Art Market Watch
Andy Warhol is as much a New York City icon as the Empire State Building, the Factory and Studio 54. But Warhol also liked to go where the beautiful people were, and that included the beach, notably Montauk and the Hamptons, where he owned property. Now, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, artnet Auctions is hosting “Warhol in Florida,” a sale of 50 of the artist’s hottest seaside-themed prints, drawings and paintings, Nov. 29-Dec. 6, 2011.
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The top lot is an unusually affectionate acrylic and silkscreen portrait of a cerulean-eyed boy clutching a beach ball, estimated at $380,000-$450,000. The work, completed in 1984, is thought to have been commissioned by dealer Bruno Bischofberger for a European client.
Another work in the sale is a 1987 camouflage-patterned print in electrified pinks and oranges, estimated at $13,000-$15,000, from the series Warhol was working on just before his untimely death. The auction also boasts sunny screenprints of flowers -- a pop-purple daisy from ca. 1982, estimated at $85,000-$95,000, and a rosy-hued edition from the artist’s famous “Flowers” series, estimated at $28,000-$32,000.
And, for beach-loving romantics, the highlight of the sale is no doubt the pair of vivid prints from the “Sunset” series, each depicting an abstracted sun setting into bands of deep pink horizons. Both works are estimated at $25,000-$30,000.
The sale also features the artist’s most popular subjects -- celebrity portraits. A signed lithograph of Elizabeth Taylor from 1964 is estimated at $45,000-$55,000, and other lots include polaroids of OJ Simpson and Bianca Jagger, and photographs of Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton with Keith Haring.
To celebrate the sale, artnet and Interview magazine are hosting a screening of the never-before-seen 16 mm Warhol film San Diego Surf, Dec. 1, 2011, at The Standard Hotel in Miami. The film, shot in La Jolla in the spring of 1968, stars Viva and Taylor Mead as a miserable couple with a new baby who are renting their beach house to a group of surfers, played by Louis Waldon, Joe Dallesandro, Ingrid Superstar, Eric Emerson and others.
Warhol -- who was shot a month later by Valerie Solanas -- never finished editing the film. But in the mid-1990s, the Andy Warhol Foundation dug up the project notes and brought back co-director Paul Morrissey to finish the edit with foundation curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley. There are two copies of the film, neither of which have been seen before.
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