1961
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Abstract art II Cities USA Rothko Rothko 1957-70 Newman Lichtenstein Magritte Sculpture Giacometti Bacon < 1963
See also : Abstract art II Cities USA Rothko Rothko 1957-70 Newman Lichtenstein Magritte Sculpture Giacometti Bacon < 1963
1961 LICHTENSTEIN
1
masterpiece
Look Mickey
National Gallery of Art
In 1961, Roy Lichtenstein is 38. He is interested in art, and his son is interested in Donald Duck. The younger Lichtenstein challenges his father : can he do as well as the pictures of his magazine? It clicked. Roy Lichtenstein invented the pop art, no less.
The idea is original. By recuperating and enlarging ordinary pictures created for feeding the magazines, Roy creates a new artistic language combining graphics and letters, which will entertain the visitors without requiring an effort of interpretation.
Yet Roy's message is subtle. This pioneer will succeed without taking seriously his own art, but it is clear that his themes are in their own right a deep view into the social role of art.
In his first pop artwork, Roy questions the art. Donald Duck is fishing. His rod is bending, and he invites Mickey Mouse : "Look Mickey, I've hooked a big one". Mickey knows that the fish is under water, and in fact there is nothing for him to see. He's right: the hook got attached to the jacket of his friend. This seminal work, 122 x 175 cm, was given in 1990 by the artist to the National Gallery of Art.
The idea is original. By recuperating and enlarging ordinary pictures created for feeding the magazines, Roy creates a new artistic language combining graphics and letters, which will entertain the visitors without requiring an effort of interpretation.
Yet Roy's message is subtle. This pioneer will succeed without taking seriously his own art, but it is clear that his themes are in their own right a deep view into the social role of art.
In his first pop artwork, Roy questions the art. Donald Duck is fishing. His rod is bending, and he invites Mickey Mouse : "Look Mickey, I've hooked a big one". Mickey knows that the fish is under water, and in fact there is nothing for him to see. He's right: the hook got attached to the jacket of his friend. This seminal work, 122 x 175 cm, was given in 1990 by the artist to the National Gallery of Art.
2
I can see the Whole Room
2011 SOLD for $ 43M by Christie's
A graphite and oil on canvas 121 x 121 cm was made in the same year as the Look Mickey, and is also inspired by a magazine picture. We see the eye of a man through a peephole. Obviously puzzled, he states, "I can see the whole room and there's nobody inside." The man denies the existence of the viewer, like Mickey denied the reality of the fish.
It was sold for $ 43M from a lower estimate of $ 35M by Christie's on November 8, 2011. It is illustrated in the second position in the article shared by the Wall Street Journal. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
It was sold for $ 43M from a lower estimate of $ 35M by Christie's on November 8, 2011. It is illustrated in the second position in the article shared by the Wall Street Journal. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1961 L'Homme qui marche by Giacometti
2010 SOLD for £ 65M by Sotheby's
Alberto Giacometti was enthusiastic about the project of decoration of the plaza in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York which was entrusted to him in 1958 and which could be the culmination of his artistic approach whole life. He will install his monumental sculptures according to the design of his Places I and II of 1948 simulating by scattered characters the buzzing activity of the city.
His figures will not be new : the walking man, the standing woman and the big head. Refusing obstinately the solution of a mechanical enlargement, he works to establish new proportions that will allow his statues not to be miniaturized by the 60 floors of the bank nor to seem huge to the passers-by.
Alberto does not yet know New York. After many trials in plaster and bronze, he is discouraged by his own belief of the gigantism of the city and renounces the project in 1960. He does not however scrap everything. Four Grande Femme Debout, two Homme qui marche and one Tête de Diego are preserved. The Homme qui marche I in life size 1.83 m high is hardly higher than the Homme au doigt from 1947 but it remains one of the best symbols of the vision of the humanity by Giacometti.
The walking man is the most emblematic conception by Giacometti. The symmetrical stride is a mark for energy, ambition and desire. The bronze provides an idea of solidity contradicted by the slender lines of the character. He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. He is alone, as the "foreigner" of Camus.
It was edited in bronze the following year, 1961, by Susse in six numbered copies for trade and four artist's proofs. The serial number 2/6 was sold for £ 65M from a lower estimate of £ 12M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2010. It is illustrated in an article shared by AuctionPublicity.
