An Almost Defiant Success
By SOUREN MELIKIAN
Published: February 12, 2010

LONDON — Contemporary art is riddled with unfathomable enigmas. It performs in unpredictable ways for impenetrable reasons and this week it surpassed itself.

Even auction house pundits could not conceal their astonishment at the miraculous outcome of Sotheby’s Wednesday evening sale, when only three lots of the 77 that came up failed to find takers and the total posted rose to £54.07 million, or about $84.5 million. They still are not quite sure how that came about. After all, the cover of the more glamorous of the two catalogs that listed the items to be dispersed proclaimed “Zero” in gold lettering. This is the logo retained by a group of artists who emerged in post-World War II Germany and forged links across national borders.

Nobody ever really got to the bottom of just what it meant. Axel Vervoordt, the distinguished antique dealer from Antwerp who discovered the group while still a student and loves contemporary art, says they cultivated the concept of emptiness.

This may account for the movement’s name. Zero aptly describes art which is about nothing. But looking at the works, disparate in style as in medium, the explanation does not always fit what the eye sees. In 1961 Heinz Mack, one of the key figures in the Zero movement, signed “Untitled (Lamellen Relief).” His piece is not physically empty — dense rows of vertical aluminium strips fill the rectangular frame of the panel. Bidders pushed that to a world record £205,250. The next three lots also set world records. Yet, they had nothing in common with the Mack — nor with each other.



Otto Piene’s “Rauchbild” (Smoke Picture), which resembles a large hazy target, made £223,500. “Empty” is not really the word. In Günther Uecker’s “Haar der Nymphen” (Hair of the Nymphs), hundreds of nails are stuck into an off-white panel in a manner suggesting gyration. The Uecker soared to £825,250.



Next came “Weisses Strukturrelief R 62-1” (White Structure Relief R 62-1) signed by Jan Schoonhoven. The white papier-mâché contraption looks like the parody of a wall cupboard with its 160 tiny open compartments. Impressed, bidders set a fourth world record for Zero art — £780,450.



These works do not conveniently fall into one category. But in contemporary art, the power of the word is everything. The 49 lots of Zero art, which came from a huge collection built up over five decades by Gerhard and Anna Lenz, were enthusiastically pounced upon, with only one exception.

Tobias Meyer, the worldwide head of Sotheby’s contemporary art departments who conducted the auction, told this writer that he had not expected this level of intense bidding, which resulted in 19 world auction records for Zero art.

Its extravagant triumph came as a reminder that painters like Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana declared themselves part of the Zero movement. Both have long been selling in the hundreds of thousands, when not in the millions, of dollars. For them, at least, success was not unexpected.



The Lenzes owned one of the straightforwardly monochrome canvases produced by Klein. Painted a solid blue, it has a rough grainy surface. Sotheby’s omitted to draw attention to its unintended resemblance to traditional Paris door mats. Luckily the title, “IKB 45,” and a date, 1960, warned you that this was art. The Klein went up to £769,250.



Toned monochromes, however, were the real flavor of the week. On a vast panel, 3 meters — or about 10 feet — long, flame-resistant resin and water body imprints on card were laid down by Klein in 1961. The title, “F 88,” was again in Klein’s science-fiction style.



The large pinkish ochre surface, with some dark spots and streaks of whitish color trickling down, had long been held in high regard. “F 88” was featured in nine exhibitions staged by major institutions. It was last seen in public at the Paris Centre Georges Pompidou in the 2006-07 show “Yves Klein: corps, couleurs, immatérial.” The catalog failed to reveal the secret of the fascination exercised by a monochrome surface, toned or not. The £3.28 million price indicates that it can cast a mysterious spell.



The Klein enigma is not unique. The Lucio Fontana phenomenon is equally intriguing. The Argentina-born artist, who moved to Italy as a child, shared the Frenchman’s love of monochrome surfaces and spiced them with splashes cut through the canvas. He liked his monochromes so much that he produced them in series under generic titles. Some, like the “Concetto Spaziale, Attese” seen at Sotheby’s Wednesday sale, were churned out with great economy of means. The artist, who did not even bother to use paint, took the unprimed canvas and slashed it with a downward stroke. This artistic minimalism dazzled the room, which ran up the slashed piece of fabric to £657,250, twice the high estimate.



Fontana would also vent his fury on metallic plaques. He is quoted as having once asked, casting his mind back to his stay in the United States: “How was I to paint this terrible New York?” Copper sheets resolved the problem. Beaten out of shape, and ripped through, one sheet was still called “Concetto Spaziale.” Keen to make his meaning clear, Fontana added the mention “New York 26.” This imaginative effort impressed the contemporary art fan brigade. The privilege of owning the battered plate cost £3.06 million.

Another copper sheet, pierced through with uneven rows of holes, did not stir up the same emotions. Just called “Concetto Spaziale,” it lacked the New York magic. At £2.05 million, though, the copper sheet still did rather well.



Why, and just how, the Zero collection boosted the sale of works from various owners that followed — and which often stood at the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum — defies rationalization. Nevertheless, Mr. Meyer, whose acute understanding of the contemporary art scene is backed up by years of conducting auctions, told me that he felt sure that it did. Works of every school and every period were enthusiastically chased.



There was the late exercise in Expressionist Abstraction by Willem de Kooning, “Untitled XIV.” Done in 1983, it lacks the lashing energy of his earlier period and, despite this, brought a huge £3.96 million. And there was the totally traditional study in black chalk of the “Head of Leon Kossoff” sketched by Frank Auerbach. Done in the manner of mid-19th-century artists, it sold for £1.03 million, 11 times what Sotheby’s expected.



