Ganz sale dominates fall auctions

Art in America, Jan, 1998 by David Ebony

This fall's sales were strong at both Sotheby's and Christie's, but the season was most memorable for the runaway success of the latter's auction of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection of modern and contemporary works. The Ganz sale, which opened the season on Monday evening, Nov. 10, included a highly unusual concentration of major works by Picasso, as well as first-rate pieces by Rauschenberg, Johns, Frank Stella and Eva Hesse. It garnered $206.5 million, the largest take for a single-session art auction in history. The figure helped Christie's reach a whopping $329.1-million total for the season, compared with its $265.3-million spring take and $139.9 million earned a year ago. Sotheby's total for the season was $194.2 million, well above the spring's $122.4 million and last year's $128.1 million. (Figures include the auction house commission of 15 percent on the first $50,000 and 10 percent on the remainder.)

The Ganz sale: Christie's extensive promotion of the Ganz collection paid off handsomely. Thanks to expanded viewing hours at the auction house's Park Avenue headquarters just before the sale and, earlier, at its brownstone building on East 59th Street, some 25,000 people were able to see the collection. The company also published two lavish volumes related to the sale: a hard-bound catalogue and a coffee table book memorializing the collection. Edited by Michael FitzGerald, the latter includes essays by John Richardson, Leo Steinberg, David Sylvester and Maya Picasso, among others.

The evening total soared far above the house's $125-million presale high estimate, and all but one of the 58 lots offered sold after heated bidding. The evening's top lot was The Dream (1932), Picasso's portrait of Marie-Therese Walter, which the Ganzes purchased in 1941 for $7,000. The work's unpublished estimate was $30 million, but after fierce bidding it was snagged by an unidentified phone bidder for $48.4 million, the artist's second highest auction price and the year's most expensive art work bought at auction. Four 1955 Picasso canvases based on Delacroix's Women of Algiers (1834) were also among the evening's best sellers. The last in the series, Version O, sold for $31.9 million, far above its $12-million high estimate. Another big price was paid for Picasso's large Woman Seated in an Armchair (Eva), 1913. Surpassing its $20-million high estimate, it sold for $24.8 million, the largest sum ever paid at auction for a Cubist picture.

Picasso was not the only artist to command hefty prices at the sale. Jasper Johns's Corpse and Mirror (1974), a large diptych featuring black-and-white cross-hatching overpainted in one area with slashing brushstrokes of pink, brought $8.4 million (est. $3.5-4.5 million), while his 1959 White Numbers went for $7.9 million, above its $6-million high estimate. The auction record for Eva Hesse was shattered when her 1966 wall sculpture Unfinished, Untitled or Not Yet, sold for $2.2 million, far surpassing its $700,000 high estimate. The San Francisco Museum of Modem Art purchased the work with funds made available by longtime museum trustee Phyllis Wattis. Another Hesse sculpture, Vinculum I (1969), broke the million dollar mark, selling for $1.2 million (est. $400,000-$600,000).

Rauschenberg produced the evening's only unsold lot, a combine painting titled Rigger (1961), which passed after a high bid of $2.4 million (est. $3-4 million). But other works by the artist sold well, including his combine Red Interior (1954-55), which garnered $6.4 million (est. $3-4 million).

Impressionist and modern: The following night, Christie's regular Impressionist and modern sale was like the calm after a storm. The auction total, $70 million, was below the evening's $79.1 million low estimate, and 19 of the 70 works offered could not find buyers. Top lot was Monet's 1903 Waterloo Bridge in the Mist, which brought $8.3 million, above the $6 million high estimate. Other highlights included Brancusi's bronze Sleeping Muse II (mid-1920s), which sold for $6.6 million (est. $4-6 million), and Braque's Fauvist Landscape at L'Estaque (1906), which went for $3.5 million (est. $2-3 million). But throughout the sale, important lots by artists such as Pissarro, Matisse and Magritte were bought in.

On Wednesday evening, Nov. 12, Sotheby's single-owner sale of the Evelyn Sharp collection of Impressionist and modern art flopped. All but five of the 39 works offered sold, but many went for well under the low estimates. A relatively paltry $41.2 million was taken in compared with the $59-78 million presale estimate. Sotheby's president Diana D. Brooks candidly admitted at the post-sale press conference that the auction house lost money on the sale because it had not reached its guarantee -- the minimum amount promised to the Sharp heirs. Desperate to secure the collection after having lost its bid on the Ganz holdings, the auction house overestimated the value of the Sharp works. Still, the evening was not without a few highlights. Top lot was Picasso's Surrealist canvas Nudes (1934), which was knocked down for $6 million, just at its low estimate. Matisse's Still Life with Three Vases (1933) sold for $3.3 million, near its $3.5 million low estimate; and a new auction record was established for Archipenko, whose bronze Woman Combing Her Hair (1915) brought $882,500 (est. $700,000-900,000).