Modigliani sells for $157.2M in New York—Sotheby’s

A stunning nude that is the largest painting produced by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani sold for $157.2 million in New York on Monday, becoming the fourth most expensive work of art sold at auction.

Painted a century ago, Modigliani’s masterpiece “Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)” fetched the highest price in Sotheby’s history and was the star single lot in the May art auction season in New York.

Modigliani follows Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso as the third highest-selling artist at auction. Monday’s sale failed to eclipse the $170.4 million paid for another Modigliani nude at Christie’s in 2015.


Nearly 58 inches (147 centimeters) wide, the picture was the cover star of a recent retrospective at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

Modigliani reinvented the nude for the modern era, and when his series of paintings were first exhibited in 1917, they were considered so shocking that police closed the show in Paris.

Bidding was restrained, lasting three to four minutes and opening at $125 million before auctioneer Helena Newman brought the hammer down at $139 million. The final price includes a buyer’s premium.

The price chalks up a healthy profit for its seller, who acquired the picture in 2003 for $26.9 million.

Modigliani completed 22 reclining nudes and 13 seated nudes between 1916 and 1919. Most of the former are found in museums, such as The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Simon Shaw, co-head of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s, said the painting sold Monday, while rooted in tradition, reflected the changing status of women during World War I.

“This is a nude of a very self-possessed, sexually confident woman who is not looking out from a distance. She’s absolutely meeting our gaze,” he told AFP prior to the sale.

Modigliani’s dealer Leopold Zborowski gave him a stipend of 15 francs a day and paid the models five francs to pose in a Paris apartment. MKH

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

Diamond the size of a tennis ball could fetch $70 million

LONDON  — It’s a rock for the ages.

A 3-billion-year-old diamond the size of a tennis ball — the largest discovered in over a century — could sell for more than $70 million, auctioneer Sotheby’s said Wednesday.

The auction house plans to offer the Lesedi la Rona diamond in London on June 29.

The diamond was unearthed in November in Botswana at a mine owned by Canada’s Lucara Diamond Corporation. It measured 1,109 carats, the second-largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered. Its name means “our light” in the Tswana language of southern Africa.

The auctioneer said the rough gemstone “of exceptional transparency” could yield the largest top-quality diamond ever cut and polished.

David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby’s jewelry division, called the discovery “the find of a lifetime” and the auction unprecedented.

“Not only is the rough superlative in size and quality, but no rough even remotely of this scale has ever been offered before at public auction,” he said.

The largest diamond ever found was the 3,106-carat Cullinan diamond, unearthed in South Africa in 1905. It was cut into nine pieces that form part of the U.K. Crown Jewels.

The Lesedi la Rona could smash the record price for a diamond of $48.5 million, paid at a Geneva sale last year for the 12.03-carat polished “Blue Moon” diamond. Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau picked it up as a gift for his 7-year-old daughter. TVJ

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

Giant white truffle fetches more than $61,000 at New York auction

NEW YORK - A white truffle from Italy, said to be the largest in the world, sold for $61,250 at an auction in New York on Saturday, Sotheby's said.

The truffle, which weighs 4.16 lbs (1.89 kg), was purchased by a buyer from Taiwan who bid by telephone, the auction house said.

The massive fungus was discovered in Italy last week by Sabatino Truffles, one of the largest suppliers. It is stored in an airtight box, Sotheby's said.

White truffles, one of the most coveted and expensive delicacies in the world, are found only in certain areas of Italy from October through December. They grow wild in forests and are detected by specially trained dogs and experienced hunters.

They vary in size and are valued for their flavor and aroma.

Sotheby's said the truffle was the largest ever found. It is nearly twice the size of a truffle that was sold in 2010 for $417,200, although the two sale prices are not necessarily comparable, a Sotheby's spokesman said.

The earlier sale took place at a charity dinner in Hong Kong while Saturday's auction had only one bidder, he said.

The Balestra family of Sabatino Truffles said it plans to donate proceeds from the sale to several charities. — Reuters

John Lennon’s doodles, drawings, nonsense poems to be sold in New York

LONDON - The largest private collection of nonsense poems, doodles and comic drawings by the Beatles singer John Lennon will be sold in New York in June, auctioneer Sotheby's said on Friday.

Ranging from gibberish descriptions of Lennon's native city Liverpool, in northern England, to a drawing of a "National Health Cow" in an apparent jab at Britain's national health service, the collection reveals a lesser known side of the celebrated British singer, who was shot dead in 1980.

The drawings and original manuscripts are part of the collection of publisher Tom Maschler, creator of the prestigious literary award the Booker Prize, who published them in two books, "In His Own Write" (1964), and "A Spaniard in the Works" (1965).

The collection, named "You Might Well Arsk," has a pre-sale estimate of around $800,000 over 89 lots, Sotheby's said.

The sale coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first appearance in America on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. Watched by 73 million Americans, it shot the band to stardom.

The drawings and poems all date back to the early 1960s at the height of Beatlemania, Sotheby's said.

One of the unpublished typescripts contains a reference to the record-breaking British band's first single "Love Me Do", released in 1962.

"The Beatles (a band) hab jud make a regord ... a song they whripe themselves called 'Lub Me Jew'", Lennon wrote in his characteristic gibberish style.

"It's very much like Lewis Carroll. 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' were two of Lennon's favorite books from childhood and he read them on a yearly basis," said Philip Errington, director of printed books and manuscripts at Sotheby's.

"It is gibberish, it is gobbledygook, and yet it's funny, it's humorous verse."

Not everyone was as convinced of their literary value. In a parliamentary debate in 1964, a Conservative politician, Charles Curran, used Lennon's nonsense verse to attack Britain's education standards.

"He [Lennon] is in a state of pathetic near-literacy," Curran said. "He seems to have picked up bits of Tennyson, Browning and Robert Louis Stevenson while listening with one ear to the football results on the wireless."

Maschler tracked Lennon down at a concert after coming across the drawings and writings in 1962 and convinced him to make a book out of them.

The New York sale will take place on June 4. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com