Print Week 2011 Ifpda Art Fair And Print Auction Highlights By Deborah Ripley

The uneven print auction results of the last week provided the backdrop for the International Fine Print Dealers Association Fair that opened on Nov

. 2 and 3, 2011. Sothebys, with its day sale and a special evening vanity sale of a California collection of Pop prints, brought in a combined total of $9.4 million, with approximately 80 percent of the lots sold by value. The evening sale provided the highlight, with an Andy Warhol Mao portfolio in beautiful condition fetching $1,426,500, just slightly below the world record of $1,684,457 from 2007.

In its day sale, Christies fetched $9,231.275 with 87 percent of the lots sold by value. But they chose to save their top lot, the rare Pablo Picasso Weeping Woman (1937), in an edition of 15, estimated at $1.5 million-$2.5 million for the Tuesday night Impressionist and modern art evening sale. The gamble paid off, sort of. It fetched $5,122,500, a new world record for any print anywhere at auction, but the buyer was John Szoke, a print dealer, disproving the myth that print collectors are too stingy to compete in the art-collecting big leagues. (Szoke claims he will be keeping the work for his private collection.)

Phillips de Pury continued its strategy of evening print sales at its new 57th Street rental space, fetching an impressive $2,379,900 for a very slim catalogue of 78 lots. It's a new high for a Phillips print sale, suggesting a coming dominance in contemporary prints.

At the IFPDA fair, held at the Park Avenue Armory, an international roster of 90 dealers exhibited graphics from the 16th to the 20th century. Right at the entrance, Tandem Press provided the big wow with An American Alphabet, 26 lithographs by Robert Cottingham that took 14 years to complete due to the artists exacting requirements. Executive director Paula McCarthy Panczenko personally attested that the letter Y required 68 different runs through the press. The letters themselves are like a diary for the artist of different paintings he has created over the years. A is from his 1970 painting Art, inspired by the run-down movie marquee from the Art Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The price for the entire set is $78,000, but single letters are available.

Next door, Mary Ryan Gallery was showing David Hockneys set of six prints, The Weather Series (1973), priced at $250,000. Rarely found as a complete set, the price seems reasonable considering that the single work Sun fetched $43,750 at Christies last week. Ryan also debuted a sculpture multiple Yo (2011), for $15,000, by Deborah Kass, following her 2011 print Oy/Yo, which was a riff on the Ed Ruscha multiple book Oh/No (2008).

The modern print dealer R. Stanley Johnson is offering a complete group of 44 early etchings (1878-1891) by Mary Cassatt during a period when she was sharing a printing press with Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro. The experimental works from the 1880s, which bring to mind Degas atmospheric monotypes of prostitutes, are much more interesting than her later sentimental mother-child depictions. The group, which took Ursula and Stanley Johnson decades to assemble, are offered for $625,000. Hopefully an institution will acquire the group, and scholarly research will probably lead to a reassessment of Cassatts graphic oeuvre as a whole.

John Szoke had one of the two impressions of the important Picasso aquatint Torse de Femme (1953). (It was nicknamed the Egyptian because of the pharaoh-like depiction of the hair on this striking portrait of Francoise Gilot.) The print fetched $242,500 at Christies last week. Szokes impression was offered for $300,000, while British dealer Theobald Jennings had his priced at $330,000.

by: aarenbrowns

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