"Girl in Mirror." (Photo courtesy of Christie's)

Back in January, Gallerist reported that Jan Cowles filed a lawsuit against the Gagosian gallery seeking $14 million for various alleged misdeeds by Mr. Gagosian in the sale of a Roy Lichtenstein work from 1964 entitled Girl in Mirror. The resulting legal wrangling has shed light on private aspects of the operation of Gagosian, some of which are not flattering to the dealer. 

The suit alleges that Ms. Cowles's son, the art dealer Charles Cowles, never had the authority to sell the painting, and accused Larry Gagosian of misrepresenting the state of the painting when he sold it. As there are various editions of the painting, the complaint alleges that Mr. Gagosian used a condition report for a different edition of Girl in Mirror as proof that the Cowles version was damaged.

The New York Times reported today that in new papers filed Monday, lawyers for Mrs. Cowles revealed some e-mails from Mr. Gagosian that give details about the sale of the painting, like how Mr. Gagosian, in a $2 million sale, earned $1 million commission and the frank language that was used by his staff.

In 2008, Mr. Gagosian went with art dealer Charles Cowles to see the the Lichtenstein work at Mrs. Cowles's apartment when she wasn't there. Mr. Cowles was in financial distress and he and Mr. Gagosian talked about potentially selling the painting. Mr. Gagosian, saying he could get $3 million for the painting, took it on consignment, and said he would take a commission of $500,000 if it sold. At Sotheby’s, another version of the painting sold in 2007 for just over $4 million. Here's Randy Kennedy in The Times:

But by 2009, according to the e-mails, the gallery had offered the painting for considerably less to a collector, Thompson Dean, a managing partner of a private equity firm, telling Mr. Dean that he had an opportunity to get an incredible bargain. “Seller now in terrible straits and needs cash,” said a July e-mail to Mr. Dean from a Gagosian staff member. “Are you interested in making a cruel and offensive offer? Come on, want to try?”

Apparently Mr. Dean was interested in making such an offer and agreed to pay $2 million for the painting, cutting Mr. Gagosian a commission of $1 million, an unusually high rate for a sale on the secondary market.

"Girl in Mirror" (Photo courtesy of Christie's)

News might not have broken last week that the lawsuit between Larry Gagosian and collector Robert Wylde had been settled for $4.4 million if a second lawsuit had not emerged from it. This one was filed last week by lawyers for Jan Cowles, the 93-year-old mother of Charles Cowles who, according to that lawsuit, sold a painting to the dealer by Mark Tansey that was, in fact, partially owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (that painting is now fully owned by the museum). The new lawsuit seeks some $14 million from Mr. Gagosian for various alleged misdeeds in the sale of Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl in Mirror, a porcelain-enamel-on-steel work from 1964. It alleges that Mr. Cowles never had the authority to sell the painting, and accuses Mr. Gagosian of misrepresenting the state of the painting when he sold it. Multiple editions of the painting exist, and the complaint, in effect, accuses Mr. Gagosian of using a condition report for another edition of Girl in Mirror as proof that the Cowles version was damaged.

The complaint alleges that sometime between August and December of 2009, Mr. Gagosian sold Girl in Mirror for $2 million, well below the $3 million low price set by Mr. Cowles when he first consigned the painting to Mr. Gagosian in October 2008. Mr. Gagosian, the complaint says, attributed the lackluster price to the fact that the painting was damaged, a claim the complaint finds dubious.

The complaint says that, in the course of paying Mr. Cowles his portion of the Lichtenstein sale, Mr. Gagosian also increased his commission. The court documents have it that the original agreement was for Mr. Gagosian to sell the painting for over $3 million with a commission of $500,000. Instead, in the plaintiff's scenario, he sold it for $2 million and took a $1 million commission. This would mean that, while Mr. Cowles had expected to receive $2.5 million from the sale, he only received $1 million. The complaint implies that Mr. Cowles, a dealer and former Artforum publisher, took this deal because he was broke, quoting a 2009 New York Times article in which Mr. Cowles says, of the art market, "It's shocking how bad business has been." To add some perspective, another work from this Lichtenstein series sold at Christie's in the fall of 2010 for $4.9 million.

The complaint says that Mr. Gagosian’s intake notes on the Lichtenstein painting describe “no significant damage.” It also states that Mr. Gagosian hauled the painting to his booths at both Frieze in 2008 and Art Basel in 2009, which he might not have done with a less-than-perfect work.

