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PRESS INFORMATION Contact: Margaret Doyle 212.636.2680 CHRISTIE'S POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART SALES OFFER EXTRAORDINARY RANGE OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST, POP, AND CONTEMPORARY ART Post-War & Contemporary Art November 11 & 12, 2003 New York - Christie's evening sale of Post-War & Contemporary art on November 11 at Rockefeller Center will offer important works from the collection of Dorothy C. Miller, one of the 20th century's most influential curators; a vast and stunning selection of paintings by America's Abstract Expressionists, including a circle of pioneering women artists who brought their own vision to the movement; and works in a variety of media by today's headlining Contemporary artists. Making their auction debuts are ten works of art from the collection of Dorothy C. Miller, a pioneering curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art who gathered a wide-ranging assemblage of Post-War art, American folk art, and American tribal and decorative arts over the course of a 50-year career. The star lot of the collection is Jasper Johns' Gray Numbers of 1957 (estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000), which the artist hand-painted without the stencils used in the later works in the Numbers series. Mark Rothko's Untitled, 1963 (estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000), is a large painting infused with a pulsating warmth and energy grounded by three shimmering rectangles against a rich brown background. Painted at the height of Rothko's creative power, Untitled conveys a sense of primal, elemental force. Christie's established a new world auction record for Rothko last spring when No. 9 (White and Black on Wine), 1958, the sale's top lot, sold for $16,359,500. Woman with Peanuts, 1962 (estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000), an early Pop work by Roy Lichtenstein, was created just at the time he was consolidating his signature style. Harking back to the days of cheerful 1950s advertisements, this large-scale portrait of a smiling waitress pops out from a bright yellow background. Although this glib and nostalgic representation seems to embody American values by its combination of work, happiness, and implied quality, the image's superficial literalness belies an undefined subversiveness. A particular strength of Christie's evening sale of Post-War & Contemporary art is the breadth and quality of works by leading Abstract Expressionists who burst onto the world scene in the years following World War II. Franz Kline's Rue, 1959 (estimate: $3,500,000-4,500,000), is an epic black-and-white painting of visual force. Nearly nine feet tall and seven feet wide, its composition reveals an armature of horizontal and vertical lines, with a dark mass of concentrated force in the central section hovering over the structure. The complex interaction between the black and white is masterful; the white is especially crucial in creating an atmosphere in the picture by softening the black into subtle gray near the edges. Christie's will offer two magnificent canvases by Clyfford Still from the estate of artist, poet, collector, and publisher John Stephan. Stephan was the artistic force behind the avant-garde journal The Tiger's Eye, published from 1947 until 1949 and coinciding fortuitously with the heroic years of Abstract Expressionism. 1945-R and 1950-T—from 1945 and 1950, respectively, and estimated at $1,200,000-1,600,000 each—are extraordinary paintings that Stephan acquired directly from the artist more than 50 years ago. Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, and Helen Frankenthaler each made their mark within the Abstract Expressionist movement with distinct repertoires of painterly gestures, from the lyrical to the violent. Joan Mitchell's No. 3, 1953-54 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), is a rare, exceptional example of her early work and possesses the signature qualities of her painting: grand scale, intricacy of figure and ground, and calligraphic trace of the abstract gesture. Her epic Plowed Field, 1971 (estimate: $600,000-800,000), a triptych, is among the largest and most daring works in her oeuvre and stands as one of the great masterpieces of its period. Astonishing in color and emotionally exuberant in composition, Lee Krasner's Celebration, 1960 (estimate: $300,000-400,000) is from her most lauded series, entitled Earth Green, and is the most important work by the artist ever to come to auction. Helen Frankenthaler's Mountain Storm, 1955 (estimate: $300,000-400,000) is a stunning example of Abstract Expressionism; daring in brushstroke and color, it is a masterful composition that combines soaked pigments and thick impasto with an explosive effect. The evening sale also will include works by some of the most highly sought-after artists of the 1990s and early 2000s. Jeff Koons' Lifeboat, 1985 (estimate: $1,600,000-1,900,000), a life-size bronze replica of a lifeboat, was a key work in the artist's first groundbreaking solo New York gallery exhibition in 1985, where it was joined by bronze casts of a rubber dinghy, a diver's jacket with oxygen tank, and diving goggles and snorkel. A major success that launched the artist's career, that exhibition, entitled Equilibrium, had as its central theme the notion of entropy and of the cultural vacuum at the heart of modern consumerist culture. Untitled (Gold), 1999 (estimate: $200,000-300,000) is a whimsical large-scale painting by Takashi Murakami, one of today's most influential Contemporary artists. The painting consists of an array of his trademark biomorphic mushroom shapes and fantastic little creatures, all of which are impossibly cute, with occasional overtones of menace and mischief. Taking his cues from both high and low art, Murakami seamlessly combines them to create a dynamic and accessible art that speaks to the present while maintaining a dialogue with the past. Christie's evening sale of Post-War & Contemporary will include a selection of works by leading Contemporary photographers. Highlights include Andreas Gursky's Prada II, 1997 (estimate: $200,000-300,000) and Untitled V, 1997 (estimate: $500,000-700,000); Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #54, 1980 (estimate: $150,000-200,000); and Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2—Genealogy, 1999 (estimate: $120,000-180,000). Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sales The morning session of the day sale will feature an important painting by Helen Frankenthaler, Courtyard of El Greco's House, 1959 (estimate $200,000-300,000), that was executed during a breakthrough period for the artist and included in several seminal exhibitions of the artist's work. Wayne Thiebaud's Five Eating Figures, 1963 (estimate $240,000-320,000), is a charming and rare example of the artist's paintings of figures, who are depicted eating delicious treats which are themselves a signature Thiebaud subject. Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild (721-1), 1990 (estimate: $300,000-400,000), is a bright and colorful example of the artist's abstract painting series and George Rickey's monumental sculpture Six Random Lines Eccentric II, 1992 (estimate: $180,000-250,000), will be installed outside of Christie's in Rockefeller Plaza, where its graceful lines can be seen in motion. The afternoon session of the day sale will include works by the most renowned artists in today's Contemporary art scene, including Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, and Richard Prince. Highlights include Jean-Michel Basquiat's three-dimensional canvas All Beef, 1983 (estimate: $350,000-450,000); Alighiero e Boetti's large-scale embroidered tapestry Tutto, 1988-89 (estimate: $350,000-450,000); a Damien Hirst spot painting Amnioantipyrine, 1992 (estimate: $250,000-350,000); the sale's cover lot, Takashi Murakami's triptych PO + KU SURREALISM (Pink), 1999 (estimate: $200,000-300,000); and a selection of Contemporary photographs including Untitled Film Still #21, 1978 by Cindy Sherman (estimate: $80,000-120,000). Auctions: Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale—November 11 at 7:00 pm The Dorothy C. Miller Collection—November 12 at 10:00 am Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sales—November 12 at 11:30 am & 2:00 pm Viewing: Christie's Galleries, 20 Rockefeller Plaza—November 7-11 # # # Images available on request