Record-breaking Magritte leads Mica Ertegun collection at Christie's
With all 19 jobs secured, the realisation amounts to 184 million, of which 105 million was brought in by 'L'empire des lumieres' alone
by Giovanni Gasparini
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The first catalogue offered by Christie's on the evening of 19 November in New York dispersed the most valuable works from the collection ofMica Ertegun, the American designer and philanthropist of Romanian birth and Turkish husband. The $184 million realisation is largely due to the new record for Magritte, which alone is worth two-thirds of the total realisation. All 19 works were guaranteed, 16 by third parties and therefore surely sold before the auction, while the three lots with lower estimates guaranteed by the auction house found buyers. Of the five lots that sold after only one bid, four may have gone to their respective guarantors; six of the 19 lots exceeded the high estimate before commissions were added, four sold below the low estimate, and seven confirmed the low estimate. Beyond the record, therefore, the market continues to be selective even when faced with the offer of collections that had been off the market for decades.
Magritte record
.The last lot in the catalogue, one of the largest and most complex versions of the iconic composition painted by Magritte in 1954, came to auction from a guaranteed asking estimate of over $95 million. It took about ten tedious minutes to conclude the battle between two clients on the phone with the auction house's American and Chinese staff to bring the bid to $105 million, which with commissions comes to $121,160,000, a new record price for the artist and for a Surrealist work; the recent previous record for a 1961 version of the same composition was $80 million at Sotheby's in 2022.
Thanks to one of the 17 versions of this mysterious composition, Magritte thus enters the small group of artists sold over the $100 million mark.
Two other millionaire works by the Belgian master of Surrealism, however, struggled to reach their low estimates but still brought in $10.5m for the one-metre canvas 'Le coeur d'amour' which falls short of its low estimate of $9-12m before commissions, and $3.7m for the smaller 'Le Memoire' which is likely to end up at the low estimate of $3m.
A work by Miro from the Surrealist period 'Peinture (Amour)' from 1925 is also likely to end up at the guarantor, confirming the low estimate of $4-8 million, or $4.8 million with commission. The market thus continues to celebrate the centenary of Surrealism with record prices, also taking advantage of the prominence given by museums such as the Pompidou in Paris with a special exhibition.
