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| Passion Investments: Art |
Desire Writ Large
Daniel DelRe
06/01/2005
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The epicenter of today’s highly charged market is not necessarily the Paris
auction houses, nor New York’s galleries, but an area in central Florida known
mainly for Disneyworld and Universal Studios. For the past two years, Sotheby’s
has conducted a private sale of monumental sculpture at Orlando’s Isleworth golf
community, an area with enough open space to accommodate dozens of works. In
2004, the New York–based auction house’s director of private sales, Stephane
Connery (Sean’s stepson), debuted the concept with 11 pieces from eight masters
such as Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dali and Fernando Botero.
VALUE JUDGMENT
Demand for monumental artwork—large-scale sculpture intended for outdoor
display—is soaring, fueling record sales figures. While collectors jostle one
another to acquire the best works, aficionados and experts alike caution that
popular whims can quickly change art values, particularly in a niche as volatile
as modern sculpture. |
Sotheby’s chose an
outdoor sale to demonstrate how monumental sculpture adorns a landscape.
“Setting is very much part of what the sale is all about,” Connery says. The
golf course adorns the finely manicured, 600-acre gated compound where the
average price of a new home is $3.5 million. Isleworth’s owner, Joseph Lewis,
has drawn from his private collection of monumental sculpture to bedeck the golf
course. Two pieces by Henry Moore and one by Philip Jackson comprise the
course’s permanent collection. According to Lisa Richardson, the community’s
real estate manager, “The golf course itself is practically a museum.”
This
year, Connery assembled 27 pieces by 13 artists for the four-month sales
exhibition, which began in January. “We’re trying to keep the bar high in terms
of the caliber of art,” he says. Sotheby’s displayed many pieces from the era of
Rickey and Maillol. “With the exception of a few notables like Brancusi,
Sotheby’s collection included the biggest names of 20th-century sculpture,” says
Timothy Baum, an independent art dealer based in New York. Established
collectors of modern sculpture, including museum curators, rubbed elbows with
first-time buyers during the sale, which saw eight of the 11 pieces change hands
and grossed almost $10 million.
 | | PAINTER AND sculptor Joan Miró conceived and cast Conque in 1969 in an edition
of six. The piece is composed of bronze, black and green patina. |
Nine pieces at Isleworth hailed from the
private collection of the elder Bermans. Of those, Henry Moore’s Reclining
Figure: Arched Leg attracted the highest price, selling for $5.1 million. Still
another Berman piece, Lynn Chadwick’s Pair of Walking Figures, two striking
black forms cast in bronze with capes appearing to billow in a breeze, sold for
approximately $500,000.
Maillol’s La Méditerranée, a classic female
figure that matches the piece he chose to adorn his grave, is a 4-foot figure
based on the form of his favorite muse, Dina Vierny. Cast in 1975, La
Méditerranée sold for approximately $1.5 million at Isleworth. Hare on Bell on
Portland, a playful bronze sculpture by Barry Flanagan, depicts a rabbit frozen
in midair as it leaps across a plain. Its fur appears smoothed by the wind and
its ears are stretched backward, furthering the impression of motion. This piece
fetched about $500,000.
Many of the Isleworth artists established themselves
as prominent surrealist painters as well as abstract sculptors. Max Ernst signed the
inaugural edition of La Révolution Surréaliste, the Paris-based periodical
launched in 1924 to popularize this genre. His piece, Le Grand Assistant, a
birdlike figure standing 5-feet high and priced at approximately $600,000, had
not yet sold as Worth went to press. Joan Miró’s 42-inch Conque, an egg-shaped
bronze abstract with a green and black exterior, sold for about $500,000.
Benediction, a 56-inch figure by Jacques Lipchitz, commemorating France’s
suffering during the Second World War, sold for $610,000.
American artists
were conspicuous by their absence from the 2004 Isleworth sale. Sotheby’s
amended this in 2005 by adding two pieces by American pop artist Robert Indiana.
The first, a 6-foot sculpture in the form of a blue number five, depicting the
artist’s obsession with numbers, was priced at $185,000. Sotheby’s also
proffered Indiana’s Love, an 8-foot sculpture formed by stacking the letters L
and O atop V and E, priced at $480,000. Neither of these had sold by press
time.
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