Jean-Michel Basquiat: “Dustheads”, 1982
Estimate: $25-35 million
Basquiat, Pollock, Lichtenstein to lead Christie’s auction On May 15 2013, Christie’s Evening Auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art will include masterpieces by Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat.]]>
April 23, 2013, source: Christie’s
“Woman with Flowered Hat” -a Pop masterpiece by Roy Lichtenstein– is expected to realize in excess of $30 million. Lichtenstein draws on Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar from 1949-50, but invents her anew in his revolutionary pop language. Coinciding with Lichtenstein’s major retrospective at the Tate Modern in London, the Evening Sale will offer four major works that span the artist’s career, with classic pictures from the early 1960s and mature renderings from the 1980s and 1990s.
Executed in 1982 at the height of the artist’s creative development and fame, Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s “Dustheads” can be seen in both its scale and ambition as its epitome of his signature style. Painted with a combustive palette, “Dustheads” becomes an intuitive, gestural whirlwind made during the pinnacle of the artist’s practice. With an estimate of $25-35 million, “Dustheads” will likely break Basquiat’s record of $26.4 million, which was just achieved last November in New York.
“Number 19, 1948” is one of the great drip paintings that Jackson Pollock (estimate: $25-35 million) made in a legendary three-year burst of creativity between 1947 and 1950 that completely revolutionized American painting and reshaped the history of twentieth century art. Displaying a fascinatingly intricate, dense, dynamic and animated abstract surface – one that reveals the artist’s complete mastery of his radical new medium of pouring and dripping enamel paint onto an unprimed ground – the painting is one of the most engaging and successfully resolved of all these much-celebrated works.
Another important work in the auction will be “Study for portrait” by Francis Bacon. Executed in 1981, the work carries a pre-sale estimate of $18-25 million. “PH-1” (1953) is a strong work by Clyfford Still expected to sell for $15-20 million, the same pre-sale estimation applied to Mark Rothko‘s “Untitled (Black on maroon)” (1958). Comparable in strenght, Willem de Koonig‘s “Woman” (1953) could sell for $12-16 million. “Abstraktes Bild, Dunkel” is a powerful abstraction by Gerhard Richter ($14-18 million). Franz Kline‘s “Accent aigu” (1957) carries an estimate of $9-12 million, and Philip Guston‘s “To Fellini” (1958) is valued at $8-12 million
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Basquiat’s ‘Untitled’ could break record at Christie’s (news, October 2011)
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