Sotheby's contemporary art sale reaches £94.7 million

Tag : Cast Iron Floor

With the third lot, the sale switched to non-figural art, which wasequally well received. A solid red canvas slashed five times byLucio Fontana in 1965 or '66 as part of his series titled "ConcertoSpaziale, Attese" climbed to £1.94 million, followed by YvesKlein's textured composition of sponges and pebbles pasted on apanel and painted a deep pink. "RE 3," as it was called, cost£3.18 million.
Thus far Sotheby's auction might have given the impression thatbuyers were rushing to buy "contemporary" paintings executeddecades ago by authors whose works could be held to have becomeblue chips consecrated by the passage of time.
Soon however, the sale proved that very recent art could alsotrigger vivid competition. Anish Kapoor's abstract sculpture carvedin 2003 out of a huge block of gray stone set a record for theartist at £1.94 million. Shortly after, "Valencia Wall," acomposition simulating a colored brick pattern painted by SeanScully as recently as 2006, went up to £657,250, a price thatagain exceeded the high estimate.
Next came a huge cast iron sculpture, "Angel of the North(Life-size Maquette)," conceived by Antony Gormley and executed in1997 as No.3 from an edition of five. The stylized figure, parthuman and part bird, rose to £2.28 million, more than 250percent above the high estimate.
Within minutes it was the turn of a figural and rather realistic,if crudely simplified, painting by Marlene Dumas, "The Visitor," toshoot far above the high estimate as it ended up at £2.28million. Five prostitutes are seen with their backs turned to theviewer, standing in dim light and looking expectantly at a brightlyilluminated doorway.
In such a context, one might have expected works displayingtraditional mastery to sell with some difficulty. There were veryfew such pictures. One, a remarkable still life painted by Nicolasde Staël in 1953 in a manner halfway between identifiablefiguration and abstractionism, swiftly sold for £769,250,exceeding the upper end of the estimate by more than half.
The only serious casualty in Sotheby's sale was a large painting byBacon. Done in 1974, "Figure Turning" depicts a man standingsideways, glass in hand and legs flexed. The failure of thepicture, which Sotheby's team hoped would be knocked down between£10 million and £15 million, is not too surprising. Theviolent Expressionism so typical of Bacon's characters is lost herebecause a disproportionately large space is occupied by the floorand the wall, both handled as geometric surfaces which clash withthe spirit of the picture.
An enormous painting done by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982 or '83 inhis naughty-schoolboy-at-the-blackboard manner later managed tosell for a hefty £5.08 million, proving that distorted, evencartoon-style figuration had certainly not lost its attraction.