Andy Warhol VIP Ticket estimate £150,000 -£200,000
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening auction on Friday, 15 October, 2010, which coincides with the Frieze Art Fair in London, will present for sale 40 artworks that are estimated to realise in excess of £10 million. In addition to the outstanding pieces by leading artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach in the auction from the Collection of Jerry Hall, the world-famous American supermodel and actress, the sale will also feature important works by established artists such as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Andreas Gursky, as well as pieces by a younger generation of artists including Bansky, Elizabeth Peyton and Ahmed Alsoudani, whose artworks have never before been offered at auction. The auction record of £1.7 million for Andreas Gursky (b. 1955) was established by Sotheby’s London in 2007 for the artist’s 99 cent II (diptych), and the forthcoming October Evening Auction is to be headlined by – among other works – a major cibachrome print by the artist, Pyongyang IV.
Executed by the artist in 2007 and from an edition of 7, the work is one of a series of five images that Gursky made on this subject following his 2007 visit to North Korea. The work examines the same formal themes of surface ornament and pattern that pervade many of his best works, but in an entirely different corner of our globalised society; North Korea, the last outpost of communist dictatorship. The festival, held annually to commemorate the birth of North Korea’s former leader, Kim Il Sung, is recognised as the largest event of its kind in the world and is the showpiece of the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Il. In this painstakingly choreographed spectacle, tens of thousands of gymnasts, individually hand picked for their skill, execute with mechanical precision a sequence of synchronised moves which radiate waves of energy around the Rungrado May Day Stadium the largest stadium of its kind in the world. In the background, thirty thousand strictly disciplined school children in white attire hold up sheets of paper of a different colour at the appointed time to create a succession of background images, each child an individual tile in a monumental human mosaic.
To avoid any potential political gloss, Gursky’s photograph consciously avoids depicting portraits of Kim Il Sung, Korean slogans or propagandistic images of the happy proletariat which, in the course of the spectacle, variously appear on the human screen in the background. Instead, Gursky’s camera focuses on the abstract patterns that underpin this event. The work, illustrated on page one, is estimated at £500,000-700,000. Sotheby’s sold one other work from this edition in 2008, in the New York (AUCTION) RED, well above the estimate of $300,000-400,000 for the sum of $1,375,000. paper of a different colour at the appointed time to create a succession of background images, each child an individual tile in a monumental human mosaic. To avoid any potential political gloss, Gursky’s photograph consciously avoids depicting portraits of Kim Il Sung, Korean slogans or propagandistic images of the happy proletariat which, in the course of the spectacle, variously appear on the human screen in the background. Instead, Gursky’s camera focuses on the abstract patterns that underpin this event. The work, illustrated on page one, is estimated at £500,000- 700,000. Sotheby’s sold one other work from this edition in 2008, in the New York (AUCTION) RED, well above the estimate of $300,000-400,000 for
