CHARLES SAATCHI SELLS 7 Doigs to Sotheby’s
Charles Saatchi, the British advertising magnate, has gained an international reputation not simply for the London gallery that showcases his vast collection of contemporary art. He is just as well known for buying works by emerging young artists before they’re hot and then selling them.
Recently he parted with seven paintings by the Scottish-born artist Peter Doig that Sotheby’s bought together for $11 million, according to art dealers and auction house experts who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing future dealings with Mr. Saatchi. He had bought them either at auction or from collectors. (All seven are still on the Saatchi Gallery Web site, www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk.)
Murmurings that Mr. Saatchi was planning to sell the paintings have been circulating around New York galleries and auction houses for six months, and this is not the first such sale he has made recently. This year he sold Christie’s five paintings by Marlene Dumas for $6 million, which the auction house has either placed at auction or sold privately, and other works he owns have been cropping up at art fairs and auctions this season.
Perhaps the most famous of Mr. Saatchi’s purges took place in 2003, when he sold most of his works by Damien Hirst back to the artist and to the London dealer Jay Jopling. Mr. Hirst paid Mr. Saatchi about $15 million for 12 seminal pieces.
This week, through a spokeswoman, Mr. Saatchi declined to confirm or deny the sale of the Doigs. Sotheby’s, which is trying to sell them privately for $2 million each, also refused to comment.
Romantic yet realistic, Mr. Doig’s paintings tend to be photo-based images of scenes like a canoe floating in a glassy lake or a snow-covered mountain range and lush woodlands. Each is nostalgic yet modern. Among them are two paintings of canoes drawn from his childhood in Canada, one of Le Corbusier’s Modernist apartment block in France and another of a house in Canada.
Mr. Doig, 47, who moved from London to Trinidad in 2002, is not a prolific artist; he works at a painstakingly slow pace, producing fewer than 10 paintings a year, said Kadee Robbins, director of the Michael Werner Gallery in London, one of the galleries representing him. “These paintings appeal to a wide number of collectors,” Ms. Robbins said, “because people can relate to the subject matter.”
Ms. Robbins, who said she was aware of the sale to Sotheby’s, called the deal “a serious commitment, but highly justified.”
A SWEEP OF ACQUISITIONS
At the Modern
The Museum of Modern Art’s committee on painting and sculpture approved several acquisitions this week. The most important is Brice Marden’s “Propitious Garden of Plane Image, Third Version” (2000-6), a six-panel painting, 24 feet long, on view as part of the artist’s retrospective running through Jan. 15. It is composed of layered ribbons of colors that explore a spectrum of six colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet — in both its backgrounds and its patterns.
“We recently acquired a small group of three works ranging in date from 1964 to 1989,” said John Elderfield, the Modern’s chief curator of painting and sculpture. “So it made real sense to see if we could add this work. It looks back at his earlier paintings and is enormously ambitious.” Donald B. Marron, vice chairman of the museum’s board, and his wife, Catherine, have promised the work to the museum.
The other acquisitions were also gifts. Leon Black, another trustee, and Ronald S. Lauder, a trustee who is a former chairman of the Modern’s board and a co-founder of the Neue Galerie, split the purchase price of a sculpture by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Standing Girl, Caryatid” (1909-10), which the Modern and the Neue Galerie will own jointly. It is the first Kirchner sculpture to enter the Modern’s collection.
The Emily and Jerry Spiegel Family Foundation donated Duchamp’s “In Advance of a Broken Arm,” a so-called unassisted readymade, meaning a common object that the artist left unchanged; this one is a common snow shovel. Mrs. Spiegel is a member of the museum’s painting and sculpture committee.
Two other sculptures were given to the museum by Agnes Gund, a Modern president emerita, and her husband, Daniel Shapiro: “Embryo II” (1967), a three-foot-tall wax relief with organic forms by Lynda Benglis, and “Wall Pocket,” a 13-foot-tall sculpture fashioned from cedar beams by Ursula von Rydingsvard. It is the first work by Ms. von Rydingsvard to enter the Modern’s collection, Mr. Elderfield said.
Another gift came from Steven A. Cohen, a hedge fund manager, who donated an untitled 1981 painting by Martin Kippenberger from his series “Dear Painter, Paint for Me.”
HOPPER SHOW EXTENDED
The Whitney Museum of American Art is extending its Edward Hopper exhibition through Dec. 31. The show, originally part of the museum’s “Full House: Views of the Whitney’s Collection at 75,” which closed Sept. 3, includes important loans like the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Nighthawks” (1942) and the Museum of Modern Art’s “New York Movie” (1939). Each painting is shown alongside its preparatory drawings from the Whitney’s holdings.
“We’re taking advantage of a rare opportunity,” said Donna de Salvo, the Whitney’s chief curator.
NEW HAMMER CURATORS
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is making some high-profile curatorial changes. Russell Ferguson, its chief curator and deputy director for exhibitions, is becoming the chairman of the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles, replacing James Welling, who had been the acting chairman since July. Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum, promoted Garry Garrels, a senior curator at the Hammer, to chief curator and deputy director for exhibitions. Mr. Ferguson will remain an adjunct curator.
Ms. Philbin also hired Ali Subotnick as an adjunct curator. Ms. Subotnick had run the Wrong Gallery in Chelsea with the artist Maurizio Cattelan and the curator Massimiliano Gioni.
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