With her 2.75 m tall, the Grande Femme Debout II is the giant who dominates the whole group of the 1960 project for the New York piaza. The number 1/6 cast by Susse in 1961 was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 6, 2008, lot 36.
Alberto first visited New York City in October 1965. Suffering from cancer since 1963 he at last appreciated when it was too late how he could have integrated his ultimate work within Manhattan. He conceived an even taller sculpture and put Diego in charge of preparing the big frame but this project was stopped by his own death.
Response by Grok :
Quote
AstrologyNewsNetwork @HoroscopeOfUSA Feb 5
Replying to @HoroscopeOfUSA
February 3, 2010 – The sculpture L'Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. #MarsRetrograde https://wikiwand.com/en/L%27Homme_qui_marche_I…
His figures will not be new : the walking man, the standing woman and the big head. Refusing obstinately the solution of a mechanical enlargement, he works to establish new proportions that will allow his statues not to be miniaturized by the 60 floors of the bank nor to seem huge to the passers-by.
Alberto does not yet know New York. After many trials in plaster and bronze, he is discouraged by his own belief of the gigantism of the city and renounces the project in 1960. He does not however scrap everything. Four Grande Femme Debout, two Homme qui marche and one Tête de Diego are preserved. The Homme qui marche I in life size 1.83 m high is hardly higher than the Homme au doigt from 1947 but it remains one of the best symbols of the vision of the humanity by Giacometti.
The walking man is the most emblematic conception by Giacometti. The symmetrical stride is a mark for energy, ambition and desire. The bronze provides an idea of solidity contradicted by the slender lines of the character. He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. He is alone, as the "foreigner" of Camus.
It was edited in bronze the following year, 1961, by Susse in six numbered copies for trade and four artist's proofs. The serial number 2/6 was sold for £ 65M from a lower estimate of £ 12M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2010. It is illustrated in an article shared by AuctionPublicity.
With her 2.75 m tall, the Grande Femme Debout II is the giant who dominates the whole group of the 1960 project for the New York piaza. The number 1/6 cast by Susse in 1961 was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 6, 2008, lot 36.
Alberto first visited New York City in October 1965. Suffering from cancer since 1963 he at last appreciated when it was too late how he could have integrated his ultimate work within Manhattan. He conceived an even taller sculpture and put Diego in charge of preparing the big frame but this project was stopped by his own death.
Response by Grok :
Quote
AstrologyNewsNetwork @HoroscopeOfUSA Feb 5
Replying to @HoroscopeOfUSA
February 3, 2010 – The sculpture L'Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. #MarsRetrograde https://wikiwand.com/en/L%27Homme_qui_marche_I…
- The post highlights the record-breaking sale of Alberto Giacometti's "L'Homme qui marche I" for $103.7 million on February 3, 2010, reflecting a surge in demand for modern art, with auction prices for top sculptures rising 1,200% from 2002 to 2015 according to a 2016 study by Artnet.
- Giacometti’s work, created during his post-war existential phase, embodies a minimalist human form influenced by his exposure to concentration camp imagery, a perspective supported by art historian Reinhold Hohl’s analysis in his 1994 book "Giacometti: A Biography."
- The #MarsRetrograde tag links this event to astrological claims of slowed progress, though no peer-reviewed studies validate this, suggesting the connection may reflect cultural fascination rather than empirical evidence.
ROTHKO
1
1961 Orange, Red, Yellow
2012 SOLD for $ 87M by Christie's
In 1961 Mark Rothko tries his mind in the expressive radiance of rare hues of red and of adjacent colors in vertical arrangements of his signature rectangles, in a renewed approach to the mesmerizing illusion of space.
That comes of course in the follow of his 1954 admiration for Matisse's L'Atelier Rouge, but an influence from Monet's abstract trends in his later works may also be considered just after the great 1960 Monet exhibition at the MoMA.
The dimensions of his canvases have increased and are standardized. The rectangles occupy almost all the available surface, over a negligible neutral background. Most significantly, the preferred color of the artist is now the most vibrant of them : red.
On May 8, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 87M from a lower estimate of $ 35M an oil on canvas, 236 x 206 cm, titled Orange, Red, Yellow. It is dominated by a bright vermilion, omnipresent, whose perfect monochromy is the result of a meticulous brushwork.
