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The Truth about Ariadne

23/10/2020

The Greek mythology is an enigmatic poetry. The myth of Ariadne, mixing life and death, past and present, truth and dream, inspired Nietzsche. A granddaughter of Zeus, she is a mortal princess and the half-sister of the Minotaur. She dies when Theseus abandons her, but the ancient accounts are contradictory. She is the complement or the antithesis of Dionysus who may have married her. An allegory of vegetation, she will be reborn in spring.

In 1910 Giorgio de Chirico conceives that painting can display the indistinguishable and the revelation. In 1912 and 1913, he devotes eight works to Ariadne's final sleep in Naxos, when she did not yet know that Theseus had fled.

The piazza is huge and deserted. Ariadne is a recumbent in marble symbolizing loneliness, but the position of the arms evokes sleep and life. The late afternoon brings the mysterious threat of shadows. The piazza is closed by an antique brick tomb but personal symbols of the artist, the train and the boat, are still beyond.

Il Pomeriggio di Arianna, painted in 1913, is the dreamlike culmination of the series. Ariadne is almost androgynous. The brick tower, as vertiginous as a skyscraper, is flanked by a broken column of similar height. This oil on canvas 135 x 65 cm is estimated $ 10M for sale by Sotheby's in New York on October 28, lot 115.

De Chirico brought a metaphysical dimension to symbolism. His Ariadne series anticipates surrealism in substance, through recourse to the psyche, and in form, through deliberately contradictory elements. Especially in Il Pomeriggio, the inverted perspective of the stele reminds the foreshortening of the Dead Christ by Mantegna.

1913

Dark Emotions

22/10/2020

In 1957 Mark Rothko was outraged by his own fame. His interpretation of basic emotions is not perceived. On the contrary, the public and the art critics admire the dramatic confrontation of his blocks of bright colors, those reds, blues and yellows to which white brings the window of transcendental light.

His style and technique change. Luminosity can also emanate from a dark area when he introduces layers of transparent glaze between layers of colors. He maintains his block structure, but the monochrome is replaced by an inextricable mingle of colors created by the diffusion of almost similar pigments into each other. The edges of the blocks add a frayed confrontation with the background color.

At the end of the year, he tests the deepest blues and reds against large black blocks. At the beginning of 1958, his preference goes for a red turning to brown. Four Darks in Red was painted just before he was commissioned for the decoration of the restaurant in the Seagram building under construction.

Rothko is very enthusiastic about this project which will allow him to test his new conceptions on a very large surface, like Monet with the Grandes Décorations. Unfortunately his deliberate rejection of the general public feeds his megalomania and he believes that his mysticism meets the sublime frescoes of Fra Angelico.

Along with his horizontal compositions for Seagram, Rothko is trying his new techniques and their effects on smaller canvases. Thus the Black on Maroon 267 x 381 cm for Seagram is accompanied by a vertical Untitled 183 x 114 cm with the same hues.

Rothko abandons the Seagram project in 1959 in a fit of anger that he will not credibly explain. Donated by the artist to the Tate Gallery, the Black and Maroon was co-signed in 2012 by a modern Herostratus.

The Untitled was sold for $ 27M including premium by Christie's on May 15, 2013, lot 55, and is estimated $ 25M for sale by Sotheby's in New York on October 28, lot 13.

Sotheby’s Adds Major Evening Sales in October, Led by $25 M. Rothko, $14 M. Restituted Van Gogh https://t.co/L4SaLwfqPk
— Art Market Monitor (@artmarket) October 9, 2020

Rothko 1957-70

Gentle Indians of NC Wyeth

21/10/2020

N.C. Wyeth is an illustrator of popular books and magazines. He works primarily but not exclusively for Scribner's. He interprets for the readers the rural life, the adventures of pirates, the Wild West. His images are enthusiastic.

He traveled the West in 1904 and 1906. For Wyeth, Indians are calm and sympathetic. They live with ingenuity in these immaculate conditions of which Frederic Remington had just seen the inexorable disappearance.

In 1908 Wyeth declared that painting and illustration are two different arts that cannot be mixed. He was probably concerned that his growing reputation as an illustrator would hurt his clients' demands for larger format paintings.

