Sotheby’s London sold Portrait on a White Cover (2002-03) for £22.5m at its Evening Sale of Contemporary Art last night (26 June). It was the highest price ever paid for a Lucian Freud work on British soil, beating the artist’s previous record of £16.1m set by Pregnant Girl (1961) at Sotheby’s in February 2016. A late masterpiece, Portrait on a White Cover—painted when the artist was 80 years old—represents the culmination of Lucian Freud’s lifelong...
Sotheby’s and Victoria Beckham are staging a collaborative exhibition at the revered fashion designer’s contemporary Dover Street store in Mayfair, London. The exhibition, which opened on 22 June, features highlights from Sotheby’s 4 July Old Master Paintings sale. It is Victoria Beckham’s first collaboration with the international auction house and perhaps her most significant partnership since her duet with Dane Bowers. But it is not the first time the flagship store of her eponymous brand...
Julien’s Auctions has sold Han Solo’s Blaster from Return of the Jedi (Lucasfilm 1983) for almost half a million pounds. Julien’s says Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum purchased the blaster—whose sale topped the world-record-breaking auction house’s Hollywood Legends auction—for $550,000 (£415,000). The BlasTech DL-44 blaster was one of many items to go under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions Hollywood Legends sale at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday (24 June)....
A portrait of Golden Muse by Picasso is among the paintings set to fetch millions at Sotheby’s London Impressionist and Modern Art Sale next week. The painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter is expected to sell for about £33 million at Sotheby’s months after a similar work went for almost £50 million. James Mackie, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and Modern Art, said the scale of the 1932 oil painting, which is 1.1 metres by three-quarters of a...
Julien’s Auctions has announced a star-studded lineup for its HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS sale, taking place on June 23. Highlights from the auction, which will be held at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, will include an Ewok axe and Imperial Trooper blaster from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Marilyn Monroe’s black wool dress and Superman III’s full costume. Also on offer will be meteorologist Valerie Voss’ Playboy bunny costume, Hugh Hefner’s robe and Donald...
An 18th-century rare Chinese vase found in a shoebox in France sold for €16.2m (£14m) at a Sotheby’s sale. The vase, which was auctioned by Sotheby’s Paris on Tuesday (June 12), sold for more than 20 times its guide price—€500,000 to 700,000. It is the highest price ever reached by a single item sold by Sotheby’s in France. The vase was part of a family’s inheritance and was discovered in an attic. Sotheby’s Asian art...
Art blockchain platform Maecenas today announced that Andy Warhol artwork 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980) will be the first on its platform to be tokenised. Cryptocurrency and art enthusiasts will be able to own fractional shares in the artwork by bidding at an auction on 20 June. The auction—which will be the world’s first cryptocurrency art sale—will be held in collaboration with Dadiani Syndicate, the first fine art gallery in the UK to accept cryptocurrency payments...
Parallels abound between cryptocurrency and art; Arts & Collections looks at this burgeoning relationship and how it’s likely to evolve over time, with Lincoln Townley and Matthew Newton. The synergy between cryptocurrency and art is hard to ignore. Art—like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple—is a fluctuating asset; its value is subject to the ebb and flow of capricious market conditions. The hope for art aficionados and Bitcoin buffs is for their investments to appreciate in value....
Dadiani Syndicate, the UK’s first fine art gallery to accept cryptocurrency payments, will collaborate with blockchain platform Maecenas Fine Art to stage a momentous sale. The date of the sale—which will enable the use of cryptocurrencies to purchase fractional interests in high-value works of art—will be announced this later month. The concept behind the joint venture is to democratise access to fine art by esteemed artists such as Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt van...
A Sotheby’s auction will offer a stunning masterpiece by revered Italian sculptor Antonio Canova at its 4 July sale in London. Bust of Peace (1814), not seen in public for more than 200 years, is one of only a handful of autograph Canova works to ever come to market. The monumental work, first shown at the 1817 Royal Academy summer exhibition, was carved for Canova’s first British patron and close friend, John Campbell, Lord Cawdor....
