中国买家斥1.7亿美元购莫迪利亚尼裸女画（英文）
ROBIN POGREBIN, SCOTT REYBURN 2015年11月10日
2015年11月10日
中国买家斥1.7亿美元购莫迪利亚尼裸女画（英文）
ROBIN POGREBIN, SCOTT REYBURN
摘要：由20世纪早期的意大利艺术家莫迪利亚尼创作的《侧卧的裸女》本周一在佳士得进行拍卖，一位中国买家以1.704亿美元（约合10.84亿元人民币）的高价拍下这幅作品，使其成为艺术品拍卖价格榜中的榜眼。
In an overheated art market where anything seems possible, a painting of an outstretched nude woman by the early 20th-century artist Amedeo Modigliani sold on Monday night for $170.4 million with fees, in a packed sales room at Christie's. It was the second highest price paid for an artwork at auction.
The painting became the 10th work of art to sell for nine figures under the hammer. It took nine minutes to sell, with the winning bid coming from a Chinese buyer on the phone. Four others vied by phone against a bidder in the room.
The seller of the Modigliani, Laura Mattioli Rossi, the daughter of the Italian collector Gianni Mattioli, was guaranteed at least a $100 million minimum price. Just before the sale, Christie's announced that a third party had stepped forward to share the risk — as well as any proceeds above the guaranteed price.
An arresting pop art work by Roy Lichtenstein, "Nurse," from 1964, also defied expectations, selling for slightly over $95.3 million, well above its $80 million high estimate — despite the lack of a "speech" or "thought bubble" that typically drives up the price of Lichtenstein works. "Nurse" reached a new price level for Lichtenstein at auction. Christie's also shared that guarantee with a third party.
Monday night's sale of 34 lots brought slightly more than $491.3 million .
It was Modigliani's 1917-18 canvas, "Nu Couché," that was the star lot around which Christie's built its themed "Artist's Muse" auction, designed to attract international buyers of the world's most expensive art. With some collectors concerned about a bubble in the market for so-called "cutting edge" contemporary art, investment-conscious buyers have been looking for blue-chip names from earlier periods. Modigliani nudes are regarded as among the ultimate trophy paintings of the 20th century.
The price was a high for Modigliani at auction, beating the $70.7 million paid in New York last November for his 1911-12 sculpture "Tête." His "Portrait de Paulette Jourdain," from around 1919, sold for $42.8 million at Sotheby's sale of the A. Alfred Taubman estate last week, well over its estimate of $25 million.
Monday's sale assuaged concerns that the painting would be too risqué for some collectors.
"This painting leaps off the page as the most vibrant, sexual, lyrical of the catalog raisonee," said Ana Maria Celis, a Christie's specialist in Post-War & Contemporary Art.
In its preview exhibition, Christie's deliberately positioned the Modigliani near Lucian Freud's painting of his nude daughter Bella, "Naked Portrait on a Red Sofa."
Ms. Celis noted that the Freud was less erotic than the Modigliani, "almost contemplative" by comparison.
The sale propelled Modigliani into the $100 Million-at-Auction Club whose members include Picasso (three times), Bacon, Giacometti (three times), Warhol and Munch. It also represented a far cry from the prices being asked for the Italian artist's work in his own brief and unsuccessful lifetime (he died of tuberculosis in 1920 at age 35).
In the winter of 1918-19, a desperate Modigliani offered to sell the entire contents of his Paris studio — which in all likelihood included Christie's "Nu Couché" — to the British writers Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, for 100 pounds or $300 (roughly $4,700 today). According John Pearson's 1978 book, "Facades: Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell," the aristocratic brothers couldn't raise the cash.
Lichtenstein's "Nurse" generated a good deal of early excitement — with many people posing for pictures in front of it at Sunday's champagne and canapé preview brunch — in part because of its sharp color and the quality of the artist's signature dots, which were individually stenciled by hand.
Christie's "Artist's Muse" sale was a more conventional follow-up to the company's unorthodox "Looking Forward to the Past" auction in May, with offerings handpicked by the young Christie's specialist Loic Gouzer. That sale brought $705.9 million from 35 lots, including $179.4 million for Picasso's 1955 painting, "Les Femmes d'Alger (Version 'O')."
Brett Gorvy, Christie's worldwide chairman of postwar and contemporary art, said that Monday's "Muse" sale had attracted both "the hard-core collector base and new buyers looking for a masterpiece."
"They want to know they're buying the best of the best," he said. "The mood is about confidence. There's more than enough liquidity in the market."
Both auctions have relied heavily on Christie's guaranteeing minimum prices to coax top quality works from owners, an increasingly common but risky practice that can leave auction houses with expensive unsold works.
On Monday, 18 lots in the catalog were guaranteed, as were about half the number of lots in the "Looking Forward" sale in May.
"These sales have a logic to them, and they've been a success," David Nisinson, a New York-based collector and adviser, said. "The market for modern and contemporary has essentially become the entire art market. If they continue to attract very major property we may see more sales with this approach."
Other observers were more skeptical, suggesting that the formula was wearing a little thin the second time around. The "Muse" theme was elastic enough for Christie's to include the 1981 Andy Warhol silk-screen painting, "Gun," estimated at $8 million to $12 million, which was also guaranteed by Christie's.
"A Warhol 'Gun' painting? How was that his muse?" the New York dealer Henry Zimet said. "But if they can get away with it, good luck to them."
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