Indian Love Call, oil on canvas 117 x 176 cm in arched format painted in 1927, is typical of Wyeth's romanticism. The young Indian in his birch wood canoe plays the flute to attract a young woman who listens in the distance, in front of her tipi.

This work had been privately commissioned by an employee of a publishing house. Kept in the family, it surfaced unrecorded 80 years later. It was sold for $ 1.83M including premium by Sotheby's on November 28, 2007, lot 39, and is estimated $ 2M for sale by Christie's in New York on October 28, lot 15.

Far West

Concept Cars at the Turin Motor Show

20/10/2020

The concept car is a marketing operation promoted post war by Harley Earl for General Motors. Production chassis are fitted with futuristic bodies and displayed in the Motor Shows to elicit reactions from the public and the journalists.

Franco Scaglione is a stylist with an experience in clothing. The car is his passion. Before the war, he had a training in aeronautics and his project is to design an aerodynamic car. Of course he will have to cooperate with a coachbuilder.

Manufacturers have their own design offices and their sub-contractors and are reluctant to hand over such major tasks to an ambitious newcomer. Bertone finally accepts. On the Fiat stand at the Turin Motor Show in 1952, the Abarth 1500 Biposto is a concept car designed by Scaglione and built by Bertone.

In the same year, Alfa Romeo chooses Carrozzeria Touring over Bertone for the design of its new racing car, the Disco Volante. The Bertone-Scaglione team persevers however and develops the B.A.T. (Berlina Aerodinamica Tecnica) based on the road going Alfa Romeo 1900.

Three concept cars are exhibited by Bertone at the Turin Motor Show : the B.A.T. 5 in 1953, the B.A.T. 7 in 1954 and the B.A.T. 9d in 1955. The B.A.T. 5 has already reduced the drag coefficient below 0.25, making it possible to push the modest Alfa to nearly 200 km/h. The B.A.T. 7 is a further improvement in aerodynamics while the B.A.T. 9d responds to a request from Alfa Romeo to provide a road version.

These performances are all the more remarkable as they are solely due to Scaglione's pencil and Bertone's know-how, without wind tunnel tuning and of course without a computer. With such simplification of forms, the three B.A.T. are works of art.

Each of these prototypes was sold after its Salon. They were brought together for the first time in their history at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 1989 in the presence of Bertone, following which a keen collector managed to acquire all three vehicles. The trio is estimated $ 14M for sale on October 28 in New York by Sotheby's in cooperation with RM Sotheby's, lot 38.

The image is shared by Wikimedia. The licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update.

Italian Cars

The Skeleton Tables of Carlo Mollino

20/10/2020

Architect and interior designer, Carlo Mollino has led his career as a synthesis of his exuberant passions : high-flying, skiing, photography, women. After the war, independently of each other, Mollino and Noguchi design the furniture of the future.

The architect observes the solidity of the construction of the human skeleton. The structure of his tables and chairs takes the forms of rib cage and spine. Mollino thus brings sensuality to his furniture, which does not need an additional ornament. Above this openwork, the table top is in transparent glass.

On June 9, 2005, Christie's sold for $ 3.8M including premium from a lower estimate of $ 150K a 73 x 157 x 86 cm oak dining table designed by Mollino in 1948 and manufactured in 1949 by Apelli e Varesio in Turin.

After the war, Italy looked for new solutions for its reconstruction. An exhibition entitled Italy at Work is dedicated by a consortium of US museums to the renaissance of Italian design. Mollino is invited to prepare the furnishings for an all purpose room.

The main piece of furniture for Mollino's participation in Italy at Work is a dining table, 77 x 250 x 80 cm, designed in 1949 and made in 1950 in plywood, maple and brass by Apelli e Varesio. The technical feat adds to the artistic novelty : his use of large-scale molded plywood is unprecedented in the history of furniture.

The table returns in 1954 to the Brooklyn Museum after the traveling exhibition by a gift from the Italian government. It is estimated $ 2M for sale by Sotheby's in New York on October 28, lot 16, for the support of the museum's collections.

20th century Furniture

Mythologies by Picabia

16/10/2020

With his Transparences, Francis Picabia attempts a new style of surrealist painting composed of tangled line drawings without perspective. The spectator will seek to perceive the figures individually and to find a link between them by relying on the title. The artist transcends time by simultaneously referring to several periods of ancient art.

