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ART & AUCTION
JULY - AUG '84

RR '84

"Aren't you glad you put it on the cover of ART & AUCTION?" a beaming Havelock-Allan asked us after the sale. "Relieved," we replied. "You're relieved!" she exhaled. There had been some presale speculation about this painting due to the failure to sell Parc Rosenberg, a similar work, last fall at Sotheby's, but Havelock-Allan said "Taking it was a risk, but Bolton Landing had more instant appeal for collectors, and what I said before was correct-this painting has more panache than Parc Rosenberg."

In spite of these relatively high prices for contemporary works of art, there is less excitement and less novelty about such a price structure within the auction houses and art would these days. "A year ago $700-800,000 paintings and sculptures would have been out of the ordinary," said Havelock-Allan, "but now it has become normal for contemporary sales to have these types of works in them."

If that is the case, then an unnamed European dealer stole Rothko's Three Blacks in Dark Blue, 1960, for only $340,000. This painting was one of the few outstanding works in the sale, with its weighty black rectangles hovering above a deep blue ground. Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park #46, 1971, went to a Texa dealer for $300,000, a very good price, even if it was $100,000 away from the record Diebenkorn at Christie's.

The major disappointment of the evening was the failure to sell, at $240,000, a major "veil" painting by Morris Louis, entitled Wine, 1958. "Missed it by an ace," said Havelock-Allan. Kenneth Noland's Apart, 1965, managed to exceed its estimate ($50-70,000) and topped off at $72,500 to a private collector. Of the three Jules Olitski paintings offered Pink Lady, 1965, more than doubled its presale estimate and found a courageous buyer at $48,000.

The most interesting works were happily not the most expensive ones and an early Rauschenberg, Black Painting No. 10, circa 1951 (est. $50-60,000), painted "at a time after he had seen an exhibition by Barnett Newman," according to Havelock-Allan, exceeded the estimate and was sold to a dealer for $67,500. In a replay of the bidding war between dealer James Mayor and Thomas Ammann over a Ryman at Sotheby's last fall, Dan Flavin's fluorescent light piece, The Nominal Three (To William of Ockham), 1963, produced an animated bidding match between Charles Saatchi, the British collector and advertising executive, and Ammann, the Swiss collector and dealer who eventually bought the Flavin for $29,000-nearly triple the high estimate. And an apparent bargain of the evening was Yves Klein's smallish work on paper Cosmologie de la Pluie, 1961, which sold for well below its estimate ($30-40,000) at $22,500.

What was most noteworthy about this sale, apart from its record total, was the incredible aggressiveness of the bidding. "When competitive businessmen leave their offices, they're as bloody-minded about collecting as they are about business," remarked Havelock-Allan, happy at last.

[235 lots offered, $7,056,950 knockdown total, $6,097,750 sold total, 16 percent unsold by lot]

-Michael Kohn

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