Why that wind of folly suddenly calmed down when the next Auerbach came up, no one could say. The portrait called “Large Head of J.Y.M.,” done in furious brushstrokes crushing the paint on the canvas, verges on abstraction. Although attuned to the contemporary mood, it did not even match the lower end of the estimate at £657,250.



On Thursday evening, at Christie’s, the erratic yoyo-like price movements continued. The experts must have been wondering whether they had been remiss when the first lot, Matthew Day Jackson’s prankish portrait of Buckminster Fuller, drawn on a very large panel in 2007, went just over £601,000, multiplying more than 12 times the high estimate.



A world auction record was established when Alighiero Boetti’s set of 11 rectangular essays in trailed red color, all with the title “Ononimo,” exceeded £1 million, nearly tripling the estimate. Just as unpredictably, a large panel in oil and sand “White with Reddish sign,” signed and dated in 1973 by Antoni Tàpies, also set a new record for the Catalan artist of the Paris school as it doubled the high estimate at £993,250.



Bidders displayed the same eagerness as the day before, and the reasons triggering their sudden bouts of enthusiasm were as elusive as ever. The sale, smaller than at Sotheby’s, went proportionately nearly as well, taking in £39.14 million and posting a remarkable 90 percent success rate.



Contemporary art buyers, it would appear, were never in a better mood than this week. Abrupt fits of crazy enthusiasm got hold of them at intervals. Just don’t ask why. Even the experts could not crack that enigma.

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Yves Klein's "Relief éponge" Sells for $9,149,790 at Christie's Contemporary Art Sale


The top price was paid for "Relief éponge" or (RE47II) by Yves Klein (1928-1962) which sold for $9,149,790 (estimate: £5 million to £7 million). REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth.

LONDON.- The Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale took place this evening at Christie’s and realized £39,149,500 / $61,073,220 / €44,278,085 selling 90% by lot and 96% by value. The sale had a pre-sale estimate of £26,290,000 to £38,260,000.

Francis Outred, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s Europe: “This evening’s auction not only showed that confidence has returned to the art market but also that there is a real hunger from international collectors for Post-War and Contemporary art. The strong results at our international auctions during the second half of last year encouraged vendors who were previously resistant to consign works of art, and the increased supply of quality works fed a strong demand and led to competitive bidding this evening. We sold more than half the lots above estimate, including 7 of the top works, and in selling 9 works over £1 million, we have already surpassed the equivalent figure for all three of our auctions of Post-War and Contemporary art in London last year. We saw particularly strong prices for classic European artists including Yves Klein as well as Tapies and Boetti, both of whose work established world record prices. These results should give consignors great encouragement as we look forward to the next major auctions of Post-War and Contemporary art in New York and London in May and June respectively.”

The top price was paid for "Relief éponge" or (RE47II) by Yves Klein (1928-1962) which sold for £5,865,250 / $9,149,790 / €6,633,598 (estimate: £5 million to £7 million). The longer of only two gold sponge reliefs ever created by the artist, it encapsulates the essence of Klein’s art with the marriage of two of his greatest series; the Relief Eponges (Sponge reliefs) and Monogolds. It was offered at auction this evening for the first time having been in the collection of the vendor since circa 1980.

At this evening’s auction, 9 works of art sold for £1 million (16 over $1 million). Buyers (by lot / by origin) were 33% UK, 41% Europe, 22% Americas and 4% Asia.

Further leading highlights of the sale:

· "Anthropométrie" (ANT 5) by Yves Klein (1928-1962) doubled pre-sale expectations realizing £4,129,250 / $6,441,630 / €4,670,182. The largest of only six works from this celebrated series to incorporate a mixture of fire and blue pigment, it was estimated to realize £1.5 million to £2 million. It last sold at auction in London in 2001 when it had realized £388,500.

· Fliegender Tanga (Flying Tanga) by Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) realized £2,561,250 / $2,995,550 / €2,896,774, the second highest price for the artist at auction. An important early work in 5 parts which was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1984, it was expected to realize £800,000 to £1,200,000.

· Dollar Sign by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) sold for £2,281,250 / $3,558,750 / €2,580,094. It last sold at auction in New York in November 2005 for $1.6 million.

· Concrete Cabin West Side, 1993, by Peter Doig (b.1959) realized £2,057,250 / $3,209,310 / €2,326,750 (estimate: £2 million to £3 million). This large scale canvas was offered at auction for the first time having been in the same collection since it was selected by the vendor from the artist’s studio in advance of its first exhibition at a gallery in London.

· Head of J.Y.M., 1973, by Frank Auerbach (b.1931) sold for £1,441,250 / $2,248,350 / €1,630,054. One of the artist’s most important portraits of his most famous muse, Juliet Yardley Mills, it was expected to realize £900,000 to £1,200,000.

· Elsewhere in the sale, 4 record prices at auction were established for: Matthew Day Jackson (b.1974) (Bucky realized £601,250 against an estimate £30,000-£40,000); Joana Vasconcelos (b.1971) (Marilyn sold for £505,250 against an estimate of £100,000 to £150,000); Antoni Tàpies (b.1923) (Blanc amb signe vermellós (White with Reddish Sign) sold for £993,250 against an estimate of £300,000 to £400,000); and Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) (Ononimo sold for £1,049,250 against an estimate of £250,000 to £350,000).