Despite some high-flying successes for Sotheby’s this year, like the sale of Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record-breaking $119.9 million, the house’s profits in the second quarter declined 33 percent compared with those realized during the same period last year. The result reflects a “challenging global economy,” according to the firm’s president and CEO, Bill Ruprecht. Read More
This morning, Sotheby’s New York sold an Apple Computer for $374,500—more than twice its high estimate of $180,000—in its Fine Books & Manuscripts sale. The computer, a 1976 Apple I, one of the first compact model computer that could be used by non-experts to type on a keyboard and operate basic programs, ushered in the era of personal computing. Read More
After suffering a loss in a California district court last month, artists suing auction houses for resale royalties they argue they are owed under state law won a minor legal skirmish on Wednesday. Oddly, their success was the result of having their motion denied by another district court judge.
Earlier this month, Jacqueline Nguyen, a California district court judge who now works at the appellate level, ruled against Chuck Close and other artists and estates who were suing Christie’s, Sotheby’s and eBay for not paying them the five percent royalties that state law requires from secondary-market sales. In her ruling, Judge Nguyen argued that the state’s resale royalties act violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution since it claimed to cover sales in other states. Read More
The New York Times reports that Sotheby’s filed papers yesterday as part of an effort to prevent the repatriation of a 10th-century statue the house had planned to sell in March 2011, but pulled from the auction over claims from Cambodian representatives that it had been looted in the 1970′s. Read More
Sotheby’s and the unionized art handlers who move its clients’ prized Warhols and de Koonings ratified an agreement today on a three-year deal that brings a 10-month lockout of the workers to a close, Crain’s reports. The deal increases wages one percent each year, raises the starting salary to $18.50 an hour and maintains benefits for the 42 workers who are members of Teamsters Local 814. While Sotheby’s was seeking to replace some of the union workers with temporary nonunion art handlers, this deal protects those positions as union jobs. Read More
Peinture (Étoile Bleue), a 1927 painting by Joan Miró is one of Miro’s most important works to come to market and it will lead Sotheby’s Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in London on June 19, 2012. The painting, set against a brilliant azure background, is part of his ‘dream paintings’ cycle, a series of works created at the height of Miró’s engagement with the Surrealist movement. Others in the cycle are in the collections of the Metropolitan, the Tate Gallery in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Read More
On June 15, Sotheby’s will auction an Apple I, “an exceptionally rare working example of the first Apple computer.” It is believed there are less than 50 of the computers in existence, and only six in working condition. Read More
The Gunter Sachs Collection Evening Auction in London tonight saw some “frenzied bidding” as per Sotheby’s Twitter feed, and brought in a total of $56,353,203. While Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait (Fright Wig), topped the sale at $8.5 million (high estimate was $4.7 million), a risque 1969 table by Allen Jones also set a record at $1,5 million. Quite apropos for the objects of a playboy art collector who was famously married to Brigitte Bardot. Read More
This morning, Sotheby’s American Art sale brought in $34,787,625, with 88 percent sold by lot, the highest total for an auction of American Art at Sotheby’s since May 2008. Read More
An iconic painting by Roy Lictenstein set a new worldwide auction record for the artist at Sotheby’s early this evening, creating one of the few dramatic moments in what was, at times, a humdrum sale. The Lichtenstein, Sleeping Girl (1964), which sold for $44.9 million, tied for the auction’s top spot with a Francis Bacon painting of the artist’s lover George Dyer from 1976, created shortly before Dyer killed himself. Read More
