Liz, 1964,’ an offset lithograph in colors by Andy Warhol, sold for $42,500 inclusive of premium. The 22-inch-square print was signed and dated in black ballpoint pen. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

NEW YORK – When art book publisher Harry N. Abrams died in 1979 the Abrams’ family collection was considered one of the most impressive private collections of 20th century art ever assembled. Phillips de Pury & Co. sold more than 300 original modern and contemporary works, prints and editions belonging to the Estate of Mrs. Harry N. Abrams for just over $6 million on Wednesday.

LiveAuctioneers, which provided Internet live bidding, facilitated the sale of 51 lots totaling $338,830.

Nearly 7,500 people viewed the LiveAuctioneers catalog, which resulted in 66,664 page views. There were 465 participants in the live bidding console. LiveAuctioneers accounted for 406 absentee bids placed and 5,886 live Internet bids, 83 of which were underbids. The sell-through rate by number of lots was 15.74 percent.

The top lot selling online was Jim Dine’s 1963 Four Palettes, a 48-inch-wide watercolor and tissue paper collage on paper. It brought $50,000 inclusive of the buyer’s premium.

Andy Warhol’s offset lithograph in colors of Liz, 1964, sold on the Internet for $42,500 inclusive of premium. The brightly colored portrait of film star Elizabeth Taylor, 22 inches by 22 inches, was from the edition of approximately 300 signed and dated copies. The print was published by Leo Castelli Gallery, New York.

Because Abrams became acquainted with many of the artists he published, some of the pieces were personally inscribed “To Harry and Nina” and acquired directly from the artists.

One such lot was a collotype of Norman Rockwell’s Dinner along with two color photographs of Norman and Molly Rockwell at their home. The collotype was signed and inscribed, “My dear friend, Harry Abrams. Molly and I and our whole family send you our gratitude and very best wishes. Cordially, Norman Rockwell.” The photographs were both inscribed, “Very best wishes to Harry and Nina, Sincerely Molly and Norman Rockwell” in ink. The lot, which was estimated to sell for $100-$200, sold online for a remarkable $25,000 inclusive of premium.

Ukrainian avant-garde artist David Burliuk’s Song of Harvest was the top lot of the day, selling for $422,500. He painted half of the top ten most profitable paintings at the sale. Robert Indiana’s red, black, blue and yellow Love canvas from 1966 sold for $215,000.

Founded in 1949, Harry N. Abrams Inc. was the first company in the United States to specialize in the creation and distribution of art and illustrated books. Harry Abrams retired in 1977. The company is now ABRAMS, a subsidiary of La Martinière Groupe.

Abrams began his career in advertising in 1928. He worked for Book of the Month Club beginning in 1936 and launched a greeting card company in 1946, which he eventually sold to Hallmark.

While Abrams and his wife, Nina, gained entrée into the New York art world of the 1940s and 1950s, she also enjoyed holding season tickets to the ballet and opera. She once commented, “I must admit I found his (Warhol’s) parties slightly dull.”

Mrs. Abrams died in 2008 at the age of 97.

Click here to view the fully illustrated catalog for this sale, complete with prices realized.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

‘John Wesley Paradise Lamp 1967’ is inscribed on the shade interior. Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, the 21-inch-tall lamp sold to an Internet bidder for $45,000 inclusive of the buyer’s premium. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.
‘John Wesley Paradise Lamp 1967’ is inscribed on the shade interior. Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, the 21-inch-tall lamp sold to an Internet bidder for $45,000 inclusive of the buyer’s premium. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

Titled and dated ‘four palettes 1963 Oct.’ on the lower left and signed and titled again ‘Jim Dine New York City four palettes’ lower right, the watercolor and tissue paper collage hit $50,000 inclusive of premium. It carried a $15,000-$20,000 estimate. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.
Titled and dated ‘four palettes 1963 Oct.’ on the lower left and signed and titled again ‘Jim Dine New York City four palettes’ lower right, the watercolor and tissue paper collage hit $50,000 inclusive of premium. It carried a $15,000-$20,000 estimate. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

A signed and inscribed collotype of Norman Rockwell’s ‘Dinner’ and two signed and inscribed color photographs of the artist and his wife sold for $25,000 to an Internet bidder. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.
A signed and inscribed collotype of Norman Rockwell’s ‘Dinner’ and two signed and inscribed color photographs of the artist and his wife sold for $25,000 to an Internet bidder. Image courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

Light-filled building opens at NC Museum of Art

North Carolina Museum of Art, 2005 photo by Justin Doub.
North Carolina Museum of Art, 2005 photo by Justin Doub.
North Carolina Museum of Art, 2005 photo by Justin Doub.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – The North Carolina Museum of Art’s new building marries light and white in a way that designers say shows off the works to their best advantage, leaving nothing to color visitors’ view of the art.

The 127,000-square-foot expansion opens to the public April 24, but reporters got to see the approximately 750 works in their new home on Tuesday. The lightness and airiness of the museum are meant to emphasize the art, yet are as important to the building as the works themselves.