This painting was owned since 1967 by a demanding collector who considered it as one of the most successful pieces in Rothko's art.
Response by Grok to an ArtHitParade tweet :
That comes of course in the follow of his 1954 admiration for Matisse's L'Atelier Rouge, but an influence from Monet's abstract trends in his later works may also be considered just after the great 1960 Monet exhibition at the MoMA.
The dimensions of his canvases have increased and are standardized. The rectangles occupy almost all the available surface, over a negligible neutral background. Most significantly, the preferred color of the artist is now the most vibrant of them : red.
On May 8, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 87M from a lower estimate of $ 35M an oil on canvas, 236 x 206 cm, titled Orange, Red, Yellow. It is dominated by a bright vermilion, omnipresent, whose perfect monochromy is the result of a meticulous brushwork.
This painting was owned since 1967 by a demanding collector who considered it as one of the most successful pieces in Rothko's art.
Response by Grok to an ArtHitParade tweet :
- The 2012 auction of Mark Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" for $86.8 million at Christie's marked a historic moment, surpassing the previous record for post-war art, driven by a rare six-and-a-half-minute bidding war that reflected growing investor interest in abstract expressionism.
- Art market analysis from the Journal of Cultural Economics (2015) suggests that Rothko's use of bold colors like red and orange, which fetched higher prices due to psychological appeal, contributed to the painting's value, challenging the notion that artistic merit alone dictates auction outcomes.
- The sale coincided with a global economic recovery post-2008, with art as an alternative asset class gaining traction, as evidenced by a 2013 Deloitte report showing a 29% increase in high-net-worth individuals investing in art, adding context to the painting's record-breaking price.
2
1961 Shades of Red
2022 SOLD for $ 67M by Christie's
Untitled (Shades of Red), oil on canvas 175 x 142 cm, was sold for $ 67M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 4C.
It features his signature rectangles with shaggy borders expressing the intensity of the brush work. The shades skillfully include crimson, red, ruby, scarlet, and deep orange, one on top of one another, surrounded by pale veils from the same pigments in a radiant luminosity.
It had been used as a pendant by Mrs Bass with the 1962 No. 1 of similar dimensions, sold for $ 50M in the same sale, lot 5C.
Listed as the first painting executed by the artist in that year, this iridescent artwork features a tall nearly square central field of intense orange surrounded by narrow bands of deeper saturated red and orange.
These colors fighting for dominance and waning to the serene pale ground at the edges of the fields may be considered as a fair demonstrator of the artist's lifelong influence from Nietzsche's dramatic human duality between force and chaos.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 13, 2022
#AuctionUpdate From The Collection of Anne H. Bass, Mark Rothko’s ‘Untitled (Shades of Red)’ realizes $66.8 million
It features his signature rectangles with shaggy borders expressing the intensity of the brush work. The shades skillfully include crimson, red, ruby, scarlet, and deep orange, one on top of one another, surrounded by pale veils from the same pigments in a radiant luminosity.
It had been used as a pendant by Mrs Bass with the 1962 No. 1 of similar dimensions, sold for $ 50M in the same sale, lot 5C.
Listed as the first painting executed by the artist in that year, this iridescent artwork features a tall nearly square central field of intense orange surrounded by narrow bands of deeper saturated red and orange.
These colors fighting for dominance and waning to the serene pale ground at the edges of the fields may be considered as a fair demonstrator of the artist's lifelong influence from Nietzsche's dramatic human duality between force and chaos.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 13, 2022
#AuctionUpdate From The Collection of Anne H. Bass, Mark Rothko’s ‘Untitled (Shades of Red)’ realizes $66.8 million
- The artwork "Untitled (Shades of Red)" by Mark Rothko, sold for $66.8 million at Christie’s in 2022, reflects his abstract expressionist style, developed after immigrating to the U.S. from Russia in 1913, where he explored color fields to evoke emotional depth, a technique later linked to psychological studies showing color impacts mood (e.g., a 2014 study in Art Therapy found red hues increase arousal).
- The painting’s sale from Anne H. Bass’s collection highlights a trend of high-value art auctions amid economic uncertainty, with Christie’s reporting a 2022 global auction total of $8.4 billion, suggesting art as a potential hedge against inflation, challenging the narrative that such investments are purely speculative.
