One of only 1,000 printed, this 1970 ‘Picasso Plakate’ book contains 297 posters reproduced from 1939 to 1970. Published by Bake-Paris in 1970, the hardcover volume is estimated at $1,525-$1,825. Image courtesy of Universal Live.
NORTHBROOK, Ill. – Universal Live will continue selling museum exhibit posters and prints from the collection of a New York art gallery on Sept. 1 beginning at 2 p.m. Central. LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding during the 419-lot online auction.
The collection has been consigned by Bernard Rougerie, manager and curator of Rare Posters, Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Some of the posters originated with Leo Castelli, who’s considered to be the father of pop art,” said Martin Shape, auctioneer and co-owner of Universal Live.
Castelli’s famous New York art gallery showcased contemporary art by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha.
“When Castelli’s gallery would have an exhibition he would have posters made to display locally and folded in four to mail to customers,” said Rougerie.
The auction will also feature out of print posters by photographers Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber and Guenther Blum. Ritts, whose fashion photography credits include Calvin Klein, Chanel, Donna Karan and the Gap, died in 2002 at the age of 50.
“His images of the late ’80s and early ’90s were mass-marketed and expensive. They still have a strong following,” said Shape. The dozen lots of Ritts’ offset lithograph posters have estimates of $150-$250.
Another important segment of the auction are more than 60 lots of art books, catalogues raisonnés of various contemporary artists.
“They’re great historical reference books reflecting the art scene of the time,” said Shape.
The auction will also include six special edition posters of Christo’s proposed Over the River Project for the Arkansas River in Colorado. Printed on heavy quilted paper, the posters depict sheets of fabric suspended above the river and include a map of the area. The posters carry estimates of $75-$225.
For details on any lots in the auction call Universal Live at 847-412-1802.
Published by Maeght in 1992, ‘Miro Lithographs VI (1976-1981)’ is in mint condition in the original plastic wrapper. The catalogue raisonné is 200 pages with 180 color illustrations. Image courtesy of Universal Live. Keith Haring created this exhibition poster for Sweden’s Malmo Konstall, one of Europe’s largest exhibition halls for contemporary art. The offset lithograph is from an edition of 1,000. It is in mint condition and has a $75-$125 estimate. Image courtesy of Universal Live. Jasper Johns’ ‘Target’ lithographed poster was created in 2007 for the Gagosian Gallery’s ‘Pop Art Is’ series. Printed on heavy stock, the poster has a $150-$225 estimate. Image courtesy of Universal Live. ‘Double Elvis’ served as the exhibition poster for a Andy Warhol showing. The lithograph is based a publicity still from the 1960 film ‘Flaming Star’ starring Elvis Presley. It has a $150-$225 estimate. Image courtesy of Universal Live. ‘Malaika, Head to Knees’ is an out-of-print poster by the late fashion photographer Herb Ritts. The offset lighograph poster has a $150-$225 estimate. Image courtesy of Universal Live.
Childe Hassam, Royal Palms, Cuba, oil on canvas, 1895, 25 by 31 inches, est. $300,000-$600,000. John W. Coker Auctions image.
NEW MARKET, Tenn. – An extraordinary and virtually unknown collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterworks amassed by the former president and later chairman of the board of Eastman Kodak will be auctioned with no reserve on Sept. 15, 2010, at the John W. Coker gallery in New Market, Tennessee. Internet live bidding will be provided by LiveAuctioneers.com.
The Dr. Albert K. Chapman (1890-1984) collection, which has been privately held in three subsequent generations of the Chapman family since the 1930s, includes artworks by Childe Hassam, Alfred Sisley, Pierre Bonnard and 30 other distinguished artists from the period 1870 to 1950. None of the paintings were exhibited at any time while in the hands of either Dr. Chapman or his heirs. Additionally, the collection is graced by a superb pastel work by Mary Cassatt that has been exhibited only once since joining the Chapman collection – at the Smithsonian Institution in 1970.
The collection’s 80+ artworks, many accompanied by bills of sale or other written provenance, are described by auctioneer John Coker as “lost and forgotten treasures that are sure to excite the fine art community.”
“Very few people even knew Dr. Chapman’s collection existed,” Coker said. “Most of his acquisitions were made prior to the 1960s, and once he purchased a painting, he did not want it out of his possession. With the exception of the Cassatt, the paintings were never exhibited or displayed outside the family home after he acquired them.”