“We wanted to push it to the limit,” Dan Gottlieb, the museum’s director of planning and design, said of the lack of color.

If the design had included color on any wall, “we would have been compromising the singular notion of having this as an experience of light and art. … This building is about making a pure experience so that whether it’s a Renaissance painting or contemporary art, you’re bringing natural light and the absence of color so that all that’s left is the art work.”

Even the museum’s curator of European art – who was accustomed to seeing Old Masters hanging on deeply colored walls and was skeptical of the all-white concept – said he accepted the whiteness.

“I tell you, when you see them here, when you see the daylight coming in from the side, these pictures sing, and they look so different,” curator David Steel said. “It’s a different way of experiencing this collection. Even for me as a curator, who has lived with these pictures for more than 25 years, it’s a revelation to see them in this kind of light.”

New York-based architects Thomas Phifer and Partners designed the building, using light in a way that designers say has never been seen in a museum. The design includes protective elements such as ultraviolet filters, louvers and three layers of curtains. Sensors tell shades to drop when the sunlight is too bright.

The open floor plan – a sculpture hall serves as an axis from which 40 exhibition galleries feed – allow the museum to display casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin in the middle of the floor, rather than up against the wall. The museum has more than 30 Rodin casts, some inside the building and others in a courtyard off the Rodin gallery and accessible from that gallery.

The design has allowed the museum to exhibit new large works – such as an 18-foot-by-25-foot contemporary piece by El Anatsui of Nigeria, made of bottle caps and pieces of liquor packaging – and small, older works, such as Triumph of Chastity,” from the workshop of Apollonia di Giovanni. It had never been exhibited at the old building with both sides visible because it hung on a wall.

The building was funded with $67 million in public money, continuing a tradition that began 1947, when the Legislature appropriated $1 million to purchase art.

“It’s a long tradition,” museum director Larry Wheeler said of the government support for the arts. “It’s pretty peculiar, considering how poor North Carolina was in the ’40s, pretty much an agrarian state, small towns. For them to believe that a mark of progression and civilization and good education was having the arts made available … It’s remarkable, really.”

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-04-06-10 1710EDT

Woman sentenced to seven years for auctioning fake art

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A woman who sold $20 million in phony artwork she claimed was by Picasso, Dali and Chagall to thousands of people through a semiweekly televised auction has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Kristine Eubanks, 52, of La Canada Flintridge pleaded guilty in 2007 to conspiracy and tax evasion and was sentenced Monday.

She and her husband, Gerald Sullivan, conducted an art auction show twice a week on DirecTV and The Dish Network from 2002 to 2006.

The couple ran Fine Art Treasures Gallery, which sold fake and forged lithographs, prints and paintings purportedly found at estate liquidations around the world to more than 10,000 victims, U.S. attorney’s spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

They bought the paintings from suppliers and sometimes signed the forgeries and prints with the artists’ names, prosecutors said.

Eubanks forged “certificates of authenticity” for some pieces and provided fake appraisals for jewelry pieces, Mrozek said.

Also, the couple drove up sale prices by having fake bids announced on-air, he said.

U.S. District Judge Gary Feess said their scheme was “audacious in its scope” and blatantly illegal.

Sullivan will be sentenced in May after earlier pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. He faces a maximum sentence of six years in federal prison.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-04-06-10 1951EDT

 

Portrait of Michael Jackson up for auction online

LOS ANGELES (AP) – An over-the-top portrait of Michael Jackson is going up for auction online.

The eBay.com auction of the 50-by-40-inch (127-by-102-centimeter) painting by Australian artist Brett-Livingstone Strong launched on Wednesday evening, the portrait’s owner said.

The colorful portrait, titled The Book, and reportedly the only painting for which the King of Pop ever posed, depicts Jackson in a red velvet jacket, clutching a journal at his Neverland Ranch.

“I’ve had it an awful long time,” said toy inventor Marty Abrams, who acquired the painting with partner John Gentilly in 1992 from Japanese businessman Hiromichi Saeki as payment on a debt owed to them. “With the positive response to his music and the movie about him after his death, we thought it was a good time to sell it and for the world to see it.”

For over 17 years, Abrams kept the painting in storage in a New Jersey warehouse. It was briefly on display at the Dancy-Power Automotive showroom in Harlem after Jackson’s death in June. The fantastical painting, which also features the fairy character Tinkerbell hovering in the background, is hanging inside Abrams’ home in Kings Point, New York.

The painting was originally sold to Saeki for $2.1 million in 1990. Abrams said the painting was appraised by Belgo Fine Art Appraisal and Restoration at $5.3 million in 2000, but he believes it is worth more now. Abrams hopes it will fetch over $3 million in the auction, which is scheduled to end April 17. The minimum starting bid will be $2.75 million.

“Frankly, I thought instead of trying to call out to other people, let’s bring the people that are really interested to us,” said auction organizer Marc Samson. “The idea of doing it on eBay in an auction format seemed to make the most sense. When Marty’s son, Ken, came to me with the painting, it hit me across the face. This is the way to get it out there.”

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On the Net:

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AP-CS-04-07-10 0656EDT