- Rothko’s use of Venetian red, a pigment with historical roots in Renaissance Italy made from ferric oxide, ties the piece to a tradition of enduring color use, with modern synthetic versions altering its original composition, offering a surprising continuity in art materials across centuries.
3
No. 17
2011 SOLD for $ 33.7M by Christie's
The output of some artists is fully indexed. Indeed, the experts are proud to announce that Mark Rothko created 835 paintings. Exactly.
The introduction at Christie's of a 836th opus in a top quality arouses amazement and wonder. Signed, dated 1961, numbered 17, this oil on canvas was known only to its owner who had bought it directly from the artist. It was sold for $ 33.7M from a lower estimate of $ 18M on May 11, 2011.
Rothko achieves a great brightness, with extremely opaque monochrome rectangles against a gold background. The two rectangles with fringed edges have the same width. The top one, which is the smaller, is deep pink, the other is dark red.
The format, 236 x 193 cm, is large enough to immerse the visitor, according to the powerful theory of the artist. The dimensions of the canvas, the proportions and arrangement of the rectangles are very close to the haunting red Rothko, painted in the same year, sold for $ 31.4M by Sotheby's in 2010.
Grok thought from an ArtHirParade tweet :
The introduction at Christie's of a 836th opus in a top quality arouses amazement and wonder. Signed, dated 1961, numbered 17, this oil on canvas was known only to its owner who had bought it directly from the artist. It was sold for $ 33.7M from a lower estimate of $ 18M on May 11, 2011.
Rothko achieves a great brightness, with extremely opaque monochrome rectangles against a gold background. The two rectangles with fringed edges have the same width. The top one, which is the smaller, is deep pink, the other is dark red.
The format, 236 x 193 cm, is large enough to immerse the visitor, according to the powerful theory of the artist. The dimensions of the canvas, the proportions and arrangement of the rectangles are very close to the haunting red Rothko, painted in the same year, sold for $ 31.4M by Sotheby's in 2010.
Grok thought from an ArtHirParade tweet :
- This 2011 X post by @ArtHitParade announces the Christie's auction sale of Mark Rothko's "Untitled No. 17" (1961), an abstract color field painting with pink, red, and gold rectangles, for $33.7 million—exceeding its $22 million high estimate.
- The work, rediscovered after years out of public view, highlighted Rothko's market strength during a $301 million contemporary art sale that set records for multiple artists like Andy Warhol.
- Rothko's pieces from this era, evoking emotional immersion through scale and hue, continue to drive auction values, with similar 1961 canvases later fetching over $80 million, reflecting sustained collector demand.
4
2010 SOLD for $ 31.4M by Sotheby's
Rothko was a perfectionist of color, or more precisely of the relationship between colors on the canvas where he laid them as two, three or four large monochrome rectangles separated by narrow spaces.
The painting sold by Sotheby's on May 12, 2010 for $ 31.4M from a lower estimate of $ 18M marks a turning point in the artist's career : it is almost entirely monochrome, red. Its date, 1961, is also within the period of the European Monochromes.
Red, at the end of the visible spectrum, is a warm and powerful color which can become obsessive. In this painting, it is treated in saturation, and in a format specially large for this artist: 237 x 204 cm.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
The painting sold by Sotheby's on May 12, 2010 for $ 31.4M from a lower estimate of $ 18M marks a turning point in the artist's career : it is almost entirely monochrome, red. Its date, 1961, is also within the period of the European Monochromes.
Red, at the end of the visible spectrum, is a warm and powerful color which can become obsessive. In this painting, it is treated in saturation, and in a format specially large for this artist: 237 x 204 cm.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
- This 2010 post by @ArtHitParade announces the $31.4 million sale of Mark Rothko's 1961 untitled red abstract canvas at Sotheby's, a record price at the time that reflected surging demand for postwar American art amid economic recovery.
- The auction's cover lot, the Rothko outperformed estimates of $20-30 million and sold to an anonymous telephone bidder, alongside Andy Warhol's "Self-Portrait" for $32.6 million, signaling robust collector interest in color field and pop art.
- The painting's provenance later fueled a high-profile 2014 lawsuit alleging secret resale breaches, dismissed by a judge, exposing tensions in art market transparency and confidentiality agreements.