According to Dr. Chapman’s grandson and granddaughter, who are the collection’s consignors, not even the few close friends their grandparents, and later their parents, chose to entertain in their homes had any idea the artworks were originals. “This is a family of intensely private, highly refined people who would not have made a point of mentioning the art was original, as this might have been misconstrued as an ostentatious show of wealth,” Coker said.
Dr. Chapman’s greatest prize was Childe Hassam’s (American, 1859-1935) oil on canvas titled Royal Palms, Cuba. Its bill of sale indicates that the 25- by 30-inch artwork depicting towering palm trees against a cloud-filled turquoise sky was purchased from the M. Knoedler & Co. gallery in 1948 for $1,500. The 1895 painting was previously owned by Horatio S. Rubens, a Cuban-American tobacco industry lawyer who boasted that he had bankrolled the sinking of the U.S.S. Battleship Maine during the Spanish-American War. “We believe Rubens was quite likely the original owner,” Coker said.
In 1980, art historian Kathleen Burnside contacted Dr. Chapman in hopes of photographing Royal Palms, Cuba for a Childe Hassam catalogue raisonne. “Until that point, no one was really sure the artwork existed,” Coker said. “Unfortunately, both Dr. and Mrs. Chapman were in failing health at the time of Burnside’s request, and the painting was not photographed, but it is scheduled to be included in an upcoming catalogue raisonne.”
Mary Cassatt’s (American, 1844-1926) Simone Talking to Her Mother, a 25- by 30-inch pastel on paper, was another of Dr. Chapman’s purchases from the M. Knoedler gallery. He acquired it in 1950 for around $5,000. Making a rare exception, Dr. Chapman loaned the artwork to the Smithsonian in 1970 for Adelyn Dohme Breeskin’s exhibit and accompanying catalogue raisonne. Ten years later, Dr. Chapman received a letter from a man hoping to buy the painting from him. Paperwork discovered in the Chapman archive documents the doctor’s sincere reply: “Thank you for your enquiry of December 5, but I have no intention of selling the Mary Cassatt. Living with it gives us entirely too much pleasure to have it depart.”
The Cassatt painting’s colors are “extremely crisp,” Coker said, a reflection of the care it had received over three generations. “It was displayed in Dr. Chapman’s bedroom, then in his daughter’s bedroom, where there was no direct exposure to sunlight.”
The trail of provenance accompanying Simone Talking to Her Mother is an illustrious one. Its previous owners included ambassadors and dignitaries from Spain, Italy and other nations. The painting is estimated at $400,000-$700,000.
The spectrum of colors in the Chapman collection seems to parallel the world of prismatic color in which Dr. Chapman worked on a daily basis, said Coker. “He was a brilliant inventor who held a patent for some sort of prismatic effect used in photography,” Coker said. “When you look at his art selections as a whole, you’ll see the same array of colors as in a prism.”
Among the many artworks featuring a prismatic color palette is Pierre Bonnard’s (French, 1867-1947) Landscape St.-Tropez, a 1956 acquisition that depicts a lush view of mountains across a bay, with a bridge in the foreground that leads to a beachside village.
Another alluring work is Gustave Loiseau’s (French, 1865-1935) oil on canvas titled Roof Top View from Artist’s Studio. “This is one of my favorites from the collection,” said Coker. “The view through an open window overlooks the rooftops of the city, all in pastel shades, and it’s accented by a vividly colored red geranium plant on the window sill. When you look at this artwork, the range of hues is quite compelling.”Pont Aven by Emile Bernard (French, 1868-1941) was one of Dr. Chapman’s later acquisitions, purchased in 1961 from the M.R. Schweitzer Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York. The hilly village landscape with grazing fowl and a church steeple is accompanied by a two-page letter [written in 1961 in French, with translation to English] from the artist’s son, in which he confirms that his father painted the unsigned picture in 1889 in Brittany.
Paysage Ain, a 1917 painting by Suzanne Valadon (French, 1865-1838) – mother of Maurice Utrillo – was purchased from Sam Salz Inc. of Park Avenue, New York in 1953, for $5,750. The verdant, long-range view from a hillside perspective was previously in the collection of Edouard Herriot (1872-1957), three-time Prime Minister of France. The picture was exhibited twice in Paris – in 1924 and 1931. The Chapman archive included a letter from Sam Salz in which the art dealer wrote: “I have known of this painting for a long time, and it was always my intention to buy it for myself.”
Coker said he made it his mission to locate all existing written provenance held in Dr. Chapman’s records so the paperwork could be permanently reunited with the artworks. “Luckily, Dr. Chapman kept his receipts, and eventually I was able to find all of the backups by digging through his files,” said Coker. “I felt it was very important to document the history of these paintings so it wouldn’t be lost.”
