Sotheby’s new campaign for their mobile application (“Your life is Global. Sothebys.com is mobile)” touts the fact that collectors may peruse upcoming lots on their hand-held devices, liberating them from the tyranny of the desktop computer.

My personal favorite features a gray haired man, at the helm of what looks like a pricey yacht, an iPhone tucked into his right hand. A white-jeaned babe reclines beside him. She doesn’t get to drive the boat nor surf the web. While a number of states have banned texting and car driving, I’m not sure where boats fit into all of this.

J. M. W. Turner's "Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino" sold for $44.9M at Sotheby's in London to Getty Museum. Photo: Sotheby's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum has purchased J.M.W. Turner’s four-foot wide view of Rome for $44.9 million, a record for the artist at auction. The price was more than double the low estimate.

Turner’s 1839 painting, Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, sold for £29.7 ($44.9 million) today at Sotheby’s in London. The estimate was  £12 – 18 million ($18.2 – $27.4 million).  London dealer Hazlitt Gooden & Fox bid on behalf of the Getty.

Sotheby’s evening old master and British painting sale totaled $80.9 million.

Only four other Turner oil paintings of comparable stature remain in private hands, according to Sotheby’s. The work is in its original plaster gilt and glazed frame and is the culmination of Turner’s focus on Rome. Modern Rome originally belonged to Turner’s  friend and patron, Hugh Monro of Novar. The work was acquired in 1878 by the 5th Earl of Rosebery and his wife, Hannah Rothschild on their honeymoon and has remained in the same family ever since.

The piece depicts the Italian landscape from the Capitoline Hill. Turner portrays the…

Eric Fischl's "Study for Corrida in Ronda #4" 2008, sold for $145,000. Photo: America: Now and Here

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

Painter Eric Fischl’s peripatetic U.S. art tour got a $1.2 million boost last week. The June 23 charity sale at Sotheby’s in New York raised funds for Fischl’s ambitious not-for-profit project, America: Now and Here,  a cross-country tour of art, poetry, film, plays and music to promote creativity and innovation across America. The auction was the project’s official launch.

The auction included works of art by well-known artists, as well as “luxury experiences,” including a Soho dinner for five with Chuck Close, a private tennis lesson with John McEnroe and a one-week stay at a Jamaican villa. Eric Fischl’s Study for Corrida in Ronda #4 was the top lot at the live auction conducted by Sotheby’s chairman and marquee charity auctioneer, