news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100512/ap_on_en_ot/us_crichton_art_auction
Christie's said the work was purchased by an American art dealer during high-spirited bidding Tuesday night by phone and in the room. There were four bidders for the work, which took two minutes to sell, Christie's said. "This fabulous painting is a tribute to the great collector Michael Crichton who showed us all how to enjoy and collect art for future generations," Brett Gorvy, international co-head of post war and contemporary art at Christie's, said in an e-mail. The popular writer of such blockbuster thrillers as "Jurassic Park," "The Andromeda Strain" and the TV series "ER" died in 2008. He was a passionate art collector, leaving a 20th century art trove of some of pop art's best known artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jeff Koons and Pablo Picasso, among others. Another 117 works from the collection will be sold Wednesday as part of Christie's post war and contemporary art sale. It has been exhibited only once for a pop art survey at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1992-1993. Crichton generously lent works from his collection for exhibitions, but was possessive about the "Flag" because of his close friendship with Johns, said Gorvy in an interview before the sale. Because of Crichton's deep understanding of Johns' work, Johns asked Crichton to write the catalog for his 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Within the art world, Crichton was renowned as a leading authority on Johns, Gorvy said. He had predicted that "Flag" would "go substantially higher" than its pre-sale estimate of $10 million to $15 million, given that the work "is so superb and rare ... and coming from a famous fella and also from someone who understood the artist." Richard Feigen, an art dealer with galleries in New York and Chicago specializing in 19th and 20th century art and old masters, said before the auction that he believed monied collectors would bid high as a hedge against the economy. "I rather think that the activity in the stock market will probably stimulate people to put more money into art because art ... now seems to be treated as an asset class and as a safe repository for money and also a hedge against currency fluctuations," Feigen said. "My guess is people will feel this is a very safe place, if not a dynamic place, to park $30 million more or less." Christie's head of impressionist and modern art, Conor Jordan, said the price "showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works." Among other highlights in the Crichton collection: Oldenburg's 1970 "Three Way Plug Soft Sculpture," estimated at $250,000 to $350,000. Crichton was one of the world's most commercially successful writers whose many books have been turned into film.
people having more wealth than they can handle and majority of humanity cannot even afford a $1 dollar burger... while there is nothing wrong with enriching oneself through hardwork, there is definitely something wrong with a system that allows the rest of humanity to suffer in hunger...
Report Abuse another Johns painting, "False Start", sold for $80 million in 2006. This was a private sale, and thus not included in the auction figures in this story. the monetary values attached to the artworks fluctuate mightily with the economy. the monetary values are news to the collecting world, but not the artworld.
Yet the last time there were 48 states was on January 2, 1959. Did it really take Johns the best part of at least one year to produce this? Seems to me that kids in 6th grade can push these kinds of things out every week.
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