1961 Black Fire by Newman
2014 SOLD for $ 84M by Christie's
Barnett Newman was a mystical atheist inspired by the creation of monotheism. His search for a non-figurative authenticity was intuitive and emotional. His art is rare, with long periods of interruption in his creative process.
The Onement series symbolizing the creation of the world includes only six paintings made from 1948 to 1953. The monochromatic surface is the result of a careful application of additional layers of paint as Rothko was doing. The only element of picture is a thin vertical central strip named the zip which shows that the homogeneity of the universe is an illusion.
Despite being an atheist, Barnett Newman viewed Moses as an arch-prophet, the one and only who provides an explanation on the uniqueness of man.
The Talmud teaches that God was summoning Moses with a voice that nobody else could hear. A similar mystery happens with the scripture. The Talmud rules that the basic element is the parchment, while the inked scripture is essential but subsidiary. They are respectively referred as white fire and black fire. As for the word of God, the white fire cannot be read in a usual manner.
Barnett Newman could not miss such a reference to the sublime, his artistic target.
His first White Fire opus asymmetrically placed two zips on a translucent bright background. This oil on canvas 122 x 152 cm painted in 1954 was sold for $ 3.86M by Christie's on November 13, 2002, lot 14.
In 1957, Newman suffers his first heart attack which generates a mystical crisis on the abandonment of man facing mortality. Despite his atheism, he takes his inspiration in the Calvary of Christ. The color is replaced by a deep black occupying the entire surface excepted some vertical strips of raw canvas. He finished the cycle of fourteen Stations of the Cross in 1966.
Newman's psychological crisis worsens with the sudden death of his younger brother in 1961. Black Fire I, in the same technique as the Stations, manages to express in a single canvas the whole existential tragedy. The growth of the black area from left to right is blocked by a vertical zip. The right side is not painted.
This oil on canvas 290 x 213 cm was sold for $ 84M by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Response by Grok :
Quote Alex Luck @AlexLuck9 Nov 12, 2024
This is "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman. It sold at Christie's in 2014 for $84 mln. Now worth up to $120 mln. Very rich people laugh about Bitcoin. This is how they invest their money. Its also a reason most of these paintings go straight into storage.
The Onement series symbolizing the creation of the world includes only six paintings made from 1948 to 1953. The monochromatic surface is the result of a careful application of additional layers of paint as Rothko was doing. The only element of picture is a thin vertical central strip named the zip which shows that the homogeneity of the universe is an illusion.
Despite being an atheist, Barnett Newman viewed Moses as an arch-prophet, the one and only who provides an explanation on the uniqueness of man.
The Talmud teaches that God was summoning Moses with a voice that nobody else could hear. A similar mystery happens with the scripture. The Talmud rules that the basic element is the parchment, while the inked scripture is essential but subsidiary. They are respectively referred as white fire and black fire. As for the word of God, the white fire cannot be read in a usual manner.
Barnett Newman could not miss such a reference to the sublime, his artistic target.
His first White Fire opus asymmetrically placed two zips on a translucent bright background. This oil on canvas 122 x 152 cm painted in 1954 was sold for $ 3.86M by Christie's on November 13, 2002, lot 14.
In 1957, Newman suffers his first heart attack which generates a mystical crisis on the abandonment of man facing mortality. Despite his atheism, he takes his inspiration in the Calvary of Christ. The color is replaced by a deep black occupying the entire surface excepted some vertical strips of raw canvas. He finished the cycle of fourteen Stations of the Cross in 1966.
Newman's psychological crisis worsens with the sudden death of his younger brother in 1961. Black Fire I, in the same technique as the Stations, manages to express in a single canvas the whole existential tragedy. The growth of the black area from left to right is blocked by a vertical zip. The right side is not painted.
This oil on canvas 290 x 213 cm was sold for $ 84M by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Response by Grok :
Quote Alex Luck @AlexLuck9 Nov 12, 2024
This is "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman. It sold at Christie's in 2014 for $84 mln. Now worth up to $120 mln. Very rich people laugh about Bitcoin. This is how they invest their money. Its also a reason most of these paintings go straight into storage.
- The artwork "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman, sold for $84 million in 2014 and now valued up to $120 million, exemplifies how the global art market—estimated at $65.1 billion in 2021 by the Basel Institute on Governance—serves as a discreet investment vehicle for the ultra-wealthy, often bypassing traditional assets like Bitcoin due to its opacity and tax advantages.
