The Tamesis
Five days before 16 masterpieces by the late media magnate SI Newhouse are to be unveiled at Christie’s New York evening auction, the auction house has released a two-minute video promoting a specific sculpture included in the sale.
As Christie’s notes, the short film was shot in early May and stars Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman alongside a bronze sculpture of Constantin Brancusi. Danaid (1913). The sculpture is expected to be one of the hottest lots of the season, with a presale estimate of $100 million, well above the artist’s record of $71.2 million but below the three most expensive sculptures ever sold at auction, all by Alberto Giacometti.
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According to a Christie’s spokesperson, the concept for the video was inspired by Man Ray’s film of Lee Miller’s reveal of Brancusi’s controversial sculptures Ms.. (The film and a marble version of the sculpture are included in the Brancusi retrospective currently on display at the Neues Nationalgalerie in Berlin.)
In the Christie’s video, Kidman talks on the phone as she strides into the “Rock Center,” the auction house’s headquarters where works from the upcoming sale are on display before arriving on the block. She tells the person on the other end “Tell them they can wait. I’m not going to push this.” Kidman takes on David Bowie’s 1975 song “Golden Years” Danaid Placed on a white pedestal in an empty room, surrounded by a circular curtain wall. As Kidman walked around the patinated bronze sculpture, the click of her heels echoing in the empty room, she was almost in a trance. Black-and-white archival photos tracing the history of the sculpture—both works that inspired Brancusi and those influenced by him—flash on the screen before the music starts again.
Kidman danced “The Golden Years” around the sculpture in a manner that was sure to draw immediate condemnation from other visitors. She even traced her fingers on the edge of the pedestal, apparently without the white gloves that anyone touching the piece must wear. Danaid Seductively. Back on the phone, she told her confidante that she didn’t think she would make it (one wonders where she would go) and that she needed “a little more time.”
She will have to wait until at least May 18, when DanaidTogether with the Newhouse collection of works by Picasso, Pollock, Matisse, Rothko and other modern art giants, it is expected to bring in approximately $450 million.
