Sunday, December 11, 2011

At the Lapin Agile - Pablo Picasso

Price in US $ - 40.7 million





















At the turn of the twentieth century the Lapin Agile, a Montmartre cabaret in France, was a favorite spot for struggling artists and writers, including Picasso, Modigliani, Apollinaire, and Utrillo.

Pablo Picasso's 1905 oil painting "At the Lapin Agile" helped to make this cabaret world famous.

Picasso's composition was of posterlike simplicity. He aligned glasses and figures—hatted and shown from full-face to profile view—along severe diagonals, ending with a seated guitarist, Frédé, the café's owner.

Steve Martin wrote a play 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile' based on this painting.



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Friday, December 9, 2011

The Gross Clinic - Thomas Eakins

Price in US $ - 68 million























The Gross Clinic
is an oil on canvas painting by American artist Thomas Eakins. Included among the group is a self-portrait of Eakins, who is seated to the right of the tunnel railing, sketching or writing.

The painting is shocking for both its bold presentation and the matter-of-fact goriness of the procedure. Adding to the drama is the lone woman in the painting seen in the middle ground, possibly the patient's mother, cringing in distress. Her dramatic figure functions as a strong contrast to the calm, professional demeanor of the men who surround the patient. This bloody and very blunt depiction of surgery was shocking at the time it was first exhibited.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Diana and Actaeon - Titian

Price in US $ - 70.6 million





















The story of how Actaeon was turned into a stag for glimpsing the naked goddess Diana has inspired artists through the centuries. Diana and Actaeon is considered to be one of the greatest works by the Italian Renaissance master Titian.

Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) - Mark Rothko

Price in US $ - 72.8 million



















White Center
is part of Rothko's signature multiform style: several blocks of layered, complementary colors on a large canvas

Mark Rothko is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label. One of the most crucial philosophical influence on Rothko was Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers - Vincent van Gogh

Price in US $ - 39.7 million






















Based on a still life theme, Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers was created by Van Gogh in August 1888.

It was created in a spectacular series by the Dutch artist. This oil painting series includes similar paintings of fifteen sunflowers in a vase, depicting the illustration of sunflowers passing through several stages of life, beginning with full blooming to withering out. The artist brilliantly produced it in several shades and hues. The painting is regarded especially for its innovative nature, which significantly highlights the use of the yellow spectrum, as well as the newly invented use of colors.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas (Water Lily Pond) - Claude Monet

Price in US $ - 80.5 million













Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas
(Water Lily Pond; 1919) is one of the series of Water Lilies paintings by French impressionist artist Claude Monet.

More than any other artist in the Impressionist circle, Claude Monet never tired of exploring the movement down to its most basic elements. He'd methodically - albeit rapidly - paint the exact same scene over and over, the only variables being the angles of light, time of day and weather conditions. It is a testament to his patience and artistic mastery that these same scenes all came out distinctly different from one another.

Monet treated the water's surface like a mirror, reflecting the swaying fringe of foliage and the clouds moving across the sky.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Turquoise Marilyn - Andy Warhol

Price in US $ - 80 million























Andy Warhol
painted several classic images of Marilyn Monroe. This one, completed using acrylic and silkscreen on linen, is from a series of five he painted, each 40 inches square, in 1964. The other four sustained bullet holes in Marilyn's forehead.

Warhol was fascinated with fame for himself, but also of those that were famous. Warhol painted many other celebrities and iconic people from history.

The style and repetition of the image is similar to the Warholian technique of celebrity iconography.

Monday, October 17, 2011

A Wheat Field with Cypresses - Vincent Van Gogh

Price in US $ - 57 million
















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The last two years of Van Gogh's life were productive of marvelous pictures--painted though they were under constant strain. During this period he traveled far from his Impressionist starting-point. The equable balance of Impressionism was replaced by an emotional turbulence.

This picture appears as a whole in the multitude of curves that twist and turn and repeat themselves throughout. The Neo-Impressionist juxtaposition of near-primary colors was also exaggerated to a point of intense brilliance.

Friday, October 14, 2011

False Start - Jasper Johns

Price in US $ - 80 million






















Jasper Johns
is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking. The False Start is one of his popular oil paintings made on a canvas 170.8 centimeters long and 137.2 centimeters wide - best described as second generation abstract expressionist.

His fixation on technical procedures defines the work of art as almost a kind of utilitarian object—as if the function of a painting were, first and foremost, to describe itself.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Eight Elvises - Andy Warhol

Price in US $ -100 million













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Andy Warhol
, born on August 6, 1928 (death:February 22, 1987) was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His art works are comprised of over 12,000 pieces of art which includes his drawings, paintings, photography, sculptures, films and prints.

Eight Elvises is a 1963 silkscreen painting by Andy Warhol of Elvis Presley. Unlike the artist’s other screen prints, which were run off, sometimes in hundreds of editions, he only made one of the work he called Eight Elvises.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust - Pablo Picasso

Price in US $ - 106.5 million
























Painted in a single day in 1932 featuring Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. The painting was publicly exhibited only once, in 1961, to commemorate Picasso's 80th birthday.

Currently displayed at Tate Modern in London.