Timed to Fashion Month, Christie’s is running a special online Andy Warhol sale entitled Andy Warhol@Christie’s: Fashion through September 25. The sale offers insight into the fashion world through the eyes of Warhol with over 120 photographs, prints and drawings including photos of Giorgio Armani, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Calvin Klein, Iman and Oscar de la Renta. You can see all of the pieces here and, through the 22nd, a select number will be on display at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.
We spoke with Amelia Manderscheid, Christie’s global head of e-commerce and a post-war and contemporary art specialist, to find out more about how this sale came about.
theFashionSpot: How did the idea for this auction come about?
Amelia Manderscheid: Warhol was involved in the fashion community for his entire career, it was natural to want to build a sale around this central component of his life.
tFS: How did Christie’s go about sourcing the pieces for the auction?
AM: All works in our “Andy Warhol @ Christie’s” sales come from The Andy Warhol Foundation’s collection.
tFS: What factors come into play when you’re working on pricing?
AM: There are many factors to pricing including the previous auction records for similar works, freshness to market and condition of the individual works.
tFS: How did you decide which pieces to include in the sale?
AM: I wanted to put together a sale that would be visually compelling without being overwhelming with the ultimate goal of giving collectors insight into Warhol’s lifelong love affair with fashion.
tFS: Can you highlight some of the most notable pieces? Which do you anticipate being the biggest draw?
AM: I love Lots 13, 64, 85, 97 – the big draw is all of the drawings from the 1950s when Warhol was a young artist, working as a commercial illustrator for leading fashion companies and publications. Also, some of his rare prints of Diana Vreeland a la Napoleon, lot 47 and Giorgio Armani, lot 68, and a Keith Haring polaroid collage for French Vogue, lot 49, bring together Warhol’s prominence among the New York social elite and the leading fashion designers of his time.
tFS: Do you think these will make for valuable investment pieces? Is any Warhol piece a good investment?
AM: Certainly Andy Warhol is a household name and his market is the largest of any artist at auction. That said, it is extremely rare that people buy art purely as an investment; art attracts art lovers, one doesn’t really ‘spend’ on art – you ‘transfer value’ into it.
tFS: How did the exhibition at the Tribeca Grand come about? Any reason you chose that venue in particular?
AM: We wanted to feature these works in a setting that would be synonymous with New York Fashion Week. As the fashion shows themselves are not the best venue for displaying artwork, a hotel with many fashion week events and guests is an excellent venue to showcase these works.
tFS: Can you tell us about the pieces that will be on display at The Tribeca Grand? How did you pick which ones to include?
AM: The works on view show the breadth and depth of this sale, everything from runway photographs in the 1980s, to portrait polaroids of fashion designers as well as a selection of Warhol’s early commercial fashion illustrations.
