As some of you may know, I work for an art dealer in an art gallery in Los Angeles and I can only describe my job as The Creative Department – {mostly Graphic & Web Designer}. We are a very small team in which we all have very specific jobs and mostly my duties consist of …well, getting my work done as quickly as possible so I can blog all the live long day while trying not to get Dooced.
A very unglamorous aspect of my job, however, is finding sales results for auction catalogs {my boss prefers the spelling catalogue} in which he piles stacks of them on my desk or on the floor by my desk awaiting my attention. I then research the sale online by auction house, print the results, cut them to size, staple them to the inside of the catalogue cover and file them away. About eight years ago when I first began working for this particular art dealer, there was no online source for sales results but instead I would get the results via fax. That was not pleasant. Yay for the internet!
This is only a small section of our collection of auction catalogues which begins in 1978 and continues to present-day for only Contemporary and Modern Art. There are hundreds more in storage for other categories of art and I usually get to take home unwanted catalogues {for categories we do not deal in like photography} and that is a fun bonus. {I cannot tell you how many times I have organized and re-organized these catalogues} They are saved for reasons unknown to me but logically, I would guess it is for researching, evaluating and estimating the value of an artwork, past and present.
On occasion {but not often enough in my opinion}, I flip through the catalogues and do a little research of my own. Here are my latest favorites from a recent November 2008 sale at Phillips
{Estimate $30,000-40,000 ~ unsold}
Banksy “Girl and Balloon” 2006
{sold for $158,500}
Barbara Kruger “Untitled (Hate)” 2001
{sold for $37,500}
Yang Yong “International Passage” 2004
{sold for $20,000}
Yoshitomo Nara “The Little Pilgrim (night walking)” 2002
{sold for $16,250 ~ I heart Nara!}
Ling Jian “Don’t Love The Beauty – Love the Army’s Power, Mao no. 4” 2008
{sold for $146,500}
Tom Sachs “Chanel Fountain” 1998
{sold for $81,700}
Nobuyoshi Araki “Kakyoku 8” 1997
{sold for $11,875}
Robert Indiana “Art” 2000
{sold for $98,500}
Yasumasa Morimura “Self-portrait (actress)” 1996
{sold for $11,250}
David Hockney “Kviknes Hotel, Balestrand (in four parts)” 2002
{Estimate: $$400,000-600,000 ~ unsold}
We actually deal quite a bit in Hockney and his watercolors are my favorite.
They are beautiful in person.
Ruud Van Empel “World #5” 2005
{sold for $47,500}
Happy Friday Luvers!