- Historical data from Christie's auction records shows that high-value artworks like this frequently enter private storage post-sale, a practice supported by a 2020 study in the Journal of Cultural Economics, which found 70% of top-tier art purchases are held unexhibited, fueling speculation about money laundering—though no direct evidence ties "Black Fire I" to such activities.
- The art market's vulnerability to illicit finance is underscored by its minimal regulation, with a 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report highlighting that only 1% of transactions over $10,000 are scrutinized, challenging the narrative that Ukraine-related laundering claims are unfounded and suggesting a broader systemic issue.
1961 L'Empire des Lumières by Magritte
2022 SOLD for £ 60M by Sotheby's
Surrealism is most often requiring an uneasy decoding. When practiced by René Magritte, it sometimes disturbs the viewer by the very simplicity of the message. La Trahison des Images painted in 1929 became the symbol of that language which is both offbeat and poetic.
With its title attributed by Paul Nougé, L'Empire des lumières reached a similar notoriety. The theme is commonplace : a night view of a suburb inspired by the Brussels district where Magritte resides.
The inhabitants are not visible but we imagine them behind the lighted windows. A lamppost illuminates the street with a questionable effectiveness. Beside these few glows the shadows are saturated. No contradiction of scale comes to puzzle the viewer.
Above this peaceful night the sky is blue, dotted with white clouds. The artist asks a poetic question for which he knows that there is no answer : are day and night incompatible or are they two complementary elements of real life ?
The first variant of the Empire des lumières was completed in 1949. This oil on canvas 49 x 59 cm was sold for $ 20.6M by Christie's on November 13, 2017, lot 12 A.
Nobody dared questioning if the Empire des lumières was not just a mere realistic twilight. It somehow illustrates a typically Surrealist verse by Breton : 'Si seulement il faisait du soleil cette nuit'.
The friends of the artist are enthusiastic about L'Empire des Lumières and Magritte makes a total of seventeen oil variants over the years. An Empire des lumières 100 x 80 cm painted in 1952 was sold for $ 12.7M by Christie's on May 7, 2002, lot 36.
The fifteenth version of L'Empire des Lumières was painted by Magritte from order for a present to a friend's daughter. It is an enlarged remake of a segment of the original painting in a large size panoramic format of similar proportions.
Matching some features of Magritte's ideal woman, the daughter revealed in 2015 that she had been the charming blonde model for La Fée ignorante, a beautiful title of an artwork indeed. The artist kindly said to the teenager : “tu vois, je te peignais déjà avant de te connaître...”»
Now consigned from that single ownership, this oil on canvas 115 x 146 cm was sold for £ 60M by Sotheby's on March 2, 2022, lot 114.
Magritte himself brings a disturbing continuation much later with La Fin du monde. Over the same place the sky has become black and in a better logic the horizon is still bright. The signature head with the bowler hat appears as a threat amidst the black silhouettes of the trees. This oil on canvas 82 x 100 cm painted in 1963 was sold for $ 7M by Christie's on November 1, 2011.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Mar 2, 2022
#AuctionUpdate: Marking a new auction record for surrealist master René Magritte, the evocative ‘L’empire des lumières’ soars to £59.4 million. #SothebysModern
With its title attributed by Paul Nougé, L'Empire des lumières reached a similar notoriety. The theme is commonplace : a night view of a suburb inspired by the Brussels district where Magritte resides.
The inhabitants are not visible but we imagine them behind the lighted windows. A lamppost illuminates the street with a questionable effectiveness. Beside these few glows the shadows are saturated. No contradiction of scale comes to puzzle the viewer.
Above this peaceful night the sky is blue, dotted with white clouds. The artist asks a poetic question for which he knows that there is no answer : are day and night incompatible or are they two complementary elements of real life ?
The first variant of the Empire des lumières was completed in 1949. This oil on canvas 49 x 59 cm was sold for $ 20.6M by Christie's on November 13, 2017, lot 12 A.
Nobody dared questioning if the Empire des lumières was not just a mere realistic twilight. It somehow illustrates a typically Surrealist verse by Breton : 'Si seulement il faisait du soleil cette nuit'.
