It is a list of contemporary art that would have the staff of any auction house drooling with envy. The sale in question includes three Andy Warhols (combined guide price, £390,000), a Basquiat collage (£800,000), three new Damien Hirst paintings (£925,000) and works by Banksy, the celebrated anonymous graffiti artist.
But while the strength of the sale’s catalogue is notable, it is the venue — and the nature — of the event that is particularly unusual.
About 100 collectors, including retail and City millionaires, pop stars and Hollywood actors, have been invited to The Soho Auction in The Shadow Lounge, a vogueish gay nightclub in Soho, Central London.
Before they contemplate the works on offer, the potential bidders will be entertained by burlesque acts, strippers and other risqué entertainment of a type unlikely to be seen at Sotheby’s.
Conceived as an irreverent shot across the bows of the art establishment, The Soho Auction is the brainchild of the photographer-turned-gallerist Steve Lazarides. Mr Lazarides has flourished in the past few years thanks to his representation of artists including Banksy and Antony Micallef, the emerging talent from Brighton whose show in Los Angeles this summer sold out for $6.5 million (£3.2 million) in two hours.
“The idea is to inject a little anarchy back into the staid, serious business of buying art,” Mr Lazarides said. “It will be an evening of booze and burlesque, with the odd bit of extremely desirable art thrown in.”
Although the guest-list is undisclosed, collectors who have bought items through his gallery include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Robbie Williams, Jude Law, Dennis Hopper, Sir Paul Smith and Frank Cohen, the “Saatchi of the North”.
Mr Lazarides said: “There is a whole new set of buyers who have entered the market. Whether they’re rag trade, City boys or celebrities, they tend to be under 45. They’ve got money and they don’t particularly want to spend it on a Picasso — they want to buy something that relates to their lives, their time and their culture.”
Next Thursday’s event coincides with Frieze, the enormously successful contemporary art fair that each year lures the great and the good of the London art world to a huge marquee in Regent’s Park and acts as a catalyst for art sales worth tens of millions of pounds. Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions during Frieze are predicted to raise up to £145.5 million.
A Christie’s sale on October 14 includes a Jeff Koons estimated as being worth £2.5 million – as well as a 1992 Hirst, a Banksy estimated at £60,000 and three works by Jean-Michel Basquiat with a total estimated value of up to £6 million. It will not, however, be crammed full of wine, women of dubious virtue and debauchery.
The Hirsts to be sold at The Soho Auction include the first of a new series of paintings depicting the world’s most magnificent diamonds, following the success of his sculpture of a diamond skull which sold for £50 million. The Regent shows the 410-carat stone found in India in 1698 which, after its sale by Thomas Pitt, the adventurer to the Duke of Orléans, in 1717, was worn by such eminences as Napoleon, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVIII.
Hirst has also provided a new spot painting and spin painting, above, entitled Beautiful Lazarides Inc Auction Spinny Thingy Where Will It All End, Money For Old Rope, Buy This You B****r, Its Got Kline Blue Bloody Splashes In It for F***’s Sake, Love You Really Painting (with xxxxx).
In an e-mail to The Times, Mr Hirst wrote: “I’ve put three paintings in Steve’s auction: he asked me to do it because, he said, I’m ‘a big name’.
“I like helping him because he’s changing the way things are done.”
Also on sale will be Warhol’s Ladies and Gentlemen and Jonathan Yeo’s pornographic portrait of President Bush.
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