Date: Fri 23-Apr-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDIR

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Christie's

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ChristieS 20th Century Art Sales For

NEW YORK CITY -- On May 13 and 14, Christie's spring sales of Twentieth

Century Art at its new North and South American headquarters at Rockefeller

Center offer a spectacular group of paintings, drawings, and sculptures from

distinguished private collections. With canvases by Braque, Matisse, Dali,

Magritte, Diebenkorn, Johns, and Warhol, and sculptures by Brancusi,

Giacometti and Moore, the sale presents a panoply of masterworks by the

greatest artists of this century. A single-owner session of "Important

Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture from The Maurice and Margo Cohen Collection"

offers works by Leger, Calder, Giacometti and Miro.

During a quarter of a century of making inspired and provocative choices,

Detroit real-estate entrepreneur Maurice Cohen and his wife, Margo, assembled

a collection of paintings, drawings, collages, mobiles, boxes, watercolors and

bronzes -- a cornucopia of the best art of the Twentieth Century. Expected to

realize more than $20 million, the collection counts among its masterpieces:

Fernand Leger's "Les trois femmes au bouquet," 1922 (est $5/7,000,000); Joan

Miro's "L'espoir," 1946 (est $2/3,000,000); and Alberto Giacometti's "Femme de

Venise IX," a bronze cast in 1958 (est $2/3,000,000).

One of the major highlights of Christie's first sale of Twentieth Century art

at Rockefeller Center is Jasper Johns' "Flags," 1973 (est $7/10,000,000). In

art, the iconic American flag belongs to Jasper Johns. The subject has been

called one of Johns' obsessions; since his first painting of a flag in 1954,

he has made almost 100 versions, in every medium that he uses. This present

work is the largest version of the flag images that Johns created and is an

extraordinary example of painterly skills.

All his life, Amedeo Modigliani displayed the greatest sensitivity and

ingenuity in his portraiture of children. "La petite Louise" (est

$3,5/4,500,000) is among Modigliani's most important pictures of 1915, the

year he returned to portraiture as the principle subject of his work. It

depicts a young girl, Louise, wearing a white apron over a blue dress, seated

on the edge of a chair so that the chair seems to jut out to the right,

creating a sense of imbalance in the painting.

In Georges Braque's career, 1913 was a year of stylistic transition as he

began turning away from the tightly knit structure of Analytic Cubism for the

simpler, flatter forms of Synthetic Cubism. Depicting a violin, a glass, sheet

music and a newspaper resting on a wooden table, Braque's "Nature morte au

violin," 1913 (est $3/4,000,000), is a work of exceptional beauty,

distinguished by its exquisite architecture of interlocking planes, and by its

horizontal format, rare in Braque's early cubist pictures.

Paul Klee, the son of a professional musician, played the violin every day and

felt the greatest passion for music, thinking of it as a model for his art.

Klee made many works based on figures and scenes from operas, but he called

Mozart's opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, one of the greatest of miracles. "Die Sangerin

L. als Fiordiligi, 1923 (est $2,5/3,500,000) represents the great German

soprano, Lily Lehman, in the role of Fiordiligi in Cosi fan Tutte.

Henri Matisse's "Nature morte devant la fenetre ouverte Nice, Place

Charles-Felix," 1925 (est $2/4,000,000), is from a group of some of the finest

still-lifes of the artist's career painted in Nice from 1924 to 1925. From the

moment he arrived in Nice, Matisse was struck by the dazzling sunlight.

Also highlighted is Alberto Giacometti's "Portrait de Yanaihara, 1956 (est

$700/1,000,000). In 1954, Yanaihara, a Japanese professor of philosophy and an

expert on modern French thought, moved to Paris and met Giacometti, who asked

Yanaihara to pose for him. The sittings began in September of that year and

became an obsession for both men as Yanaihara posed day after day, week after

week. The situation was made more intimate and intense by the fact that

Yanaihara and Giacometti's wife, Annette, began an affair, with Giacometti's

blessing.

Sculptural Highlights

Alberto Giacometti's postwar figures are often described as isolated beings

ravaged by space, their bodies engulfed by a hostile environment. "Composition

avec trois figures et une tete," 1950 (est $2,5/3,500,000), depicts three

tall, slim figures and a smaller head separated by the space that surrounds

them, and is sculptured as if from a distance.

Henry Moore's reputation as the preeminent modern sculptor is grounded in the

essential humanity of his work, regardless of its scale. Moore's "Reclining

Figure," 1969-/70 (est $2,5/3,000,000), is imbued with the awe-inspiring

presence of an earth-mother. Massive yet weightless, its forms mimic that of a

rugged landscape.

Surrealism in

Twentieth Century Art

Rene Magritte's "L'empire de lumieres" (The Dominion of Light), 1953 (est

$2/3,000,000), is perhaps one of Magritee's most popular images. It depicts a

small, white house in a nocturnal landscape, but with a skyscape of broad

daylight. He first painted a version of it in 1949 and produced numerous

variations of it between then and the end of his career.

Salvador Dali was fascinated with cinema. His most riveting work for film was

his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock on Spellbound. Hitchcock wanted to

produce a dream sequence without resorting to the stereotypical device of

smearing grease on the lens to create a blurry effect and enlisted Dali's

skills to design the famous Freudian dream sequence for the film. Dali's

"L'oeil," 1945 (est $1,2/1,600,000), depicts an eye floating high above the

landscape almost like a planet unto itself. The fact that Hitchcock owned the

work until his death only adds to its significance.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is perhaps the most famous image in the

history of art -- masterpiece of enduring value and appeal. Thanks to Marcel

Duchamp and Andy Warhol, "Mona Lisa has a place in Twentieth Century art

theory as well. In Duchamps' L.H.O.O.Q. series, the artist created the

definitive act of Dadaist defiance by adding a mustache and goatee to a

reproduction of da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." He made the work even more shocking

through the title which if read out loud in French sounds the same made the

work even more shocking through the title which if read out loud in French

sounds the same as "Elle a chaud au cul" or "She has a hot ass." The present

L.H.O.O.Q., 1960 (est $350/450,000), was painted over a handpainted copy of

the "Mona Lisa" and was made by Duchamp for fellow Surrealist Max Ernst and

his wife Dorothea Tanning.

Andy Warhol's "Blue Mona Lisa," 1978 (est $400/600,000), plays brilliantly off

of Duchamp's work. Andy Warhol first made silkscreen paintings of the "Mona

Lisa" in 1963 concurrent with an exhibition of Leonardo's masterpiece at "The

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Twentieth Century

Art Day Sale

Christie's day sale of Twentieth Century Art on May 14 includes among its

highlights Georges Braque's "Cruche, Cahier de musicque, bouteille," oil and

sand on canvas, painted in 1924 (est $350/450,000); Max Ernst's "Table mise,"

bronze with green patina, conceived in 1944 and cast before 1962 (est

$200/250,000); David Hockney's "Moving Wisp," oil on canvas, painted in 1995

(est $250/350,000); and Andy Warhol's "Blue Self-Portrait," synthetic polymer

and silkscreen inks on canvas, circa 1966-1967 (est $250/350,000).

Twentieth Century Art will be on view at Christie's galleries at 20

Rockefeller Plaza from May 8 to May 13. Viewing times will be May 8-12, 10 am

to 5 pm, and Thursday, May 13, 10 am to noon.