It's official: Sotheby's has won the collection of legendary dealer Barbara Gladstone and will showcase twelve pieces in a single sale during the fare auction in May. The sale comes after Gladstone's death at the age of 89 last June last year and is expected to generate a total of more than $12 million. “It takes some wisdom to go through what other people want you to do and the path that best suits you,” Gladstone once said. “There is no formula. I believe my intuition.”
Sotheby's America chairman Lisa Dennison told Observer that Barbara Gladstone's collection is also supported by the relationships she has built and supported artists. For Gladstone, collecting art and running galleries are inseparable pursuits, a lifelong commitment to artists who redefine artistic concepts and expand expression response time.
Indeed, the practice of social participation has been at the heart of Gladstone’s program, which consistently advocates the institution’s renowned artist from the AIDS crisis to the urgent social and political issues of ecological disasters, wars and grief, not just her figure, but not just as a powerful distributor and tastemaker, but also an important cultural producer.
The Gladstone Gallery’s roster includes the most famous artists of our time, from galleries founded in 1989 such as Matthew Barney, Joan Jonas, Carroll Dunham, Thomas Hirschhorn and Carrie Mae Mae Weems, as well as Anicka Yi Yi, Wangechi Mutu and Philippe Parren and Philippe Parren. The gallery also represents the main estates, including those of Keith Haring and Robert Rauschenberg, who will conduct a landmark survey of his sculpture exercises at landmarks held in New York in May, the first work in three decades – from the 1950s to the 1990s.
“Barbara Gladstone changed the meaning of life to art and what it means to believe in it,” Denison said in a statement. “Each piece makes sense, gets along with it and reflects a collector who sees what is unique. These works are its most powerful expressions, providing us with a profound new lens of her as a collector and enduring legacy.”
True to her famous strategic thinking, Gladstone planned her succession before her death, naming four partners to drive her vision: Max Falkenstein now leads the gallery, Gavin Brown (joined after closing her own gallery in 2020) directs the artist’s relationships and development, Caroline Luce Luce Luce and Paula tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai tsai assia and Communications and Communications and Communications.
Gladstone’s collection will be landed along with another major Trove: an art collection of Israeli art dealer and founder of Luxembourg+Co, which is expected to generate $30 million.
Highlights of the Barbara Gladstone series
Planned at 6:30 pm on May 15, the single choice of Barbara Gladstone’s sales collection will be open with Elizabeth Peyton’s sensual, intimate paintings: Lohengrin (Est.: $600,000-$800,000), inspired by the opera by Richard Wagner.
Leading the auction will be two groundbreaking works by Richard Prince, who she advocated early on. The first one is Man crazy nursea huge display of works on display in the 2003 “Nurse Painting” exhibition of Gladstone's legendary 2003, is expected to receive between $4 million and $6 million. Inspired by the pulp cover of mid-century romantic novels, here the Prince deploys his postmodern strategy to enhance and dismantle popular culture kitsch, revealing embedded narratives of gender, desire and fantasy. From Peggy Gaddis Man crazy nurse Criticizing and celebrating American visual culture, paying sly tribute to New York schools, while subverting the fashion skills of pulp novels.
Sotheby's will also offer Are you kidding? (1988), one of the prince's most important monochrome joke paintings. The painting (Est.: $250-3.5 million) first appeared in auctions, representing Prince's Deadpan humor and conceptual skills, transcribing the vibrant yellow gag line to the superamine background. Here, the prince folds high and low cultures with minimalist wit, reminding us that meanings often exist in the simplest gestures.
Rare black version of Andy Warhol Flowers The series, created in 1964, will also be on the block and will be auctioned with high expectations. The work has only one of four types of examples, with an estimated value of $1.5 million. The work blooms in pitch-black black, giving rise to a toxic charm to the vivid green, revealing the Vanitas background color that always lies all over the surface of the pop music. In his Death and disaster The series shows naked Warhol’s obsession with the transient nature of mortality and survival.
Mike Kelley from Memory vessel A $1 million overvalued sales will also be provided. exist Memory Steel Parts #42 (2003), Kelley embeds a wide variety of decorative objects and household items into plaster or clay, creating an independent aesthetic atmosphere that celebrates ordinary beauty and solves the chaotic nature of existence. Inspired by the memory merchandise seen at the antiques exhibition, while in conversation with the history of post-war abstraction, the work collapses the distinction between folk art and advanced art, acknowledging the possibility of more popular and easier access to the language of materials investigating the language.
Rudolf Stingel's self-portrait is a highly anticipated location Untitled (Bolego)– This is undoubtedly one of the artist's most intimate psychological works, expected to be sold for $1.5 million to $2 million. Here, Stingel portrays himself drinking and smoking, an investigation of identity, habits, and myths. Flirting with the artist's ideas, both a decadent and a tragic character, Bolego First exhibited at the 2006 Whitney Biennale, curator Francesco Bonami described it as “the history of melancholy”, which proves the artist's obsession with memory and the passage of time.
Also, Sotheby's Senza Titolo (Seguire Il Filo del Discorso.which is likely to exceed its pre-sale of $400,000-$600,000. Other works on sale include a kawara black painting, August 8, 1975 (Est.: $300,000-$400,000), a small red-head sculpture inspired by Thomas Schütte Brancusi (Est.: $200,000-300,000), Raymond Pettibon (Est.: $80,000-$120,000), and seven works by Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Sigmar Polke, Untitled Since 1996 (EST.: $400,000-$600,000).
