Less known to the general public than Bill Gates, with whom he gave birth to Microsoft in 1975, Paul Allen was a jack-of-all-trades billionaire with a passion for pop culture, from Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana or Star Trek, whose objects he exhibited. in his museum in Seattle (northwest), his hometown.
Owner of several sports franchises, such as the Seattle Seahawks, he had also amassed a considerable art collection, which he used to loan to museums before his death in 2018.
In 150 works, put up for sale Wednesday and Thursday at Christie’s headquarters, at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, the set traces more than 500 years of art history, from Botticelli and Canaletto to Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois, via Claude Monet, Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper.
Unique, the assemblage is also unique for its value: several masterpieces are estimated at at least 100 million dollars, such as “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (petite version)” (1888) by Georges Seurat, a pinnacle of the pointillism, or a “Montagne Sainte-Victoire” (1888-1890) by Paul Cézanne, heralding Cubism.
There is also Vincent Van Gogh’s “Orchard with Cypresses” or a painting from the Tahitian period by Paul Gauguin, “Maternity II” (1899), which depicts his 17-year-old mistress, Pahura. This Tahitian period of Gauguin, one of the most sought after, has also become controversial because of the painter’s relationships with teenage girls when he was staying on the island.
– Philanthropy –
Although he had fallen out with Bill Gates, Paul Allen had signed his “Giving Pledge” in 2009 and all sales will be donated to charities. His sister Jody Allen, who heads the Paul Allen Foundation, did not give details on the works that will benefit from it.
Christie’s, controlled by the Artémis holding company of François Pinault, hopes in any case to mark the history of the art market by totaling more than a billion dollars. It would be a new record, in the wake of the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, which reached $922 million at competitor Sotheby’s in the spring.
With these sales, and that of the portrait of Marilyn Monroe “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” by Andy Warhol, which left in May for 195 million dollars, a record for a work of the 20th century, the current year could remain as the one of the most expensive in history.
Another emblematic Warhol, “White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times]” (1963), representing a car accident and of which only three exist in this monumental format, will be sold on November 16 by Sotheby’s, with an estimate of more than 80 millions of dollars.
The company, which is owned by Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, will auction for four days and says it expects the “biggest season ever”.
According to auction house experts, art is more than ever a safe investment in the eyes of the very wealthy, in a difficult economic context, weighed down by the war in Ukraine and the risks of recession.
“Clients want to diversify their assets, to take advantage of the art and because they know that most works continue to increase in value over time,” Adrien Meyer, co-president of the Impressionists department, told AFP. and Modern Art at Christie’s.
“There are more billionaires than masterpieces” available on the market, he summarizes, and “the demand is very diversified”.
“We don’t see any sign of slowing down,” confirms the vice-president of the Phillips auction house, Jeremiah Evarts, who nevertheless notes that “a large number of collectors are looking to the side of the 20th century and feel perhaps be more confident when buying a Picasso, a Chagall or a Magritte”, safe bets.
Phillips will notably put on sale on November 15 a painting by Marc Chagall from 1911, “The Father”, a work stolen by the Nazis and recently returned by France to the legitimate heirs, who have decided to part with it.
