$27.7 Million Bacon Tops New York Art Auction Sales

A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon of his great love sold for $27.7 million at Sotheby's spring sales in New York. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon of his great love sold for $27.7 million at Sotheby's spring sales in New York. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
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$27.7 Million Bacon Tops New York Art Auction Sales

A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon of his great love sold for $27.7 million at Sotheby's spring sales in New York. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon of his great love sold for $27.7 million at Sotheby's spring sales in New York. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP

A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon of his great love sold for $27.7 million at Sotheby's spring sales in New York on Monday, topping the first night of contemporary art auctions that grossed $234.6 million.
The work fell short of the $30 million to $50 million range the house had estimated for the portrait -- the first in a series of 10 the painter made of George Dyer between 1966 and 1968 -- which was making its debut at auction, AFP reported.
The highest price paid for a single-panel portrait by Bacon is $70.2 million, which came from the same Dyer cycle.
American painter Joan Mitchell, whose works have led a revaluation of paintings by women artists, was one of the stars of the evening.
Her work "Noon" exceeded $22.6 million, maintaining an upward trend that began last November, when two pieces by the "second generation" American abstract expressionism artist fetched over $20 million for the first time.
Her record sale stands at $29.1 million.
The night set other records such as the $19 million paid for a work by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the highest ever paid for a collaboration of this kind, and the nearly $23 million for a work by Lucio Fontana, the highest price ever paid for the Italian artist at auction.
A sculpture by Frank Stella also went for over $15 million.
Another rising star was recently deceased African-American artist Faith Ringgold, whose work was sold for more than $1.5 million, three times more than her last record.
Patrick Drahi's auction house will hold another evening of modern art sales on Wednesday, featuring works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Rene Magritte and British artist Leonora Carrington.
With sales of $14.9 billion last year, the art market dropped 14 percent compared with 2022, although online transactions saw a 285 percent jump.
Sotheby's hopes to collect between $549 and $784 million this week in New York, after the good results in Europe, in a market led by American investors and collectors, closely followed by buyers from Asia.



Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
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Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP

More than a century ago, Pablo Picasso smashed the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris into a web of tangled lines on his canvas, deconstructing reality with the brushstrokes of a master cubist.
At a Hong Kong exhibition opening Saturday, that painting will be shown alongside a more literal form of destruction -- a "gunpowder drawing" by Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang -- as part of a cross-cultural exchange, AFP said.
"Interest in (Picasso's) life and work hasn't subsided at all, including in Asia" in the half-century since his death, said Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator at the M+ museum.
The show will pair more than 60 masterpieces loaned from the Picasso Museum in Paris with around 130 works by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists.
Highlights include "Portrait of a Man" from Picasso's Blue Period, a 1937 horse head sketch for "Guernica" and "Massacre in Korea", a 1951 expressionist anti-war painting.
"Exhibitions on Picasso tend to be very monographic," said Chong, who co-curated the event.
"We felt that it's more productive for understanding Picasso... that we create these unexpected juxtapositions and dialogues."
Cecile Debray, president of the Picasso Museum in Paris, hailed the approach as being "decentered from the Western point of view".
The last major Picasso showcase in Hong Kong, a more straightforward affair, took place in 2012 and drew huge crowds.
In the intervening decade, Picasso's reputation has been dented by the #MeToo movement as critics decried his abusive treatment of wives and girlfriends.
"We are of course very open and honest about the rather disturbing aspects of his biography, but we also shouldn't let that determine the meanings of his whole career," Chong said.
Hong Kong officials have touted the four-month exhibition as part of "Art March", hoping that high-brow events at museums, fairs and auction houses can boost the city's international appeal.
Since opening in late 2021, M+ has seen more than eight million visitors -- a bright spot for Hong Kong's loss-making West Kowloon Cultural District.
Chong said the museum connects visual culture between Asia and the world, citing the example of how Picasso is placed next to self-taught local painter Luis Chan.
Chan, who drew ample inspiration from the Spanish master, was "of the older generation when formal training in art was not possible in Hong Kong".
"Still he felt connected to the center of the art world at the time in Paris, and the very important figure in that context (that is) Picasso."