The Sotheby’s house exhibits in New York the most iconic works that it has sold throughout its history, made by art greats such as Basquiat, Dalí, Warhol or Kahlo that stand out for their execution, their history or the price at which they were sold.
The Spanish Mercedes Lámbarri, director of mid-range private sales at Sotheby’s and specialist in contemporary and post-war art, is one of the thinking minds of the exhibition, which can be seen inside the Breuer building, in Manhattan, until this Sunday.
The idea for ‘Icons: Back to Madison’ arose after Sotheby’s purchased this renowned brutalist building on the Upper East Side: “We don’t often have the opportunity to present works solely for the love of art. We told ourselves that it was time to celebrate our history and our collectors,” Lámbarri explains to EFE from the house’s New York headquarters.
In front of one of Andy Warhol’s famous Marilyns – one of the stars of the exhibition – Lámbarri highlights that the project has been in the works for a year and a half, and that of all the works requested, 25 buyers said ‘yes’.
Marilyn between shots and a crushed Banksy
Of those chosen, one of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn stands out, a painting in which the artist portrays the actress’s face on an orange background, with her eyes half-open and made up with blue shadows.
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The name, ‘Shot Orange Marilyn’, arose after a friend of Warhol, a performance artist and photographer, fired her revolver at the pieces that are part of this series, something that, far from devaluing them, added more cachet to them.
Although the painting was sold in 1998 for 17.3 million dollars, it is estimated that its current value already exceeds 300 million.
In an adjoining room, the public’s attention is drawn to an apparently broken piece in which a girl lets a balloon escape: it is ‘Girl without balloon’, by Banksy, who decided to shred the work at the time of its auction in 2018.
When the auctioneer dropped the hammer that day to sell the piece for $1.5 million, someone in the room – sent by the artist – pressed a button and the work began to disintegrate.
“Panic spread, the mechanism failed and it stopped here,” explains Lámbarri, pointing to the lower part of the piece, disintegrated, in contrast to the only thing that “survived”: the red heart-shaped balloon.
What makes a work an “icon”?
A work of art becomes an “icon” for many reasons: sometimes it is because of its rarity, other times because of the way it was created, because of the market value of the artist or because of things that have happened during the sale, according to Lámbarri.
On the walls of Sotheby’s, a painting by Frida Kahlo tells its own story: the artist portrays herself with a parrot on her shoulders and accompanied by a small black monkey, which is believed to have been given to her by her husband, also the painter Diego Rivera.
This work is the only one in the exhibition to come from a museum rather than a private collector, and was first sold in 1998 to Eduardo Constantini, founder of the MALBA Museum in Argentina.
Meanwhile, at the entrance, the American Jean-Michel Basquiat welcomes the public with ‘Untitled’, a gigantic painting from 1982 that sold in 2017 for $110.5 million, setting an auction record for the artist and for any American painting.
Like the rest of his works, the painting is loaded with symbolism and has “incredible power,” says Lámbarri, and has been loaned for this exhibition by investor Kenneth Griffin, current executive director of the Citadel fund.
In ‘Icons’ other names also stand out, such as Piet Mondrian, with his ‘Composition No.II’; Clyfford Still, with his ‘1949-A-No.1’; Salvador Dalí, with a small painting called ‘Gradiva’, or one of the popular Hermès ‘Birkin’, sold last July for 8.5 million dollars.
With information from EFE
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