NEW YORK, NY.- Following the unprecedented success of the ONE auction and recent 20th Century sales, Christie’s continues its 2020 trend of innovation and globalization, and presents 20th Century: Hong Kong to New York, a live-streaming relay sale linking the two major sale hubs on December 2, 8:30am EST/ 9:30pm HKT. From Monet and Picasso to Schutz and Warhol, the wide-ranging auction will kick off a New York marquee week showcasing the most internationally recognized figures of post-war and contemporary art, Impressionism, modernism and design from December 2-4. This week of sales represents the conclusion of Christie’s two-part Fall 20th Century auction season in New York, which began with a successful grouping of sales offered over October 5-8 that totaled $387,242,500. On December 2, viewers from around the world may watch the sale live here.

Following Hong Kong to New York, Christie’s will offer three live day sales in New York and two online-only sales. The Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Featuring The Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel is underscored by blue-chip names such as Cy Twombly, Matthew Wong, Salman Toor and Sarah Sze. Led by works from Pablo Picasso and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale features works of various media by masters of artistic movements such as Impressionism, German Expressionism and modern sculpture. Finally, La Ménagerie brings together the art of this expansive period with works of sculpture based on famed artists’ interpretations of animals and wildlife. François-Xavier Lalanne and Rembrandt Bugatti lead a dynamic, and often, irreverent sale. Running parallel to the week of live auctions are online-only sales of Picasso Ceramics and Post-War and Contemporary Art.

Full Schedule:

• 20th Century: Hong Kong to New York
December 2, beginning at 8:30am EST/9:30pm HKT.

• Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale Featuring The Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
December 3, beginning at 9:30am EST.

• La Ménagerie
December 4, beginning at 9:30am EST.

• Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale
December 4, beginning at 10:30am EST.

• Picasso Ceramics | Online
November 23-December 7, Online-Only Sale




• First Open | Online
December 1-15, Online-Only Sale

NEW YORK HIGHLIGHTS
Among the highlights of 20th Century: Hong Kong to New York is Joan Mitchell’s Trees, 1990-1991 (estimate: $5-7 million), which will be offered in the New York leg of the sale. Trees is one of the last examples from the artist’s final great series of paintings to remain in private hands. Executed as her life was drawing to a close, this monumental canvas demonstrates the painterly vitality and emotional intensity that ensured she became one of the key figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Across the two conjoined canvases, Mitchell lays out a series of strong verticals, columns of rich vibrant pigment that soar skywards, before dissolving into effervescent clouds of ethereal color. The paintings in this series demonstrate her unique ability to encapsulate the past and present, the internal and external, and life and death in dramatic brushstrokes, and are now regarded as the triumphal culmination of her long and distinguished career. Consequently, many of the works from the series now form part of major institutional collections including, Taillade, 1990 (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Trees, 1990-91 (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis), Tilleul, 1992 (Musée National d’Arte Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris); and Ici, 1992 (Saint Louis Art Museum).

Highlighting the sale’s selection of Pop is Andy Warhol’s Small Campbell's Soup Can (Chili Beef), 1962 ($6-8 million). Instantly recognizable as both an artistic and cultural icon, Warhol’s paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans transformed him into an overnight sensation when they were first exhibited in Los Angeles in 1962. These 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans (now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) were revolutionary in that they took a ubiquitous object found in nearly every American home and transformed it into high art. This seemingly simple motif represented many things: it was a sign of American efficiency, of ingenuity, and of democracy (Presidents and movie stars eat the same Campbell’s Soup as everybody else).

Standing over four feet tall, Isamu Noguchi’s Man, 1945 (estimate: $3-5 million), leads a group of 12 examples by Noguchi being presented at auction in New York this December, offered across the Hong Kong to New York sale, the Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale, and the December 11 Design auction. Coming from the Collection of Dr. Marvin and Mrs. Natalie Gliedman, Man is a rare and distinguished example of a sculpture from the period that Noguchi executed in wood. Composed of a series of six interlocking wooden elements, each carefully fashioned and luxuriously finished to a smooth surface, the individual elements are assembled to form the upright figure of a man.

