Art Watchers Primed for N.Y. Auctions : Van Gogh’s ‘Irises’ Eyed Closely, May Bring at Least $21 Million

Glittery with high presale estimates and jittery from a wildly volatile stock market, New York’s fall auction season is off and running. A Gutenberg Bible from the Estelle Doheny Collection set the pace Oct. 22 when Japanese book seller Maruzen Co. Ltd. bought it for $4.9 million. Christie’s had predicted the rare Bible would bring $1.5 million to $2 million.

Now auction watchers have shifted their gaze to the next big attraction, in fact the season’s crown jewel: the sale of Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” Nov. 11 at Sotheby’s. The third work from Van Gogh’s highly prized late period to go on the block this year, “Irises” is expected to bring between $21 million and $39 million. If the selling price falls within that wide range, “Irises” will be the second most expensive painting to sell at auction, but it will not break a record for the modern Dutch master. (Auction houses typically estimate selling prices prior to sales and publish them in catalogues.)

The most costly painting ever sold at auction is Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” purchased for $39.9 million last March by Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance in Tokyo. The Van Gogh sale more than tripled the previous record ($11.1 million, paid in 1986 for a Paris street scene by Edouard Manet) and stunned the art world.

While some observers have worried that the price of art has gone out of sight for all but the world’s wealthiest collectors, others have argued that the “Sunflowers” purchase was an aberration, brought about by Japan’s abundance of cash, the Japanese love for Impressionism and the popularity of an image strongly identified with a painter perceived as a tragic hero. Both sides felt vindicated in June when another late Van Gogh, “Le Pont de Trinquetaille,” was sold for $20.2 million to an unidentified German-speaking collector in Europe.

Offered in the wake of the stock market plunge and subsequent fluctuations, “Irises” may prove to be the most closely watched Van Gogh yet. Collectors who say that “Irises” is a better, though admittedly less popular, painting than “Sunflowers” speculate about a new record, while others foresee a return to reason, forced by an unstable economic climate.

Painted in 1889, the year before the artist’s death, the canvas depicts a corner of the garden in the Saint-Remy asylum where he spent his final days. The painting is in the late Joan Whitney Payson’s collection and has been on extended loan to Westbrook College in Portland, Me.

Van Gogh is not the only artist who has collectors talking. In the same sale with “Irises” are Georges Braque’s 1914 Cubist oil “Le Violon,” from the Phillips Collection in Washington (expected to bring $3 million to $4 million); Claude Monet’s shimmering Impressionist garden “Le Jardin Fleuri” ($3 million to $4 million), and Paul Cezanne’s airy landscape “Arbres et Maisons au Bord de l’Eau,” from the Art Institute of Chicago ($2 million to $3 million). Among 10 works by Pablo Picasso are a 1952 painting of a woman and a baby carriage ($2.5 million to $3 million) and an early (1901) Impressionist street scene, “Boulevard de Clichy” ($2 million to $3 million).

In Christie’s $40-million sale of Impressionist and modern paintings and sculpture on Nov. 10, Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele’s 1914 painting of a contorted nude couple, “Liebespaar (Mann und Frau I),” is a rare offering, expected to bring $4 million to $5 million. One of Monet’s waterlily paintings bears an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million, while a whimsical abstraction by Joan Miro, a richly colored landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, a small portrait of a young man by Paul Gauguin and a dark vase of flowers by Van Gogh are all in search of buyers who have more than $1 million to spend on a single painting.

The Impressionist and modern sales are expected to rack up the season’s biggest totals for fine art, but New York branches of Sotheby’s and Christie’s also have scheduled major sales of contemporary artTuesday and next Wednesday and American paintings and sculpture Dec. 3 and 4.

A bonanza of 10 prime works by Georgia O’Keeffe from the estate of her sister, Anita O’Keeffe Young, will go under the gavel Dec. 3 at Sotheby’s. Including paintings of enlarged flowers from the ‘20s and later fiery landscapes done in New Mexico, the works’ estimates range from $100,000 to $150,000 for a pastel up to about $1 million for the two largest flower paintings.

Southern Californians can see five of the O’Keeffes today and Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sotheby’s Beverly Hills office (308 N. Rodeo Drive). A primitive “Double Portrait” by John Brewster Jr., to be offered at the same sale of American art and expected to fetch $1 million, is also on view in the second-floor showroom.

Christie’s Dec. 4 auction of American paintings and sculpture includes an O’Keeffe bone painting ($1 million) as well as five sculptures ($4 million total) by Elie Nadelman, to be sold for the benefit of American Ballet Theatre.

Two works by British painter Francis Bacon have star billing in Christie’s Tuesday contemporary art auction: a 1963 oil, “Figure With Two Owls--Study After Velazquez Innocent X” ($1 million to $1.5 million) and a 1957 painting, “Study for Portrait of P.L. No. 1” ($800,000 to $1 million). Willem de Kooning’s 1946-47 “Two Figures” is the next most expensive item ($650,000 to $850,000) in the catalogue of 64 properties by 39 artists. The small (11x13-inch) work in oil, chalk and charcoal is one of five De Koonings offered.

Five paintings by Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann are also slated to be sold Tuesday, along with Mark Rothko’s “Violet Center,” a 1955 example of his mature style ($500,000 to $700,000). Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, Morris Louis, Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn and Frank Stella range from $250,000 to $400,000.

Sotheby’s most important fall sale of contemporary art takes place Wednesday, when 25 works from the estate of the late New York art dealer Xavier Fourcade go on the block, along with seven works by Jean Dubuffet collected by Hope and Abraham Melamed and properties from other collections.

Fourcade represented and collected the work of such prominent artists as De Kooning, Barnett Newman and Arshile Gorky. The most imposing item in his estate sale is De Kooning’s 9 1/2-foot-tall bronze, “Seated Woman” ($450,000 to $550,000). Also listed in the catalogue are seven other figurative bronzes and two late paintings by De Kooning; sculptures by Michael Heizer, John Chamberlain, Walter de Maria and Tony Smith and paintings by Joan Mitchell, Fairfield Porter, Louise Bourgeois, Le Corbusier, Georg Baselitz, Malcolm Morley and Roy Lichtenstein.

Another De Kooning, “Woman (Green),” a 1953-55 oil from his celebrated series, is expected to ring up the top price in the Wednesday auction. Offered from the estate of an anonymous New York collector, this aggressive image of a smiling nude with bright red cheeks and chartreuse breasts is tagged at $2 million to $2.5 million.

Despite a plethora of unprecedented high prices, the fall auction catalogues reflect a wide range of prices even within the work of a single artist. Van Goghs spiral down from the stratosphere to $1 million. Aficionados of Jackson Pollock have their choice between paying six figures for a modest, signature drip painting or an estimated $18,000 to $22,000 for an early landscape done in the ‘30s under the influence of Thomas Hart Benton.

For those with less than $5,000 in hand, there’s a Mark Tobey “Calligraph” on an 8x11-inch sheet of vellum, Rodney Alan Greenblat’s tacky “Duck Chair” (with webbed feet and a goofy painting on its backrest) and assorted creations by artists who have not cut off their ears, moved to Tahiti or otherwise achieved widespread recognition.