20th Century Italian & Contemporary Art
SUPERMODEL JERRY HALL'S COLLECTIONI was lucky enough to be invited to attend Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Friday, 15 October, 2010, which coincides with the Frieze Art Fair in London. The sale will present 40 artworks that are estimated to realize in excess of £10 million.
ANDY WARHOL WITH JERRY HALLIn addition to the outstanding pieces by leading artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach in the auction from the Collection of Jerry Hall, the world-famous American supermodel and actress.
JERRY HALL, 1997Lucien Freud
Estimate £30,000-40,000
The sale will also feature important works by established artists such as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Andreas Gursky, as well as pieces by a younger generation of artists including Bansky, Elizabeth Peyton and Ahmed Alsoudani, whose artworks have never before been offered at auction.
PYONGYANG IV, 2007
Andreas Gursky
Estimate £500,000-700,000
Executed by the artist in 2007 and from an edition of 7, the work is one of a series of five images that Gursky made on this subject following his 2007 visit to North Korea. The work examines the same formal themes of surface ornament and pattern that pervade many of his best works, but in an entirely different corner of our globalize society; North Korea, the last outpost of communist dictatorship. The festival, held annually to commemorate the birth of North Korea's former leader, Kim Il Sung, is recognized as the largest event of its kind in the world and is the showpiece of the country's dictator, Kim Jong Il. In this painstakingly choreographed spectacle, tens of thousands of gymnasts, individually hand picked for their skill, execute with mechanical precision a sequence of synchronized moves which radiate waves of energy around the Rungrado May Day Stadium, the largest stadium of its kind in the world. In the background, thirty thousand strictly disciplined school children in white attire hold up sheets of paper of a different color at the appointed time to create a succession of background images, each child an individual tile in a monumental human mosaic. To avoid any potential political gloss, Gursky's photograph consciously avoids depicting portraits of Kim Il Sung, Korean slogans or propagandistic images of the happy proletariat which, in the course of the spectacle, variously appear on the human screen in the background. Instead, Gursky's camera focuses on the abstract patterns that underpin this event.
DIAMOND DUST SHOES, 1980Andy Warhol
Estimate 1,300,000-1,600,000
The sale will also feature two of Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) most iconic works: Diamond Dust Shoes from 1980 and Flowers from 1965. The acrylic, silkscreen ink and diamond dust on canvas Diamond Dust Shoes is the most impressive work of this spectacular series ever to be offered for public sale in recent times. For his entire career and life Andy Warhol was obsessed with shoes, and these high-heeled icons represent all the transformative promises of glamour and attraction proposed by 20th-century fashion. Sparkling and glittering, the inherent qualities of diamond dust make a direct reference to movie star glamour, high fashion fame and money.
UNTITLED, 2003
(Orange Butterfly Green MG 03)
Mark Grotjahn
Estimate £350,000-450,000
A further auction highlight is Mark Grotjahn’s (b. 1968) oil on canvas which is a captivating display of the perspectival reorientation and sumptuous colour immersion that has made this artist one of the most exciting painters working in America today. While the formative paintings of his early career were heavily dependent on text and derived much of their conceptual weight from home-made signs of the sort found in shop windows and consisting of different graphics or varying point size and font type, in the late 1990s he developed geometric paintings with multiple and independent vanishing points usually with three horizon lines in a single canvas. The present work is an early and outstanding paragon of this body of works, and typifies the most important themes of method and concept of his best work.
THE NAZIS, 1998
Piotr Uklanski
Estimate 3400,000-£600,000
Also being offered for sale is Polish artist Piotr Uklanski’s (b. 1969) The Nazis, which consists of 164 chromogenic, black and white and colour photographs and was created in 1998. Number 5 of an edition of 10, it is Uklanski's most renowned and significant work to date and affords an encyclopedic survey of the wildly divergent cinematic interpretations and treatments of the history of war in the 20th century. From the determinedly epic to the effusively sentimental; the overtly heroic to the outright comic, this extraordinary document of and response to 20th- century filmmaking issues an incredibly powerful analysis of the conflicting perspectives of directors, producers, actors, cinematographers and stylists that compiled this canon of "War Films" for more than six decades. In its truly monumental scale and the brilliantly glossy chromatic terms of its manufacture, The Nazis lucidly and succinctly reveals the dependence upon film in later 20th-century western societies to inform our emotional and psychological responses to the Past.
I will be working the ticketing counter on Friday night and will watch the auction in the standing room after everyone is seated. I’m so excited! I know that just being asked to work the event is a testament to my hard work at Sotheby’s so far!
Last night I had the privilege of attending the RM/Sotheby’s preview of the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that starred in the James Bond films Goldfinger and Thunderball. Let me tell you, this car would bring out the little boy in everyone- regardless of age, gender, or previous passion for automobiles. 
Who wouldn’t dream of owning an Aston Martin, let alone James Bond’s Aston Martin? It comes customized with 007 ‘Q-Branch’ gadgets such as machine guns, a bullet-proof shield, revolving number plates, tracking devices, a removable roof panel, oil-slick sprayer, nail-spreader and a smokescreen-all controlled from the special agent switches hidden in the centre arm-rest!
Known around the world by its original UK registration number, FMP 7B, this 1964 Aston Martin is one of the two original ‘007’ DB5s as featured on screen with Sean Connery – but it’s the only one remaining. The second one was bought and placed in storage by a private automobile collector. Despite attempts to keep the whereabouts of the car a secret, the second make was stolen. Suspicions surfaced speculating that was in the hands of a mafia boss who has more than one way to relate to the James Bond films. After a much publicized international police investigation, the cars disappearance remains unsolved.
When RM (in association with Sotheby’s) puts the car under the hammer on October 27th, at its luxury automobiles event at the Battersea Evolution venue, it will be the first time in history that this car has come to market. Through the extremely generous Mr. Roger Bell-Ogilby, I will actually be allowed to attend the auction event! The RM automobile auction house expects the sale price to top $5 million.
Originally loaned to EON Productions for the filming of the two Bond movies, the DB5 was returned to the Aston Martin Lagonda factory and then, in 1969, and immediately sold to Mr. Jerry Lee, an American radio broadcaster based in Philadelphia, for $12,000. It has remained in his possession and has rarely been seen publicly over the past 40+ years. Lee created a special garage for the car to control the temperature and moisture and decorated the walls with limited edition 007 memorabilia. He also had special generators created to ensure that the battery and custom gadgets would stay in perfect condition.
Mr. Lee plans to use the proceeds from the sale of FMP 7B to further the charitable work of The Jerry Lee Foundation, a multi-national initiative dedicated to solving social problems associated with poverty, and crime prevention in particular. The car is set to make its first 21st Century public appearance at the Bond-themed Midsummer Classic/Thunderball concourse and black-tie reception scheduled for 26 June at the Stoke Park Club, near London.