The first exhibition took place in Paris in 1928. Léonce Rosenberg, owner of L'Effort Moderne gallery, is convinced and buys for his personal use several paintings which would decorate his apartment alongside works by Léger and De Chirico.

Minos, oil, watercolor and pencil on panel 151 x 97 cm, is painted in 1929 on a specific order from Rosenberg. Minos is that king of Crete who locked up in the Labyrinth the Minotaur, one of the inspiring flagships of surrealism. The statue of Augustus as Jupiter Capitolinus is mingled with elements from the Virgin and Child with Five Angels by Botticelli. By the difference in scale, Jupiter appears like a doll whose feet are held by two Christian hands.

Minos is estimated € 2.8M for sale by Sotheby's in Paris on October 21, lot 10. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.

Atrata, a panel of similar dimensions, overlays the Atlas Farnese in a portrait of a man by Botticelli. The entomological meaning of the title Atrata responds to another passion of Picabia, impossible to decode for most of his visitors. Purchased during the same period by Rosenberg, Atrata may have inspired his order for the Minos, a less hermetic reference. Atrata was sold for £ 3.7M including premium by Sotheby's on February 26, 2019 from a lower estimate of £ 1.5M.

Picabia went too far into iconoclasm, even from a surrealist viewpoint. He terminated this series of Transparences in 1933.

SOLD for € 3.96M including premium

Lot phare de notre vente Modernités du 21 octobre, ´Minos’ de Francis Picabia s’impose comme l’une des plus exceptionnelles ´Transparences’ de l’artiste. L’œuvre fut commandée par le galeriste renommé Léonce Rosenberg pour son appartement parisien. pic.twitter.com/ke5l4FzGpa
— Sotheby's France (@SothebysFr) September 27, 2020

1929

A Bikini in the Caribbean

16/10/2020

Dr. No, Ian Fleming's sixth spy novel, appeared in 1958. The agent James Bond is taking a nap on a paradise Caribbean beach when suddenly a nude woman emerges from the water like Botticelli's Venus. She makes a living collecting seashells and bears the silly and titillating name of Honeychile Rider.

This novel is the first James Bond transposed to the cinema, in 1962. Sean Connery is Bond. The production budget is very low, leaving some place for improvisation. The premier woman's role, that of Honey Ryder, is entrusted to Ursula Andress because her frame is sexy : 36-24-36.

For the movie, Honey cannot be naked. Nothing is ready. With a support from a costume designer, Ursula conceives a bikini fitted with a belt carrying a scabbard for her diving knife. This ivory-colored cotton bikini is sewn by a Jamaican seamstress onto the actress' personal underwear, in a single unit.

This bikini worn by Ursula on the beach for three minutes is one of the elements that ensure the success of the film. In the context of sexual liberation, women all over the world are suddenly enjoying for their own use this taboo swimsuit that displays the belly. Ursula Andress is the very first Bond Girl in cinema and her career is launched.

The most famous bikini in movie history is estimated $ 300K for sale by Profiles in History in Calabasas CA on November 12, lot 253 here linked on the iCollector auction platform.

Ursula Andress has been quoted as saying, "This bikini made me into a success." □ One of the most impressive pieces in our upcoming auction was worn by Ursula Andress in Dr. No as Honey Ryder when she emerges from the ocean, making waves as the first Bond girl ever! pic.twitter.com/1P2bAuFiWE
— Profiles In History (@pihauctions) October 18, 2020

Movies

In Memory of Nijinsky

15/10/2020

The Yakutia region, which has become the Sakha Republic, has been for half a century one of the best producers of pink diamonds, operated by the Russian company Alrosa.

A gem discovered in 2017 is a purple pink diamond of exceptional weight, 27.85 carats. Prepared in Russia, the diamond has retained the elongated shape of the rough stone, allowing a sensational yield of over 50%. It weighs 14.83 carats and is certified Fancy Vivid Purple Pink and Internally Flawless by the GIA. Its oval modified brilliant cut perfectly reveals both colors.

Much rarer than the Fancy Vivid Pink or the Fancy Intense Pink, the Fancy Vivid Purple Pink shows a perfect balance between its two colors, unlike the Fancy Vivid Purplish Pink which has a pink dominant.