The Chapman collection is far from one-dimensional, Coker said. “Dr. Chapman grew up in Ohio, and of course he lived in Rochester, New York, as president and later chairman of Eastman Kodak, but he appreciated the work of a variety of regional artists.” Three noteworthy regional paintings in the collection are Anthony Thieme’s (American, Rockport school, 1888-1934) Entrance to Magnolia Gardens in Spring, Charleston, S.C.; A.T. Hibbard’s (American, Rockport school, 1886-1972) Late Sun; and Harry Leslie Hoffman’s (American, 1871-1964) oil on board titled The Cotton Pickery – Savannah.
Additional highlights of the collection include Camille Pissaro’s (French, 1830-1903) graphite-on-paper work titled Young Lady Reading in Bed and Alfred Sisley’s (English, 1839-1899) Conte crayon-on-paper sketch for the painting La Rade de Cardiff.
Coker said the condition of the artworks in the Chapman collection across the board is “as original as anyone could ever wish for. The paintings are untouched, with no visible signs or cleaning or repairs.”
“This magnificent collection most certainly would have been welcomed by any of the major auction houses in New York, London or Paris, so it is a tremendous honor for us to have been chosen to sell the artworks for Dr. Chapman’s heirs,” Coker said.
The no-reserve auction of the Dr. Albert K. Chapman Fine Art Collection will be held on Sept. 15, 2010 commencing at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. All forms of bidding will be available, including live via the Internet through LiveAuctioneers.com.
For additional information on any painting in the sale, call John Coker at 865-475-5163 or e-mail john@antiquesonline.com.
Mary Cassatt, Simone Talking to Her Mother, pastel on paper, 25½ by 30½ inches, est. $200,000-$400,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. Emile Bernard, Pont Aven, oil on canvas, 24 by 18 inches, est. $30,000-$50,000, John W. Coker Auctions image. Pierre Bonnard, Landscape St.-Tropez, oil on canvas, 1925, 20½ by 12½ inches, est. $40,000-$70,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. Anthony Thieme, Entrance to Magnolia Gardens in Spring, Charleston, S.C., oil on canvas, 36 by 30 inches, est. $30,000-$40,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. A.T. Hibbard, Late Sun, oil on canvas, 36 by 28 inches, est. $15,000-$25,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. Suzanne Valadon, Paysage Ain, oil on canvas, 1917, 32 by 26 inches, est. $20,000-$30,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. Gustave Loiseau, Roof Top View from Artist’s Studio, oil on canvas, 25 by 21 inches, est. $40,000-$60,000. John W. Coker Auctions image. Ker-Xavier Roussel, Nymphette Satyr, oil on canvas, 12 x 9 7/8 inches, est. $40,000-$70,000. John W. Coker Auctions image.
This lunar rock from the Apollo 17 mission, known as Sample 70017 or the "Goodwill Rock," was cut up into hundreds of pieces and distributed to all 50 states and more than 130 nations. Colorado’s tiny piece of the rock ended up on a plaque hanging on the wall of the state’s ex-Governor. It is now moving to the Colorado School of Mines. NASA Photo.
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) – Colorado’s once missing moon rock is about to go on public display.
Gov. Bill Ritter and Colorado School of Mines president Bill Scoggins will unveil the rock Wednesday at the school in Golden, its new home.
The Nixon administration gave former Colorado Gov. John Vanderhoof the rock in 1974. It was a piece of moon rubble from the Apollo 17 mission and all 50 states and more than 130 foreign countries received samples.
Many have turned up missing and some student researchers have been trying to track them down. In June, Vanderhoof was questioned by a reporter and said he had the missing rock.
Vanderhoof said he didn’t think anyone else was interested and offered to give the rock to a museum.
It will be on display starting Monday.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago’s Jackson Park. Photo by urbanrules, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
CHICAGO (AP) – More than 1,500 people have applied to spend a month at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
The winner of the promotion will live at the museum – roaming freely and sleeping in exhibits like the U-505 submarine or the coal mine.
Museum officials say they’ve gotten applications from all 50 states and from as far away as Antarctica and Australia. The applicants range from 18 to 80 years old.
The museum plans to pick the semi-finalists this week. The list will eventually be narrowed down to three, and the public will vote in September.
The winner gets to live at the museum from Oct. 20 to Nov. 18, as well as $10,000.
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Online: http://msichicago.org/
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Information from: Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/index
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Turner Building at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. Arrowmont image.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is staying in Gatlinburg, Tenn., rather than moving to Greeneville.
