Cultura: British Pop art attracts international buyers
Provocative sculptures by the British artist Allen Jones fetched record auction prices.
By Colin Gleadell
British Pop art was the talking point of the London salerooms last week when three artists’ records were broken in some style. First off was Allen Jones, whose slinky Sixties paintings of leggy girls in impossibly high stiletto heels have been creeping up in price lately. But they were pulverised when Sotheby’s offered a complete set of his three 1969 furniture sculptures using fibreglass models of semi-naked women in submissive positions as part of the Gunther Sachs collection. The playboy heir to the Opel car fortune and former husband of Brigitte Bardot, who died last year, had a penchant for beautiful girls in life and art, and the sale included many examples, notably by Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman and Mel Ramos.
However, it was Jones’s sculptures that excited most competition. The works had caused a furious feminist backlash when first exhibited, and in 1981, Tate director Sir Alan Bowness was singled out for criticism after he purchased the most provocative, Chair (above), for the gallery with public money.
Six editions were made of the sculptures, and one set, belonging to pop star Elton John sold at Sotheby’s in 1988 for £21,000 – considered a high price at the time for a British Pop artist.
Now, with each sculpture estimated at £30,000 to £40,000, they attracted multiple bids from New York dealer Jose Mugrabi and London dealer Pilar Ordovas among others, before all sold to the same anonymous telephone buyer, for record prices. Hat Stand was sold for £780,450, while Chair was sold for £836,450 and Table for £970,850.
At Christie’s, it was the turn of two relatively neglected figures, Gerald Laing, who died last year, and Joe Tilson, who is still going strong. Laing never quite achieved the recognition some thought his due, and his record price until last week was about £60,000. But a snazzy 1964 painting of a racing car and driver soared over its £60,000 estimate to sell for £385,250. The painting had belonged to the British art collectors John and Kimiko Powers, and after John died, it was sold last year at Shannon’s auctions in New York where it was bought for $80,000 (£51,000) by a dealer who placed it in Christie’s and reaped an unexpected reward.
A masterpiece by John Constable is to be a star lot at Christie’s this summer. The Lock, part of the same series as The Haywain, last appeared at auction in 1990, when it was bought by Baron Thyssen for £10.8 million.
While it has been exhibited at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid among many works that were placed in trust, The Lock was part of the Baron’s private collection, and is now being sold by his widow, Baroness Carmen Thyssen Bornemisza, with an estimate of £20 million to £25 million. CG
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