On Thursday, October 14, one of Banksy’s most iconic artworks—a self-destructive piece entitled Love is in the Bin—sold for triple its high estimate at $25,383,941 (£18,582,000), setting a new record for the artist. The artist’s previous record, a $22 million sale of Game Changer, was set earlier this year at Christies.
Art News
Discover two ultra-rare Swiss automata, made for the Chinese market in the 19th century. The magnificent McCullough automaton box is the last and greatest musical magician box to remain in private hands. Last offered at Sotheby’s in 1964, it has remained in an important private collection ever since. The musical automaton ‘necessaire’ with watch was formerly in the collection of John Asprey and is one of only two known examples of this size, the other being kept in the Hans Wilsdorf Collection at Rolex.
Get film poster expert Bruce Marchant’s top tips on starting a collection and discover some of the gems he’d recommend to more established collectors from our upcoming sale Original Film Posters (27 August – 7 September). Demonstrating over 100 years of cinematic history, discover iconic film posters from Alfred Hitchcock thrillers to the ever-popular James Bond titles. Highlights include classics such as Gone with the Wind, The Italian Job and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Wayne Thiebaud’s painting of a young tennis player sold for almost $8.5 million on May 13, 2021, nearly five times the Christie’s estimate of $1.2–1.8 million.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of JAY-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, his pioneering debut album that forever changed Hip Hop, the legendary artist, entrepreneur and philanthropist has commissioned multi-disciplinary artist Derrick Adams to create a one-of-one animated digital artwork that comments on and recontextualizes the album’s iconic cover, which will be sold by Sotheby’s as an NFT in a special single-lot auction. In this video, join Derrick Adams at his studio in Brooklyn as he reflects on the importance of Reasonable Doubt, recontextualizing the cover and his greater artistic practice.
Auctioneer Antoine Petit spotted Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s "Philosopher Reading"—which, on June 26, 2021, sold for £6.6 million ($9.2 million)—during a standard estate inventory of a Parisian apartment.
Later this month, Sotheby’s will offer five exceptionally rare CryptoPunks. Of the 10,000 Cryptopunks created, only twenty-four were issued in physical form, as certified prints signed by co-creator John Watkinson.
Discover an exceptional group of works by Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Odilon Redon in this episode of Expert Voices. From an esteemed private collection and fresh to the market, these five works look beyond Impressionism and convey the uniquely sensitive vision of each artist. The group features two exquisite pastels by Degas, ‘Le bain’ and ‘Femme à sa toilette’, two fine examples of Renoir’s late portraiture, ‘Femme à la rose’ and ‘La bohémienne’, and a rare Symbolist work by Redon, ‘Profil bleu’.
In a time when the passion of the crowd has been so sadly missing at sporting events, the pre-match sense of energy and excitement in L.S. Lowry’s ‘Going to the Match’ is more palpable than ever. Painted in 1928, this is one of Lowry’s earliest depictions of crowds thronging to a sporting occasion. That it was a Rugby League match he chose to paint first shows just how deeply entrenched the sport was in the social and cultural fabric of northern England.
The last 200 years of Russian Art is a true reflection of what was happening in Russia both socially and politically. In this latest episode of Expert Voices, Sotheby’s specialist Reto Barmettler talks about the changes that Russia endured between the 19th and 20th century. Discover how Sotheby’s upcoming Russian Pictures auction (2- 8 June) reflects the breadth of what Russian art has to offer, from 19th century landscapes by Shchedrin and Aivazovsky, post-revolutionary works by Malevich and Puni, Gerasimov’s Soviet era paintings, and more contemporary artworks by Ilya Kabakov and Ivan Chuikov.