The school is currently located on the Parkway, Gatlinburg’s main street, on land that it leases for $1 a year from the Pi Beta Phi sorority for women.
The sorority said earlier that it was interested in selling the location to developers.
Earlier this year, the school’s governing board ruled out a move to the Knoxville area.
The school sponsors workshops, exhibitions and other programs, and has received national recognition for its work. It operates a 14-acre residential campus for arts and crafts students who attend one- and two-week workshops.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE
Wood Studio at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. Arrowmont image. Red Barn at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. Arrowmont image.
1943 photo of Gen. George S. Patton, left, discussing military strategy with Lt. Col. Lyle Bernard, commanding officer of the 30th Infantry Regiment, at Brolo, Sicily. National Archives & Records Administration Photo.
SAN MARINO, Calif. (AP) – During the final days of World War II, as American soldiers were returning from Germany with swastika-inscribed helmets, flags and other Nazi memorabilia, Gen. George Patton was packing up his own set of souvenirs.
The legendary field commander took four pages of documents signed by Adolf Hitler that laid the legal framework for killing 6 million Jews – the so-called Nuremberg Laws.
On Wednesday, The Huntington Library, a sprawling complex of libraries, museums and botanical gardens in this leafy Los Angeles suburb, handed over the documents to the government-run National Archives, thus concluding a 65-year-old odyssey.
The papers, which among other things rescinded the citizenship of German Jews and forbid them to marry non-Jews, are the only original pieces of Nuremberg trial evidence missing from the collection, said National Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper.
Holocaust scholars have described them as priceless, saying they provide an outline of the beginnings of a movement that led to the most atrocious act of genocide in history.
It hasn’t been lost on officials at The Huntington that Patton, a notorious war trophy collector, carried the papers out of Germany illegally.
“We were aware of the fact that General Patton, who had received the documents from his staff as a gift and deposited them at The Huntington, had not paid attention in his souvenir hunting to the orders of his commander in chief,” library President Steve S. Koblik said.
The papers should have gone to the U.S. government, which was collecting evidence to use in the Nazi war crimes trials that took place in Nuremberg shortly after the war. Prosecutors had to use photocopies instead.
“Had General Patton not taken these documents, they would have been part of the collection the government was putting together in order to prepare for the Nuremberg trials,” Koblik said.
Patton, instead, deposited the papers at The Huntington in 1945. The general grew up next door to the library and his father once worked for its namesake, railroad baron Henry Huntington.
The laws, which also forbade Jews from having sex with non-Jews, flying the German flag or hiring non-Jewish women to work in their homes, remained quietly filed away in a bombproof vault until 1999 when Huntington officials announced they had them.
After lending them for several years to Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center – whose mission is to promote Jewish culture and heritage – The Huntington announced this week it was handing them over.
The time had come to take them off display, Koblik said, adding the papers’ fragility doesn’t allow they be exposed to light indefinitely.
“We’ve never made them an official part of the Huntington collection,” Koblik told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He said the nonprofit institution, known for such treasures as its priceless Gutenberg Bible and early editions of the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer, has very little material on 20th century Germany.
Although the laws didn’t directly call for the execution of Jews, they laid the groundwork for that, several scholars said, by marginalizing a group of people, turning them into second-class citizens.
“It’s important to our understanding of genocide that genocide is always a process,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation Institute, which documents evidence of the Holocaust.
“That was not an order to murder the Jews, it was an order to exclude them from participation in society,” Smith said of the Nuremberg Laws. “Once you start excluding a group for whatever reason you are on the path to the ultimate exclusion.”
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Al-Bagawat cemetery at Kharga Oasis, one of the oldest Christian cemeteries in the world. Photo by Kabaeh49 at de.wikipedia, Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s antiquities authority announced on Wednesday the discovery of an ancient trading settlement in one of its desert oases dating back more than 3,500 years, a millennium older than previous discoveries in the area.
The Yale University mission discovered the settlement while excavating in Kharga Oasis, more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) south of Cairo in the Western Desert.
The site is on what was once a bustling trade route between the ancient Egyptian civilization in the Nile valley and the rest of Africa, said the statement from the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Mission head John Darnell said the site had a massive baking operation suggesting it may have been a food production center.
The site reached its peak during the latter years of the Middle Kingdom (1786-1665 B.C.).
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-CS-08-25-10 0745EDT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Kharga Oasis in the Libyan desert is the largest oasis known to exist in western Egypt. It is located about 200 kilometres west of the Nile Valley. Photo by Hanne Siegmeier, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
