Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary Art

RICHARD NEUTRA'S KAUFMANN HOUSE

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT CHRISTIE'S HAS PLACED ARCHITECTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF A CONTEMPORARY SALE. >

Robert Rauschenberg Andy Warhol Sam Francis Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Mark Rothko Roy Lichtenstein Gerhard Richter

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Roy Lichtenstein
Ball of Twine, 1963
Estimate $14–18 million
Christie’s contemporary

In the early 1960s, when Roy Lichtenstein was painting his signature cartoon frames, he also created a handful of black-and-white “single object” compositions. Drawing on the aesthetic of commercial art, the paintings depict such banal items as a golf ball, a tire, an electric cord—and a ball of twine. Shown in this 1963 picture against a background of Ben­day dots, like those in comic books, the strands, carefully choreographed into a dance of curved, animated lines, have striking graphic power.

The artist created the 40-by-36-inch canvas in what proved to be an extraordinary year for him. Not only was he given debut solo shows at Ferus Gallery, in Los Angeles, and Sonnabend Gallery, in Paris, but he also had his second solo exhibition in New York with Leo Castelli, who sold Ball of Twine to the early Pop art collector Leon Kraushar, of Long Island, for $780. Kraushar later sold it to the German collector Karl Stroher, whose heirs consigned it to the Sotheby’s New York evening sale in November 2001. It was a turbulent economic time, due to the terrorist attacks on September 11, yet the work still fetched a rousing $4.1 million (est. $1.5–$2 million).

Only two Lichtensteins—both painted around the same time as this one—have exceeded $10 million at auction: Sinking Sun, 1964 (est. on request), fetched $15.7 million at Sotheby’s New York in May 2006, and In the Car, 1963 (est. on request), made a record $16.3 million at Christie’s New York in November 2005. Ball of Twine is poised to match or even top those results.

In a now-famous 1963 magazine interview, the artist was asked to define Pop art. He responded: “I don’t know—the use of commercial art as a subject matter in painting, I suppose. It was hard to get a painting that was despicable enough so that no one would hang it,” he continued. “The one thing everybody hated was commercial art.”

Claude Monet
Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, 1873
Estimate on request
Christie’s Imp/mod

The appearance of premium Impres­sionist paintings at auction has become something of a rarity, given the historical significance of the period and the number of museums and private collectors hoarding prime examples. In this climate, Christie’s is aggressively touting Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil as a potential record setter. That would require beating the artist’s high of £19.8 million ($33 million), set 10 years ago at Sotheby’s London by Bassin aux nymphéas et sentier au bord de l’eau, painted at Giverny in 1900.

The sellers, the powerful Nahmad art-trading clan, who negotiated a financial guar­antee for the picture, acquired it at Christie’s London in November 1998 for £6.8 million ($12.5 million). It had previously sold at auction at Sotheby’s London in April 1979 for £420,000 ($873,600).

The early publicity surrounding the identity of the consignor is a tad puzzling, considering the Nahmads’ penchant for secrecy and reputation for bare-knuckle dealing in the Impressionist and modern field. Scores of their holdings appear regularly at auction without ownership attribution. Nahmad possession isn’t exactly an esteemed provenance, but few would quarrel with the painting’s pristine condition, wall power and voluminous scholarly references.

Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil is one of 170 paintings that Monet made of Argenteuil, a bucolic village that the railroad’s incursion transformed into a Paris suburb, and it delivers a timely view of industrial progress impinging on country life. “This is an absolutely iconic image, truly irreplaceable in today’s market,” says Paul Tucker, the Boston-based Monet scholar and author. “There just isn’t another like it.”