Warhol Polaroid Portraits at Christie’s

Last September, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced it would auction off a chunk of its trove at Christie’s to benefit its endowment.  The other big change at the Warhol Foundation in 2012 was the dissolution of its authentication board, which was becoming overly expensive due to constant lawsuits.  Both changes were motivated by the Warhol Foundation’s desire to further its mission and increase its grantmaking activities.  Everyone, except Jose Mugrabi, wins!

On November 12, Christie’s began the Warholmania with three auctions—one for photographs, paintings and works on paper, and prints (the catalogues have some crazy graphic design).  The auctions featured 354 works and brought in $17,017,050. (There is still a ton of work to be sold by Christie’s through a selling exhibition in Hong Kong and an online sale next month.)

How did Andre Leon Talley being cute go for so low?!

Four Facts: This Will Have Been

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

“I got love for you if you were born in the 80s,” croons Calvin Harris. Why thank you Calvin, I was in fact, born in the 80s, towards the end of it, but still.  This is why the MCA’s This Will Have Been is such a fun show for me—because it presents work that I am mostly unfamiliar with.  Unfamiliar, for two reasons: one—the work has not been thoroughly historicized yet, and two—I wasn’t around when most of the work was being produced.

There are A LOT of conversations in the show, some of which you can find here, here, here, and here.  While that might be confusing, the overall curatorial statement is to present “the decade’s moments of contentious debate, raucous dialogue, erudite opinions, and joyful expression.” And there were a lot.

Everybody loves an inflatable bunny!

Lucas Cranach’s Adam and Eve

Restitution Issue: Norton Simon Museum

Adam and Eve, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder in c. 1530, are a pair of panel paintings currently on view in Pasadena, at the Norton Simon Museum.  There hasn’t been an update on the painted pair since October, but the ownership of the Adam and Eve remains an unresolved dispute.  Marei Von Saher is the daughter-in-law of Jacques Goudstikker, a previous owner of the Adam and Eve.  During the 1940s, Goudstikker fled Holland and was forced to sell the panels to the Nazis under duress.  The issue of restitution would seem clear if this case was that simple.  A questionable, century-long provenance and a legal tangle both complicate the case.  Let’s explore.

Adam and Eve have hung at the Norton Simon since 1977.

Norton Simon bought the Cranach panels from George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff , a Russian, in 1971.  Stroganoff-Scherbatoff was the heir of an aristocratic family who claimed to have owned the paintings prior to 1917.  Stroganoff-Scherbatoff received/bought the paintings from the Dutch Government in a restitution agreement in 1966.  The Dutch Government was restituted the paintings (remember Goudstikker fled Holland during WWII) after WWII.  The Nazis forced Goudstikker to sell them in the 1940s.  Goudstikker had bought the paintings from the Soviet government at an auction in 1931.  The Russian government had confiscated Adam and Eve from the family of Stroganoff-Scherbatoff prior to 1917.  Seems like a resolved case of restitution: Russian heir gets stolen paintings back and then sells them to a collector (Norton Simon).