Condo Condo

At the February launch of 15 Union Square West, a luxury condominium development in New York, Christie’s seized on a chance to display artworks in a domestic setting. Smartly dressed art lovers and real-estate shoppers arriving at the construction site were shunted in a wire-cage elevator past girders, concrete and dust to a completed third-floor unit, where they ate caviar and previewed nine lots from this month’s First Open postwar and contemporary sale, including works by Keith Haring, Robert Rauschenberg and Pipilotti Rist. The event was part of the firm’s effort to integrate more closely its auction and real-estate businesses: Christie’s Great Estates affiliate Brown Harris Stevens is handling the marketing and sales of the condos, priced from $4 million to $6 million. One partygoer at the preview admired the art but took issue with the placement of George Condo’s Beatnik, below, in the bedroom. “I couldn’t wake up to that every morning,” he muttered before moving on.

"Condo Condo" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.