• Picasso and Warhol paintings expected to sell for at least $35 million each

    Reuters

    Pablo Picasso's "Nature Morte Aux Tulipes" is expected to sell for at least $35 million at auction.

    By Patricia Reaney, Reuters

    NEW YORK -- A 1932 portrait by Pablo Picasso of his young lover and a pioneering 3-D Andy Warhol painting of the Statue of Liberty are expected to sell for at least $35 million each, but could fetch much more when they are auctioned next month.

    The two works, Picasso's "Nature Morte Aux Tulipes," and Warhol's "Statue of Liberty" will be the highlights of New York autumn sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. 

    The Picasso masterpiece is one of several renderings of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter and considered by art experts to be one of his most important works. It carries a pre-sale estimate from $35 million to up to $50 million ahead of the Nov. 5 sale at Sotheby's. 

    "The young woman, with her Grecian profile and athletic, statuesque frame, inspired Picasso's greatest achievements in a variety of media," said Simon Shaw, Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art department in New York. 

    "Nature Morte Aux Tulipes" is exceptional within the series for its double-meditation on this subject, demonstrating the influence of Surrealism on his output: the artist builds a sculpture of Marie-Thérèse, and then paints that sculpture as a sexually charged still life, allowing him to dissect her form on many levels," he added in a statement. 

    Marie-Thérèse, who was just 17 years old when she met the already married Picasso, was featured in many of his works and bore him a daughter in 1935. 

    Another painting of her, "Femme à la Fenêtre" from 1936, will also be included in the Sotheby sale with a pre-sale estimate of up to $20 million. 

    "Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur" a 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse was sold to anonymous buyer at a 2010 auction for $106.5 million. 

    The sale of the Picasso portraits coincides with a new exhibition of the works of the renowned Spanish artist at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

    The following week, on Nov. 14 , Warhol's "Statue of Liberty," will go under the hammer at Christie's. It is the first of its kind in 3-D and the only example of the artist's experimentation with the technique still privately owned. 

    A child of immigrants, Warhol painted the red and green work showing multiple misaligned images of the iconic landmark in 1962 as a prelude to his Death and Disaster series, according to Christie's. 


    "Andy Warhol's 'Statue of Liberty' is one of the most important statements on America and on painting in the 1960s," said Brett Gorvy, the chairman and international head of Post-War and Contemporary Art. 

    "It is a famous icon of the American dream, alongside Warhol's most popular American subjects such as the Coca-Cola bottle, the Campbell's soup-cans and his Marilyns and Elvis." 

    Two other paintings from the 3-D series are part of museum collections in Switzerland and Pittsburgh. 

    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced last month that it would sell paintings, photos and other works by the pop artist in a series of auctions, private sales and online. Proceeds from the sales will be used to help the foundation expand its support of the visual arts.

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  • New Andy Warhol exhibit opens in N.Y.'s Metropolitan Museum of Art

    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

    Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987),
    "Big Campbell's Soup Can," 19¢ (Beef Noodle), 1962.

    By Jane L. Levere, NBC News contributor

    Artist Andy Warhol, creator of now legendary paintings of Campbell’s soup cans, is the inspiration for a major new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, opening Sept. 18.

    Called “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years,” the exhibit displays almost 50 works by Warhol — paintings, sculpture and films — alongside 100 works by some 60 other artists inspired by his creations. The museum says it is the first major exhibition to explore Warhol's full impact on the contemporary art world. 


    The exhibit also coincides with the 50th anniversary of Warhol’s first major one-man show, at a Los Angeles gallery, of his “32 Campbell’s Soup Cans,” individual paintings of 32 varieties of soup that were displayed side-by-side, like cans of soup on a grocery store shelf.

    The Metropolitan’s exhibit divides the works of Warhol and others into five sections: his interest in daily news found in newspapers and magazines; his interest in portraits, particularly of celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe; how Warhol  broke new ground representing issues of sexuality and gender; his use of famous paintings — like the “Mona Lisa” — and photographs by others in his work; and his partnerships in filmmaking, design and magazine publishing. (He founded the pop culture magazine, “Interview,” in 1969.) Contemporary artists whose work is featured in the exhibit include Ai Weiwei, Richard Avedon, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Chuck Close, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman; the exhibit’s catalogue contains interviews with Baldessari, Close, Katz and Koons, among others.

