'Image World': contemporary art at Christie's
Cindy Sherman - Untitled - 1981
Next November 2021, Christie's contemporary art auction will include several works from the same private American collection, grouped under the title "Image World", in reference to the Whitney Museum of American Art's famous 1989 exhibition on the Picture Generation.
Source: Christie's. Image: CINDY SHERMAN (b. 1954), "Untitled", 1981. chromogenic print. 24 x 48 in. (61 x 121.9 cm.), 1981. Edition of ten plus two artist's proofs. Estimated pre-sale price: $2 million to $3 million.
The collection to be auctioned at Christie's focuses on a group of artists emerged in the 1980s, who drew on the highly visual culture (television, advertising) in which they lived. Prominent among them was Cindy Sherman, whose 1981 photograph "Untitled" will be offered at the auction. This is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated images created by the artist, which Christie's describes as "at once seductive and anxiety-inducing". Another print of this same photograph was auctioned 10 years ago at Christie's for $3.9 million, which remains, as of September 2021, the second highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. Two other photographs by Sherman, "Untitled #92" and "Untitled #93", will also be included in the auction.
The work with the highest pre-sale estimate is "Untitled" (1995) by Christopher Wool, an artist whose prices have risen dramatically in the last decade, to the point that one of his "Untitled" paintings fetched almost $30 million at Sotheby's in 2015. The painting, which according to Christie's evokes “the downtown counterculture of New York City in the 1980s and 90s", is expected to sell for between $7 million and $10 million.
Other works announced by Christie's for the November auction include "Liam and Noel in the 70s", a portrait of the two founding brothers of the band Oasis by Elizabeth Peyton; and "Untitled (Your Manias Become Science)", a Pop-inspired collage created in 1981 by Barbara Kruger.

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