A dealer familiar with Lichtenstein's work and market told The Observer that condition is crucial to the prices one might hope to attain for enamel works by Lichtenstein because "most" of them are not in good condition. Girl in Mirror is generally considered to exist in eight editions, though Clare Bell of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation said that inventory records for the Leo Castelli Gallery, where Lichtenstein showed in the 1960s, say that there may be 10 versions of the work, some of them original proofs. Ms. Bell also said that not all of the editions are numbered. One version of the painting hung in Gagosian's Madison Avenue gallery for the summer 2008 show "Roy Lichtenstein: Girls" and, according to the complaint, Gagosian employee John Good testified during the Tansey litigation that at one point in the period covered by the lawsuit the gallery was in possession of two Girl in Mirrors--one damaged, one in good condition.

The complaint describes a scenario in which Mr. Gagosian provided a fake condition assessment when subpoenaed by Ms. Cowles’s lawyers for evidence that the painting was in fact damaged. Mr. Gagosian apparently provided a one-page report from Amman+Estabrook Conservation Associates that detailed a Girl in Mirror with “numerous dark inclusions and small pits in the yellow field,” among other problems. According to the complaint, Ms. Cowles's lawyers then subpoenaed Amman+Estabrook, which provided a four-page version of that report. The last page of this version features an invoice that says “the work was examined in the owner's home: Agnes Gund, 765 Park Avenue,” which would suggest that Mr. Gagosian gave Ms. Cowles’s lawyers a condition assessment for a version of the painting not owned by Ms. Cowles, but instead owned by Ms. Gund, a highly esteemed contemporary art collector and philanthropist. Through a spokesman, Ms. Gund declined comment for this piece.

Shortly after the complaint was filed, lawyers for Gagosian responded with an affidavit that disputed the validity of this last page of the condition report, saying that it was accidentally generated by a computer error and erroneously submitted to the Cowles' lawyers.

The condition report submitted by Mr. Gagosian was for the correct Girl in Mirror, Amman+Estabrook partner Elizabeth Estabrook says in the affidavit, but the last page, the invoice that says Ms. Gund owned the evaluated Girl in Mirror, "was mistakenly produced from our company's back up file." The false invoice, Ms. Estabrook says, referenced evaluations that the company made for a different Lichtenstein work owned by Agnes Gund, titled Masterpiece (1962). The allegedly false invoice was said to have been created from two other invoices from those Amman+Estabrook evaluations. They are included in the affidavit, dated May 15, 2008 and July 25, 2008 and both addressed to Andy Avini at Gagosian. The affidavit also makes reference to repairs that reportedly took place before the Cowles Girl in Mirror was examined on Dec. 5, 2008.

Gagosian Gallery asked that the following statement from Amman+Estabrook's lawyer Robert Solomon be run in full.

"In a sworn statement, Elizabeth Estabrook, co-principal of Amman+Estabrook, has confirmed that the condition report she prepared in December 2008 detailed the condition of the Lichtenstein work previously owned by Jan Cowles entitled, Girl in Mirror, after it had been restored. To an art person, that process left the work visibly discolored. It is no wonder then, that to the untrained eye of a shipper, the work seemed to him to be in '[o]verall good condition.'

Invoices issued to Gagosian Gallery in 2008 also clearly show that the services Amman+Estabrook performed in relation to a work owned by Agnes Gund had nothing to do with any edition of Girl in Mirror, which was on enamel, and instead pertained to a Lichtenstein work on canvas entitled, Masterpiece, 1962, which Ms. Gund had loaned to Gagosian Gallery in 2008. As there was nothing nefarious or fraudulent about the condition report, only an honest mistake in Amman+Estabrook's document production, continued prosecution of the defamatory statements on which Jan Cowles bases her fraud claim exposes her and her counsel to monetary and other sanctions.

Bottom line: Jan Cowles has no viable claim against Gagosian Gallery or its owner, Larry Gagosian, whom she apparently has sued as deep pockets in hopes of recouping at least something on the massive debt her son (whom she has not sued) purportedly cannot repay her in full."

The allegedly false invoice, the one that references a Girl in Mirror owned by Ms. Gund, is dated Dec. 5, 2008, like the rest of the condition report, and addressed to Derek DeGreer at Gagosian. Exactly how this last invoice was created is unclear.

"I'm too old to explain how computers do things like that," Mr Solomon told The Observer over the phone. "It was one of those things where it just mashed together two separate reports and they don't know how it happened. I certainly don't know how it happened."

The Gagosian affidavit does not, in its description of the events, say where the Cowles Girl in Mirror was examined.

Parties on both sides were hesitant to speak on the record, among them Gagosian Gallery.

"As to the Tansey, we're pleased that the painting has been returned to the museum," said Mr. Baum, the lawyer for Ms. Cowles. "And as to the Lichtenstein, we think the complaint speaks for itself."

Correction 1/26 An earlier version of this story misstated Mr. Cowles' role at Artforum.
Update 10/4 Mr. Solomon has since revised his statement.

"I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in it!" (1961), by Roy Lichtenstein, sold for $43.2 million. (Courtesy Christie's)

A grueling 91-lot contemporary art sale at Christie's last night paid off, bringing in a total of $247.6 million with premium included, within its pre-sale estimate of $226.5 million-$312.3 million. At least 13 auction records were set over the course of the evening, including new high marks for Paul McCarthy ($4,562,500), Barbara Kruger ($902,500), Louise Bourgeois ($10,722,500), Charles Ray ($3,106,500) and Roy Lichtenstein ($43,202,500). It was a "marathon sale" in the words of department head Brett Gorvy, but a lively one for the most part.

The evening kicked off with works on offer from the collection of computer magnate and West Coast impresario Peter Norton. Every single lot sent to the block by Mr. Norton sold, and his collection alone ushered in nine new artist records, including one for Mr. McCarthy, set by his dealer Iwan Wirth, after an extended battle with the phone bank over the 1994 sculpture Tomato Head (Green). Applause erupted when it finally sold to Mr. Wirth. ("Yes," said auctioneer Christopher Burge wryly, to the applause at the end of the bidding. "Let's hear it for Paul McCarthy.")

Robert Mnuchin of L&M Arts more than doubled the standing record for Glenn Ligon (set by Jennifer Aniston a few months ago at David Zwirner's charity sale for Haiti, at Christie's). Mr. Gorvy said he was pleased with the types of bidders in this auction, adding that many were from American museums that had been bidding at the sale and said that Christie's doesn't "usually see American museums so active" as they were during the Norton bidding.

The excitement continued into the post-war auction proper, with an early Louise Bourgeois making a new auction record for the artist at $10.7 million. Jose Mugrabi was one of the under-bidders helping to push the late artist's record beyond its previous mark of $4.5 million. The price marked a new record for a post-war work by a female artist.

There was stiff competition for an early Robert Ryman (lot 31) from 1965, an especially sought-after period, with the painting on offer shooting past its high estimate of $600,000 to sell for $1.6 million at hammer, with adviser Neil Meltzer and dealer Christophe Van de Weghe among the bidders. ("I hate it when people make $50,000 bids for a work way past its high estimate," moaned a journalist at the back.)

Roy Lichtenstein received a new record thanks to his important 1961 work of a man peering through a peephole, which had been prominently featured in publicity materials for the auction, and which set the artist's auction record when it was last sold, in 1988. The work ultimately went to former Christie's specialist and now private dealer Guy Bennett for $43.2 million, with premium.

As the auction wore on people, the audience began to lose steam. Always the trendsetter, Leonardo DiCaprio left his seat alongside the Nahmad family around lot 58, and by lot 81 most of the room was empty.

Of the 91 total lots on offer, just nine went unsold (a sell-through rate by lot of 90 percent), and even more impressively, only 22 lots in the whole evening sold for below their low estimates.

"It shows that there is still a market for good material with reasonable estimates," said Mr. Van de Weghe, after the auction.

"It seems like it, doesn't it?" said dealer David Zwirner, responding to a similar theory. He'd snagged an early Richard Tuttle triptych for $422,500, as well as a Jeff Koons comprised of a pair of basketballs suspended in a tank for $4.2 million, after a bidding war against Mr. Mugrabi and dealer Per Skarstedt.

A fluorescent light tube piece by Dan Flavin, whose estate Mr. Zwirner represents, failed to sell, after a final bid of $850,000, despite a third party guarantee. But Mr. Zwirner didn't seem concerned. "It was a great piece but it wasn't Flavin's night," he shrugged. "What can you do?"