The friends of the artist are enthusiastic about L'Empire des Lumières and Magritte makes a total of seventeen oil variants over the years. An Empire des lumières 100 x 80 cm painted in 1952 was sold for $ 12.7M by Christie's on May 7, 2002, lot 36.
The fifteenth version of L'Empire des Lumières was painted by Magritte from order for a present to a friend's daughter. It is an enlarged remake of a segment of the original painting in a large size panoramic format of similar proportions.
Matching some features of Magritte's ideal woman, the daughter revealed in 2015 that she had been the charming blonde model for La Fée ignorante, a beautiful title of an artwork indeed. The artist kindly said to the teenager : “tu vois, je te peignais déjà avant de te connaître...”»
Now consigned from that single ownership, this oil on canvas 115 x 146 cm was sold for £ 60M by Sotheby's on March 2, 2022, lot 114.
Magritte himself brings a disturbing continuation much later with La Fin du monde. Over the same place the sky has become black and in a better logic the horizon is still bright. The signature head with the bowler hat appears as a threat amidst the black silhouettes of the trees. This oil on canvas 82 x 100 cm painted in 1963 was sold for $ 7M by Christie's on November 1, 2011.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Mar 2, 2022
#AuctionUpdate: Marking a new auction record for surrealist master René Magritte, the evocative ‘L’empire des lumières’ soars to £59.4 million. #SothebysModern
- Sotheby's post announces the £59.4 million hammer price for René Magritte's 1954 oil 'L'empire des lumières' at its Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London, shattering the artist's prior record by nearly threefold and ranking as Europe's second-highest painting sale then.
- The surrealist canvas, showing a lit house at night beneath a bright daytime sky, exemplifies Magritte's exploration of reality's illusions; it originated from the private Gillion Crowet Collection and drew 122 likes amid modest thread engagement.
- By November 2024, another 1950 iteration from the series fetched $121.2 million at Christie's New York, eclipsing this benchmark and affirming surging collector interest in Magritte's perceptual paradoxes, per auction records.
1961 Untitled by Twombly
2021 SOLD for $ 32M by Christie's
Cy Twombly is interested with the illusion of gesture in the art of Franz Kline. By chance in 1953 he spends his military service as a cryptographer. During this mission he begins to draw intertwined scribbles that are tentatively the hidden expression of a primordial feeling.
His art finds at that time a higher complexity. He positions a proto-writing on a large surface with colored pencils. This meaningless writing does not escape the graphology. A rising and colorful proto-writing is a mark of optimism or enthusiasm. The primordial art of Twombly was early admired and analyzed by the semiologists such as Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers.
His end goal is to find the origins of thinking, and not just of writing. The American history is too recent for this ambition. In 1957 he spends the summer on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. Dazzled by the atmosphere that transcends time, he decides to live in Italy and meets his future wife in Rome.
In the same year he discovers in Mallarmé's poems the expressive force of silence. Without apparent link with the Achromes, he inscribes his gestures on white surfaces. Sometimes this false writing aggregates and forms an almost imperceptible word.
He set up his workshop in Rome in 1959, as close as possible to the Colosseum, and imagines the mythological meaning of the graffiti defaced by time. He proposes in his paintings and drawings an ever modified semiology in an indecipherable language in which he is probably the only one to identify some signification.
The Roman gods had an orgiastic reputation. Also inspired by Sade, the artist imagines that the pornographic graffiti is a timeless expression, and he endeavors to achieve it with modern techniques. His drawing with graphite pencil and wax crayon on a canvas painted in oil is stealthy, abundant and unevenly positioned, as if the artist, inside his comfortable studio, wished to imitate the illegal gestures of the former passions.
His first works in Rome are uneven arrangements on a neutral background of spots of various colors and mixed materials often placed directly by the finger on the canvas. His paintings gradually reach very large sizes.
A mixed technique on canvas 200 x 230 cm executed in 1961 was sold for $ 32M by Christie's on November 11, 2021, lot 50C. This Untitled is not located. The figures from a large area of the upper right are laid in a gray cloud. Some pseudo antique marks have been carefully erased by further layers of scribbles.
The Macklowe collection had a smaller example from the same technique, style and year. This Untitled 125 x 145 cm located at Roma was sold for $ 21M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 9.