Painted in the summer of 1927, Pablo Picasso’s large-scale Femme debout ($3-5 million) comes from The Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel, sold to benefit the Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Foundation (please find a dedicated release on the Mandel Collection here). Picasso kept this striking painting in his collection for the duration of his life, after which it passed to his daughter, Paloma Picasso. The present work is one of a series of works described by Christian Zervos as “tableaux magiques.” Created between 1926 and 1930, this group saw Picasso fuse a hybrid of influences, both internal and external—tribal art, Surrealism, his cubist syntax, as well as the passionate yet turbulent love affairs that defined his private life of this time—working to conjure a new, radical and expressive mode of representing the human form. Seen together, these works are regarded as among the most revolutionary depictions of the figure since the artist’s cubist years.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Pierreuse, 1889 ($3-5 million) highlights Property from the Estate of Mrs. Henry Ford II. With her unmistakable profile, striking coloring, and distinctive hair style, the enigmatic protagonist of Pierreuse appears to be one of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite models, the auburn-haired gamine, Carmen Gaudin. Lautrec had discovered Carmen in 1884 when he caught sight of her walking along a Montmartre street. Instantly captivated by this young, working class “woman whose hair is all gold,” as he wrote to his mother, Lautrec implored his friend, Henri Rachou to approach her and persuade her to model for him. She agreed, and from this time until the end of the 1880s, she featured in some of Lautrec’s greatest portraits, inspiring the realist, Zola-esque works in which the artist captured the dark underworld of bohemian Montmartre.

HONG KONG HIGHLIGHTS
Dana Schutz’s masterful Elevator, 2017 (HKD$15-20 million / USD$1,944,876-2,593,168) represents a profusion of vibrant color and fractured form that exemplifies Dana Schutz’s glorious brand of painterly breakdown. Flailing limbs, flushed faces and contorted bodies rush to fill an elevator compartment. Its metallic doors are closing in, framing the picture with claustrophobic urgency. Ants, mayflies and a gargantuan stag beetle and cicada join the melee, their carapaces glinting among the tangle of fluorescent clothing. Schutz’s brushwork fragments objects and bodies into bold, geometric planes, structuring all this chaos with crystalline painterly logic. Like many of her pictures, Elevator depicts a subject likely never before tackled in paint, conjuring an escapist, humorous vision of reality rebuilt before our eyes. A related work, Fight in an Elevator (2015), is a promised gift to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Leading the Hong Kong selection is Yoshitomo Nara’s Agent Orange (In the Milky Lake), 2009 (HKD$50-70million / USD$6,482,920-9,076,088). One of the largest examples from a series of works featuring small children marooned in an expanse of milky white, Yoshimoto Nara’s Agent Orange (In the Milky Lake) is an important painting featuring the artist’s familiar, yet subversive, iconography. Using nuanced and delicate brushwork, along with an almost minimalist palette, Nara depicts a young girl with orange hair standing serenely in the middle of a milky lake, as she mischievously sticks out her tongue. Her wide face, button nose, and playful gesture transports the viewer back to the loving and familiar memories of childhood. Yet, there is also an ominous sense of unease. This sense of tension is central to Nara's oeuvre and is a thread that has run through his career for the past three decades; thus Agent Orange (In the Milky Lake) becomes a pivotal work that represents the overarching ideology of the artist’s practice. Other works from the series are in the permanent collections of the Yokohama Museum of Art, and Museum Of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

Georges Mathieu’s Souvenir de la maison d’Autriche (Remembering the House of Austria), 1978 (estimate: HKD$14-24 million / USD$1,815,218-3,111,802) is a monumental painting that celebrates the exuberance of color and form for which his work is so renowned. One of seven large-scale paintings completed in 1978 for a major retrospective organized by the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, the complex composition knits together chromatic ribbons with architectural elements to build an active and striking composition. Considered to be the founder of a movement known as Lyrical Abstraction, he was one of the first artists—along with Jackson Pollock—to apply paint to the surface of the canvas directly from the tube. Mathieu was also well-known for working at a frenetic pace, often completing large-scale paintings such as the present work in a single day. His paintings were admired by many of the American Abstract Expressionists, with the celebrated critic Clement Greenberg describing Mathieu as the transatlantic painter whose work he admired the most.