10-11 November 2010. An additional 200 works will be offered in Christie’s Interiors sale in January 2011 TBA
Christie’s NEW YORK is presenting The Dennis Hopper Collection. Unknown to his many fans Hopper was an artist, a filmmaker, an actor, and a passionate art collector of contemporary art. He amassed more than 250 works throughout his lifetime. His well rounded and often cutting edge choices included prime examples of the world’s foremost Post-War & Contemporary artists, including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Rauschenberg, John Baldessari, and Julian Schnabel. Thirty-five works from the Collection will be offered at the Christie’s New York Post-War & Contemporary Evening and Day Sales in New York on November 10 and 11, 2010. An additional 200 works from the collection including those by Annie Leibovitz, Kenny Scharf and David Salle will be offered in Christie’s Interiors sale in January 2011. The Dennis Hopper Collection is expected to realize between $9 and $13 million.
The top lot in the sale is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled 1987, executed in acrylic, oil stick and graphite, (estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000) it will be offered in Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Evening Sale on November 10, 2010. The stylized composition is coated in numerous images such as figures, visages, text and mixed media. The visual use of text riffs from the textual “cut-up” style of Beat Generation writer William Burroughs in the 1950s. The other iconic work for the Evening Sale is Andy Warhol’s Portrait of Dennis Hopper, 1971, in synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000) in shades of blue, gray and ecru. Warhol photographed Hopper, immortalizing his friend and subject in the vein of his other famous subjects including James Dean.