Eric Fischl's "Study for Corrida in Ronda #4" 2008, sold for $145,000. Photo: America: Now and Here

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

Painter Eric Fischl’s peripatetic U.S. art tour got a $1.2 million boost last week. The June 23 charity sale at Sotheby’s in New York raised funds for Fischl’s ambitious not-for-profit project, America: Now and Here,  a cross-country tour of art, poetry, film, plays and music to promote creativity and innovation across America. The auction was the project’s official launch.

The auction included works of art by well-known artists, as well as “luxury experiences,” including a Soho dinner for five with Chuck Close, a private tennis lesson with John McEnroe and a one-week stay at a Jamaican villa. Eric Fischl’s Study for Corrida in Ronda #4 was the top lot at the live auction conducted by Sotheby’s chairman and marquee charity auctioneer, Jamie Niven. The work fetched $145,000.

America: Now and Here is a nationwide tour which will stop in eight regions a year. The itinerant exhibition will be open to the public for six weeks in each location. Events will be held in custom-designed mobile truck galleries, civic centers and local schools, and include public programs, performances,…

Sotheby's Tobias Meyer conducting Sotheby's London auction, with Yves Klein's 1961 "Re 49" on the wall. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in London tonight totaled $61.8 million, about a third as much as last May’s New York contemporary sale. Results are respectable: eighty-three percent of lots found buyers. Nine of 53 lots failed to sell. The same London sale tallied just $42 million a year ago.

The evening’s top lot was Klein’s Re 49, Relief Eponge Blue, the surface arrayed with sponges, pebbles and coated in the artist’s signature blue hue.  The 1961 piece sold for $9.3 million to an unnamed U.S. collector, according to Sotheby’s.  The seller was HypoVereinsbank.

Other Kleins on the block included a gold leaf panel MG42 which sold for $732,848, six times the price it fetched in at auction 2000. Another piece, a fire painting titled F124 sold for $1.4 million. The artist’s retrospective continues at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum until Sept. 12.

Sotheby’s press department calculated any and all auction records, including one for a Boetti tapestry: Mappa fetched $1.3 million. Bharti Kher’s life-size elephant sculpture The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, set an auction record for the artist, selling for $1.5 million–also a…

Romare Bearden 1980 oil monotype "Trumpet Player" sold for $24,000 at Swann Galleries. Photo: Swann

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Norman Lewis’ 1946 brown-hued Cubist riff, Bassist, fetched $48,000 yesterday at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York. The piece, estimated to sell for as much as $75,000, was the top lot at the Out of the Blue: Modern Art and Jazz auction.

The Lewis painting was among 54 lots sold yesterday for $391,620, below the sale’s overall projected low estimate. The sale was estimated to total between $475,100 and $728,400. Nearly a third of lots failed to find buyers.

Bassist is one the earliest abstracted jazz musicians that Norman Lewis painted between 1945 and 1946. This was the first to come to auction, according to Swann’s catalog. The archetypal jazz musicians series were the last works by Lewis to portray an explicit jazz theme, because his pieces became heavily abstracted as his career progressed.

The sale was comprised of figurative and abstract art influenced by blues, jazz, and improvisation. It included silver print photographs of famous jazz legends including Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Betty Carter and Miles Davis.

Paintings by Romare Bearden were plentiful. A section of the catalog…

Robert Gober, on left, at Charles Burchfield survey show at Whitney Museum. Photo: Lindsay Pollock

American watercolorist Charles Burchfield is resurrected in all his eccentric, phantasmagorical glory with a new survey show curated by sculptor Robert Gober. The admirable exhibit opens at the Whitney Museum this week and runs until Oct. 17.

The mellifluous Gober, best known for his meticulous sculptures of sinks and body parts, led a group of journalists on a tour of the exhibition, Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, earlier this week.

The show begins with a re-creation of Burchfield’s 1930 solo show at the newly minted Museum of Modern Art. Those works date from 1916-1918, an innovative period when the artist’s landscapes were infused with a Gothic mystery, spiritual longing and Dr. Seuss-like invention. He makes the wind hostile and wheat fields foreboding.

Burchfield resided outside of the bohemian Manhattan milieu. He lived in suburban Buffalo, the father of five children. In the 1920s he worked a day job designing wallpaper. The show includes a riveting, claustrophobic room hung with Burchfield’s own sunflower wallpaper.

A long gallery is devoted to Burchfield’s drawing, lively doodles reminiscent of the unique twisted forms…

Subodh Gupta painting sold for $494,500. Photo: Saffronart

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Saffronart, an online auctioneer specializing in Indian art, concluded its most recent sale June 17th, grossing $6.7 million. The sale included a world-record auction price for painter Jehangir Sabavala. The sale was projected to total  $5.4 – $7 million, and included 90 works by 45 modern and contemporary Indian artists.

Eighty-one percent of lots sold, with 73 finding buyers. Sabavala’s work titled The Casuarina Line I sold for $374,900. His previous record was $264,000 for Storm III, set at Sotheby’s Indian Art Auction in New York in 2007.

Other tops lots included S. H. Raza’s La Provence Noire, which sold for $746,111 and Subodh Gupta’s 2003 can carrying bike riders in Untitled, which fetched $494,500, doubling the projected high estimate of $240,000.

