CHRISTIE'S N.Y.TO OFFER MOST VALUABLE WARHOL PAINTING

Friday, 06 April 2007 17:35

New York – On May 16, Christie’s in New York will offer Andy Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) from his seminal Death and Disaster series.  With a pre-sale estimate of $25 – 35 million, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) is expected to far exceed the previous record for the artist which was established at Christie’s New York in November 2006 when Warhol’s iconic Mao, 1972 was purchased for $17.4 million.  Not only has Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) resided within the same private collection for over three decades, the painting is also the most important work of Warhol’s seminal Death and Disaster series to have ever appeared at auction.  This sale is bound to set a new price structure for the artist.

“The appearance on the market of Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) will send a shock of excitement through the art world,” said Brett Gorvy, Deputy Chairman and International Co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art.  “This is a painting that has been considered the Holy Grail by a legion of contemporary art collectors and for years this work has been on every major wish list.  Warhol’s uncanny, oracle-like sense of what the future will bring is striking to say the least. As the Mao series was a prelude to the rise of China as a super power, the Death and Disaster series was indicative of today’s cult of the self.

Warhol’s Car Crashes – created between late 1962 and early 1964 – remain among the most powerful, challenging and provocative paintings made in the Post-War era.  Among this group, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), is based on what is arguably the most extraordinary, strange and disturbing source image of them all.  The scene is a mundane, suburban street transformed in an almost surrealistic nightmare in which an overturned car in flames is shown in the foreground while the catapulted body of the driver can be seen hanging, limp though still alive, impaled on a post.  What renders the image even more morbid is the figure at the heart of the picture, a man, hands in pockets, passing by nonchalantly, seemingly oblivious of hell happening on the other side of the sidewalk.

Like something from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, where a charming and banal idyll of a suburban community is shown to be nothing more than a shallow artifice of respectable surface appearance beneath which there lurks a darker reality of horror, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) reveals a similar disconnect in the world of appearances.  The extraordinary contrast between the mundane normality of everyday suburbia and the exceptional tragedy and violence that periodically strikes at its heart is exactly what Warhol wished to express with supercool detachment in the Death and Disaster series.

Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) leads the extraordinary group of works by Andy Warhol Christie’s will offer in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 16 – the value of the entire group is expected to realize in excess of $67 million. Among the other highlights are Yellow Marilyn, 1962 (estimate on request), Four-Foot Flowers, 1964 (estimate: $5 – 7 million) and Self Portrait , 1966/67 (estimate: $5.5 – 7.5 million).

About Christie’s
Christie’s is the world's leading art business with global auction sales in 2006 that totaled £2.51 billion / $4.67 billion.  This 36% increase over 2005 marks the highest total in company and in art auction history.  Christie’s is a name and place that speaks of extraordinary art, unparalleled service, and international glamour.  Christie’s has 85 offices in 43 countries and 14 salerooms around the world including London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Dubai and Hong Kong.  Most recently, Christie’s has led the market with expanded initiatives in emerging markets such as China, India and the United Arab Emirates, with successful sales and exhibitions in Beijing, Dubai, Mumbai and Russia.  Christie's also offers its clients worldwide access to its sales through Christie's LIVE, its unique, real-time online bidding service.  Visit Christie's at : www.christies.com/