     

    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

    Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987), "Red Jackie," 1964.

    Mark Rosenthal, a curator of the exhibit, said in its catalogue that from almost the start of his career, Warhol “cast a very broad shadow over the art world, one that covers a period of about fifty years and has had a sweeping effect on a group of far more than that number of artists from around the globe. Among his influential pursuits, he made art the province of all manner of prosaic themes and sources; he put photography, appropriation and serial composition at the center of his methodology; and he gave permission to do virtually anything in the name of art.  By his example, the premises and practices of art-making were dramatically transformed.”

    Related: Andy Warhol's estate to sell off all of his remaining works

    In addition to the exhibit, on display through Dec. 31, 2012, the museum is offering a series of related concerts, talks and tours, including a tribute by singer Patti Smith and a discussion of Warhol and reality TV. Warhol — whose quote, “In the future everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes,” is now itself world-famous — developed his own TV series, “Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes,” for MTV in 1985.

    Andy Cohen, producer of “Real Housewives” and “Top Chef,” and a participant in the museum’s reality TV discussion, said, “We now live in a world where everybody is famous. Warhol was amused by the success of the first reality show, ‘An American Family.’  His philosophy was everybody is a star. I think he’d be amused” by reality TV today.

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  • UK man buys earliest Warhol Pop Art work for $5?

    A British businessman has discovered what could be the earliest piece of Andy Warhol's 'Pop Art' ever found.

    By NBC News and msnbc.com staff

    A British businessman has discovered what could be the earliest piece of Andy Warhol's "Pop Art" ever found.

    An art expert told the U.K.'s ITN that the $5 bargain could be worth millions, if it's authenticated.

    Channel 4 News in the U.K. reported that the painting was bought by Andy Fields, of Devon, in Las Vegas, from a drug user whose aunt cared for Warhol as a child. It said the picture had been valued at more than $2 million.

    Warhol was supposed to have made the work when he was just 10 or 11 in the 1930s, Channel 4 said.

    NBC News partner ITN in London contributed to this report.

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  • Warhol's 'Double Elvis' could sell for as much as $50 million at auction

    AP

    "Double Elvis [Ferus Type]" is estimated to sell for between $30 million to $50 million at Sotheby's in New York on May 9, 2012.

    By Reuters

    An iconic portrait of Elvis Presley by pop artist Andy Warhol is poised to fetch as much as $50 million when it hits the auction block in May, Sotheby's said on Thursday.

    The life-size painting, "Double Elvis (Ferus Type)" from 1963, epitomizes Warhol's obsessions with fame, stardom and the public image, according to Sotheby's.

    Estimated to sell for $30 million to $50 million, it will be included in the auction house's May 9 sale of post-war and contemporary art.

    "The silver background of 'Double Elvis (Ferus Type),' along with the subtle variations in tone give the serial imagery a sense of rhythmic variation that recalls the artist's masterpiece, '200 One Dollar Bills' completed the previous year," Sotheby's said in a statement.

    That work soared to nearly $44 million or four times its estimate in 2009, when the art market was reeling from the financial crisis that struck in 2008. It was the highlight of the season, and achieved the highest price of any work at the fall auctions.

    In the "Double Elvis" work, Presley is dressed as a cowboy, shooting a gun. Sotheby's described him in the work "a Hollywood icon of the '60s rather than the rebellious singer who shook the world of music in the '60s."

    The double in the title refers to a shadowy image of Presley in the same pose that appears next to him in the work.

    Of 22 works in Warhol's Elvis series which were first exhibited at Los Angeles' Ferus gallery, nine are in museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

    At the Los Angeles exhibit, Warhol stipulated that "the paintings were to be displayed as a 'continuous surround,' encircling the gallery like flickering pictures reminiscent of early film," Sotheby's said.


    The last double Elvis work to come up for auction was in 1995. Prices for Warhols have soared dramatically since then, with works featuring pop culture icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor fetching top prices.

    But it was a work from Warhol's "Death and Disaster" series that set the artist's record, which still stands. "Green Car Crash (Green Car Burning)," also from 1963, more than doubled its estimate and sold for $71.7 million in 2007, at the height of the art market boom.

    "Double Elvis" will be exhibited in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London prior to the May sale.

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