Art, Auction to Add Glamour to Newport Event

Last November, Sotheby’s auctioneer John Marion banged his gavel to record the $53.9-million sale of the most expensive work of art ever bought at auction: Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises.”

On Saturday night, when Marion presides over Art Auction ’88 at Newport Harbor Art Museum, the numbers are expected to creep no higher than five figures. But the auctioneer and the works he will be hammering down--on view at the museum today through Saturday--promise to infuse the event with the aura of art-world glamour.

Sixty-five works by contemporary California and New York artists with estimates ranging from $500 to $40,000 will come under the gavel during the live auction. An additional 81 works (with estimates for the most part under $4,000) will be part of a silent auction earlier in the evening.

The event, chaired by Beverly Diamond, is expected to net at least $100,000 for the museum’s permanent collection.

But museum director Kevin Consey stressed that another major purpose of the auction is “to encourage people to collect.” For that reason, he said, there will be a broad range of media, including photography and ceramics as well as painting and sculpture.

The artists--many of whom have works represented in the permanent collection or shown in exhibitions organized by the museum--were chosen primarily on the basis of quality, although Consey concedes that “there were some we didn’t think too well of that we knew had commercial value.”

The vast majority of the artists contacted agreed to donate work to the event, Consey said. The museum arrived at the estimates published in the auction catalogue (a commonly used guide for prospective bidders) based on previous sale prices of the artists’ work. The figures are the result of consultations with artists, dealers, museum staff and the staff of Sotheby’s North America.

Consey said the choice of Sotheby’s stemmed from the volume and frequency of business the museum has done with the firm.

Marion is donating his services for the event. In return, the auction house will be gaining valuable information about Southern California collectors and their tastes and about numerous lesser-known artists from this region for whom, Consey noted, “no price structure (exists) as of yet.”

Well-known artists represented in the live auction include Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Stella, Grace Hartigan, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Arnoldo Pomodoro, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Holland, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Ed Moses and John McCracken.

The highest estimate ($30,000-40,000) is for a linear black painted-steel sculpture by Southern California artist Guy Dill; listed on the low end ($500 to $1,000) are a Stella lithograph and a manipulated-gelatin silver photograph by Judy Coleman. Pre-sale estimates, however, often bear little relationship to new price structures created in the heat of the bidding process.

Judging by the catalogue illustrations and a quick walk-through of the partially uncrated works, temporarily stored under lock and key in the basement of the Atrium in Newport Beach, the auction is likely to appeal to a broad range of contemporary taste.

The paintings include Christopher Brown’s big, lushly romantic “River at Evening”; Mary Corse’s subtle “Black Glitter Painting”; Matt Mullican’s enigmatic untitled black-and-white piece on unstretched cloth; James Hayward’s stucco-textured “Athenian (Seafoam Green/Neutral/Neutral Flesh)”; one of Leonard Koscianski’s special breed of fierce dogs (“Leap”), and Wally Hedrick’s funky “Cloakroom,” with its images of the famous ancient Greek statue, “Nike of Samothrace” and an orange cowboy boot on fire.

Among the sculptures are Fred Eversley’s big rippling S-curve made of black and clear acrylic prisms; an untitled piece by Donald Lipski in which cow-milking tubes are thrust into a pair of baby shoes; Barbara Spring’s life-size wooden image of “Veronica,” a woman in a blue dress and jogging shoes; Arman’s fractured torch-wielding “Slice of Liberty,” and a multilevel New Wave cocktail table by Peter Shire.

Works in other media include a wry collage by Allen Ruppersberg (“My Greatest Adventure”); an oil stick-and-pencil drawing of a figure by Manuel Neri; a dreamy monotype of architectural elements by Nathan Oliviera; a red-and-black broken-grid watercolor by Ed Moses, and a self-portrait by photographer Paul Outerbridge.

The silent auction offers a similarly broad range of styles, with work by such established and up-and-coming artists as Don Bachardy, William Bailey, Jo Ann Callis, Robbert Flick, Manny Farber, Jill Giegerich, Tony Labat, Jay McCafferty, Lee Mullican, Marc Pally, Beverly Pepper, Stephen Prina, Alan Saret, Richard Shaw, Susan Rankaitis, Alexis Smith, Mitchell Syrop, Nick Vaughn and Max Yavno.

Art Auction ’88 will be Saturday beginning with a cocktail buffet and the silent auction at 6 p.m. Tickets: $100, which includes a copy of the catalogue. Auction preview is open free to everyone during normal museum hours, today through Saturday. For information, including instructions on how to make an absentee bid, call the museum at (714) 759-1122.