Ten lots were won via Saffronart’s new mobile application, which allows bidder to bid from Blackberrys and iPhones. Those lots totaled $934,272. M.F. Husain’s Untitled was the highest lot sold via mobile, making $235,750.

Saffronart was founded in 2000 by Dinesh and Minal Vazirani. Beginning as collectors, they expanded their online art auction model to include Fine Jewels and Watches in…

Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park" sold for $722,500 to Alinder Gallery

The Alinder Gallery, based in Gualala, California, purchased Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, the top lot at Sotheby’s June 21 and 22 sale of the Polaroid Collection. The work sold for $722,500, above $500,000 high estimate. Overall the sale totaled $12.5 million with 88.8 percent of lots finding buyers. My earlier coverage of the sale is here.

The gallery, which specializes in Ansel Adams has a motto displayed on the landing page of its website:  “Better Art. Better Life.”

Adams took the photo of the misty mountainous landscape in 1938. The mural-sized print from the Polaroid Collection dates from the 1950s or 1960s and was printed four-feet wide and hung in a Polaroid office.

Art Smith copper and brass bracelet, sold for $12,500. Photo: Sotheby's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Last week’s design auctions in New York included a selection of art jewelry. Here’s a recap.

Christie’s June 17 sale included a spiky Pol Bury gold pendant, circa 1970 and from an edition of 30, which fetched $10,000, at the low estimate.

British pop artist Joe Tilson’s 1968 ‘Ziggurat’ necklace, earrings and ring made $4,375, just over the $4,000 low estimate. A pair of 1971 Tapio Wirkkala earrings, estimated $3,000 to $5,000, failed to sell.

The sale included a trove of jewelry and accessories by Claude Lalanne.  A circa 1970 “Bamboo” necklace and matching bracelet by Claude Lalanne, sold for $35,000, six times the high estimate. The 40-inch long necklace is made of gilt-bronze and was originally acquired directly from the artist by his dealer, Alexandre Iolas.

A circa 1970 gilt-bronze belt by Claude Lalanne went for $27,500. The delicate belt features ornamental leaves that decorate the waist and fall from the belt. The jewelry is remains true to the Lalannes’ organic style. Claude and Francois- Xavier are well known for their bronze lily-pad chairs, benches and bronze and wool ‘sheep’ sculptures.

At…

Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," mural sized, est. $300K-$500K, sold for $722,500. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s conducted the first part of a two-day sale of images from the Polaroid Collection last night. The first session included 99 lots and was front-loaded with some of the collection’s best material. Not surprisingly all 99 lots sold. The estimates were pegged extremely low estimates and, one imagines, so were reserves.

The sale came on the heels of protest and hand-wringing from some members of the photography community who objected to the dispersal of the historic collection.

The session totaled $7.2 million, topping the $4.5 million pre-sale high estimate.

Today Sotheby’s will sell the remaining 473 lots. The auction is by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota. Sale proceeds benefit creditors of PBE Corp., formerly Polaroid, which filed for bankruptcy twice in the previous decade. (My earlier Bloomberg story about the sale here).

Landscapes by Ansel Adams fetched some of the biggest prices. New York collector Sunil Hirani was among the successful bidders for Adams large format images.

“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire some of the most iconic American photography by the best and most well…

Frida Kahlo "Survivor." Image: Christie's

Frida Kahlo’s 1938 Survivor cruised past a $150,000 low estimate tonight at Christie’s, selling for $1.2 million during a Latin American painting sale.

The buyer was an unnamed private collector, bidding from the salesroom, according to Christie’s. A dealer who attended the sale told Art Market Views that the buyer was a female Mexican collector on a spree who snapped up 6 to 7 other pieces. Her other acquisitions included paintings by Alfonso Michel, Kazauya Sakai, Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Gunther Gerzso.

The 6 inch by 4 inch painting (which I previously blogged about here) was framed with a Oaxacan tin frame. The painting was first exhibited in 1938 at the Julien Levy Gallery in Kahlo’s first solo show.

UPDATE:

Final sale results are in..the sale totaled $16.8 million with a healthy 81 percent sold by lot. The second priciest lot was Jose Clemente Orozco’s 1929 The City, selling for $1.1 million, above the $200,000-$300,000 presale estimate. This achieved an auction record for the artist.

Maxfield Parrish "Daybreak" sold for $5.2 million at Christie's. Image: Christie's

Link to Bloomberg story here.

By Lindsay Pollock

May 20 (Bloomberg) — Maxfield Parrish’s famous 1922 “Daybreak” sold for $5.2 million today at Christie’s International in New York, at the low end of the $4 million to $7 million presale estimate.

The seller was actor Mel Gibson and his wife, Robyn, who filed for divorce last year. The buyer was an unnamed phone bidder.

The price was well below the $7.6 million Robyn Gibson paid at Christie’s in 2006. At the time, the price established an auction record for Parrish.

The painting had previously sold for $4.3 million at Sotheby’s in 1996 when it was purchased by billionaire James Jannard, founder of the Oakley Inc. sunglasses company.

“The Parrish market is very small,” said dealer Betty Krulik, standing near the front of the Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom. “The owners were the big recent buyers,” she said. “Another big buyer — Michael Jackson — is dead. That limits competition.”

Jim Halperin, co-chairman of Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, was one of two contenders bidding for the Parrish over the phone. He said he owns about a dozen Parrish…