What We're Reading: 11/19/24
Looking at Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian,” a banana duct-taped to a wall, at Sotheby’s preview. Who’s laughing? It is estimated to sell for $1 million to $1.5 million.Credit...John Angelillo/UPI, via Shutterstock
Will a ‘Trump Bump’ Help the Art Market’s Biggest Week?
Will the art market go bananas again, like it did before the pandemic, now that Donald J. Trump has been elected to the White House on promises to cut taxes? Speculative investments like cryptocurrencies have risen in anticipation of a new Republican administration’s anti-regulatory agenda, and the auction world hopes that it can ride an economic boom to recovery after nearly two years of declining sales.
The November auction season that starts this week in New York will test the willingness of the ultrarich to spend a pile on artworks.
A Claude Monet ‘Water Lilies’ Scene Sold for $65.5 Million
Sotheby’s sold a Claude Monet “Water Lilies” scene for $65.5 million on Monday, a solid start to a weeklong series of New York auctions being closely followed for fresh clues into the art market’s trajectory.
Monet’s jewel-tone pond scene from 1914-17 was expected to sell for around $60 million, but the piece drew three dogged bidders, with an anonymous Asian telephone bidder winning the work.
Union League's Monet going to auction — but for how much?
The Union League Club of Chicago's ballyhooed Monet painting is scheduled to go to auction tomorrow night amid an uncertain post-election art market. Whether the hammer will come down is hardly guaranteed.
The work, "Pommiers en Fleurs," or Apple Trees in Bloom, has been whipsawed by the club's need to raise cash to stay in business after 145 years. There was a sales agreement in 2020 for $7.2 million, but the club reneged, according to the prospective buyer who got nowhere in court trying to enforce the deal.