The company gave the raw gem the name Nijinsky, in memory of the costume adorned with rose petals worn in 1911 in Monte Carlo by the Russian dancer in the memorable ballet Le Spectre de la Rose. The finished diamond was named The Spirit of the Rose when it was announced in August 2019. It is estimated over CHF 21M for sale on November 11 in Geneva by Sotheby's, lot 204.

A Fancy Vivid Purple Pink weighing 8.41 carats, also Internally Flawless, was sold by Sotheby's on October 7, 2014 for HK $ 138M including premium, making US $ 2.1M per carat, one of the highest results recorded in the whole range of pink diamonds.

With identical characteristics and an optimized shape, bigger diamonds are more expensive per carat. The higher estimate of The Spirit, CHF 35M, corresponds to more than US $ 2.5M per carat before fees.

Le Spectre de la Rose, ce diamant qui va créer l'événement chez Sotheby's Genève - Madame Figaro https://t.co/TnwbOTVmGm
— Sotheby's France (@SothebysFr) October 12, 2020

Pink Diamond

The Mamluk Revolution

13/10/2020

The gilding and enamelling of glass vessels appeared in Persia around 1200 CE. These exquisite pieces are extremely fragile. Very few are dated.

A 28 cm high baluster-shaped bottle with a flared neck is kept by the Furusiyya Art Foundation. It is decorated with scenes from the life of a Christian monastic community. This Christian theme on a vessel of Islamic design can only be correlated with the Mamluk revolution which overthrew in 1250 in Egypt the Ayyubid dynasty unable to resist the seventh crusade.

The revolution was social : the Mamluk were soldiers of servile origin. Louis IX allied with them temporarily in 1252 in Syria while they were endeavoring to reconquer Damascus.

On October 27 in London, Sotheby's sells a 24 cm high bottle in same shape and technique as the Furusiyya specimen, lot 449 estimated £ 300K. Blue, red and white enamels had been applied after the gilding on a brownish-yellow glass.

The body and neck are adorned with a frieze inscribed in Islamic letters in praise of an unidentified sultan. The shoulder is decorated with intricate foliate figures and with four golden fish spread around the circumference. When the vessel is filled with clear water, this arrangement gives the illusion of the evolution of the fish in an aquarium. Under these conditions the gilding brings a sparkling effect on the scales.

Such a piece is extremely rare. Another example of the same shape is known, smaller and in blue glass. These vessels were used to clean the hands during the meal. Water was poured over a brass basin silver-inlaid with swimming fish.

#Sotheby's Auction to Offer Mamluk-Era Flask https://t.co/5pdhS6W82Y
— Asharq Al-Awsat English (@aawsat_eng) October 2, 2020

Glass before 1900

The Death of the Bisons

13/10/2020

PRE 2020 SALE DISCUSSION

Frederic Remington is the illustrator of the Wild West for the use of the magazines. He maintains this know-how through short trips to the West. In 1900 he returns disappointed : civilization had distorted the life in the West which provided his business. He decides never to go West again and will keep his word. He still has his imagination and his artistic production is not slowed down.

Remington provides the images expected by the readers. He has no ethnological curiosity. The Indian is an enemy warrior with whom communication is impossible.

The Buffalo Signal, oil on canvas 102 x 69 cm painted in 1900, is a rare example in which Remington expresses his nostalgia. To make a signal, an Indian scout rears his horse and brandishes a buffalo hide high over his head. A buffalo skull is placed in front of him on the sand. The arid desert and the cloudless sky complete this typical atmosphere that anticipates the western movies.

Two years later Remington uses this image as the frontispiece in a book, with the title If Skulls Could Speak, a direct allusion to the bygone cultures of the American West, symbolized by the extinction of the bison herds.

The painting was sold for $ 4.4M including premium by Christie's on November 29, 2007, lot 103. It is estimated $ 3M for sale by Christie's in New York on October 28, lot 16.

Far West

<<Previous

The Truth about Ariadne

Dark Emotions

Gentle Indians of NC Wyeth

Concept Cars at the Turin Motor Show

The Skeleton Tables of Carlo Mollino

Mythologies by Picabia

A Bikini in the Caribbean

In Memory of Nijinsky

The Mamluk Revolution

The Death of the Bisons

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