His art finds at that time a higher complexity. He positions a proto-writing on a large surface with colored pencils. This meaningless writing does not escape the graphology. A rising and colorful proto-writing is a mark of optimism or enthusiasm. The primordial art of Twombly was early admired and analyzed by the semiologists such as Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers.
His end goal is to find the origins of thinking, and not just of writing. The American history is too recent for this ambition. In 1957 he spends the summer on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. Dazzled by the atmosphere that transcends time, he decides to live in Italy and meets his future wife in Rome.
In the same year he discovers in Mallarmé's poems the expressive force of silence. Without apparent link with the Achromes, he inscribes his gestures on white surfaces. Sometimes this false writing aggregates and forms an almost imperceptible word.
He set up his workshop in Rome in 1959, as close as possible to the Colosseum, and imagines the mythological meaning of the graffiti defaced by time. He proposes in his paintings and drawings an ever modified semiology in an indecipherable language in which he is probably the only one to identify some signification.
The Roman gods had an orgiastic reputation. Also inspired by Sade, the artist imagines that the pornographic graffiti is a timeless expression, and he endeavors to achieve it with modern techniques. His drawing with graphite pencil and wax crayon on a canvas painted in oil is stealthy, abundant and unevenly positioned, as if the artist, inside his comfortable studio, wished to imitate the illegal gestures of the former passions.
His first works in Rome are uneven arrangements on a neutral background of spots of various colors and mixed materials often placed directly by the finger on the canvas. His paintings gradually reach very large sizes.
A mixed technique on canvas 200 x 230 cm executed in 1961 was sold for $ 32M by Christie's on November 11, 2021, lot 50C. This Untitled is not located. The figures from a large area of the upper right are laid in a gray cloud. Some pseudo antique marks have been carefully erased by further layers of scribbles.
The Macklowe collection had a smaller example from the same technique, style and year. This Untitled 125 x 145 cm located at Roma was sold for $ 21M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 9.
1961 Seated Woman by Bacon
2015 SOLD for $ 28M by Phillips
Francis Bacon never worked in the presence of his model. His desire was to exhale the deep and intimate personality of his friends. In 1959, aged half a century, Francis takes as the theme of his figures the men and women with whom he spends his nights in Soho. He commissions their photos to John Deakin who was part of his group.
Muriel Belcher is of course included in this project. He knew her for a long time. When she opened her private drinking club in 1948, this lesbian activist paid Francis to bring his homosexual male friends.
Muriel is not a beauty but that does not discourage Francis who does not seek eroticism in women but empathy. Why does he display her seated in the nude on a disordered sofa ? Did she play for Deakin such a prudish attitude with carefully crossed legs hiding the sex?
This oil on canvas 165 x 142 cm simply titled Seated woman was painted in 1961. It was sold for € 13.7M by Sotheby's on December 12, 2007 and for $ 28M by Phillips on May 14, 2015, lot 33.
This uncommon personality was also authoritarian and bad tempered. Above her uninteresting and unappealing nude body, Francis showed the old-fashioned hair parted in the middle, the prominent chin and the bushy eyebrows in a cubist composition of two mingled profiles.
The clear face is encircled by the hair and the shade of cheeks and chin, building the shape of a heart or of an apple with its stalk, a surprising way found by the artist to encode his friendship with his former sponsor. Francis Bacon will never stop surprising us.
Muriel Belcher is of course included in this project. He knew her for a long time. When she opened her private drinking club in 1948, this lesbian activist paid Francis to bring his homosexual male friends.
Muriel is not a beauty but that does not discourage Francis who does not seek eroticism in women but empathy. Why does he display her seated in the nude on a disordered sofa ? Did she play for Deakin such a prudish attitude with carefully crossed legs hiding the sex?
This oil on canvas 165 x 142 cm simply titled Seated woman was painted in 1961. It was sold for € 13.7M by Sotheby's on December 12, 2007 and for $ 28M by Phillips on May 14, 2015, lot 33.
This uncommon personality was also authoritarian and bad tempered. Above her uninteresting and unappealing nude body, Francis showed the old-fashioned hair parted in the middle, the prominent chin and the bushy eyebrows in a cubist composition of two mingled profiles.
The clear face is encircled by the hair and the shade of cheeks and chin, building the shape of a heart or of an apple with its stalk, a surprising way found by the artist to encode his friendship with his former sponsor. Francis Bacon will never stop surprising us.
