News: Kaufmann House Sold for $16.84M
Situated conspicuously amongst a catalog of Warhols, De Koonings, Bacons, and Princes in Christie’s evening sale of Post-War & Contemporary Art was Richard Neutra’s Modernist masterpiece, the Kaufmann House. In an evening of record-breaking sales (Lucien Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” went for $30M at hammer, the highest auction result for a living artist), the Kaufmann House earned its place within the carefully curated sale, receiving a decorous applause following the $15M (before buyer premium) gavel price.
The anticipation over tonight’s sale of the Kaufmann House had been brewing since last autumn, when the NY Times ran an article on the historic work, announcing its eventual inclusion in Christie’s prominent Post-War & Contemporary Art auction. Over the ensuing months, and particularly in recent weeks, the media was teeming with chatter over the building’s designation as a work of art and what it means for the real estate market. Edwin Heathcote, architectural critic for the Financial Times, recently argued in an article on the house, that architecture, like art, is undergoing an unparalleled commodification. Tonight’s purchase of Neutra’s masterpiece, by what remains at press time an anonymous bidder, will have sweeping ramifications for not only mid-Century buildings, but contemporary architecture as well.
Christie’s officials were keen to indicate that the addition of the Kaufmann House to the Post-War & Contemporary Art sale was something of a unique case, noting its exceptional condition (the structure recently underwent a methodical restoration process by its recent owners, Brent Harris and Beth Edwards Harris) and exemplary form. Still, the Kaufmann House is now the third in a series of record-breaking sales for modern architecture. In 2003, Sotheby’s sold Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House for $7.5M, and last year, Christie’s sold Jean Prouvé’s prefab Maison Tropicale to hotelier André Balazs for a cool $4.97M. While many experts argue that the skyrocketing sales will raise the cultural awareness of these architectural landmarks, thereby improving preservation efforts, some fear that they will fall prey to collectors seeking more varied means of investment, ultimately remaining sequestered from both the public and scholastic spheres. The following weeks will likely reveal what kind of role the Kaufmann House will play in our lives. Perhaps we’ll simply continue to admire its beauty through Julius Schulman’s iconic pictures. Or, in the hopes our anonymous bidder is eager to share his/her architectural predilections, we’ll soon make pilgrimage to this desert tour de force.
The anticipation over tonight’s sale of the Kaufmann House had been brewing since last autumn, when the NY Times ran an article on the historic work, announcing its eventual inclusion in Christie’s prominent Post-War & Contemporary Art auction. Over the ensuing months, and particularly in recent weeks, the media was teeming with chatter over the building’s designation as a work of art and what it means for the real estate market. Edwin Heathcote, architectural critic for the Financial Times, recently argued in an article on the house, that architecture, like art, is undergoing an unparalleled commodification. Tonight’s purchase of Neutra’s masterpiece, by what remains at press time an anonymous bidder, will have sweeping ramifications for not only mid-Century buildings, but contemporary architecture as well.
Christie’s officials were keen to indicate that the addition of the Kaufmann House to the Post-War & Contemporary Art sale was something of a unique case, noting its exceptional condition (the structure recently underwent a methodical restoration process by its recent owners, Brent Harris and Beth Edwards Harris) and exemplary form. Still, the Kaufmann House is now the third in a series of record-breaking sales for modern architecture. In 2003, Sotheby’s sold Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House for $7.5M, and last year, Christie’s sold Jean Prouvé’s prefab Maison Tropicale to hotelier André Balazs for a cool $4.97M. While many experts argue that the skyrocketing sales will raise the cultural awareness of these architectural landmarks, thereby improving preservation efforts, some fear that they will fall prey to collectors seeking more varied means of investment, ultimately remaining sequestered from both the public and scholastic spheres. The following weeks will likely reveal what kind of role the Kaufmann House will play in our lives. Perhaps we’ll simply continue to admire its beauty through Julius Schulman’s iconic pictures. Or, in the hopes our anonymous bidder is eager to share his/her architectural predilections, we’ll soon make pilgrimage to this desert tour de force.
Posted by: Brian Fichtner on May 14, 08 at 04:39 AM PDT
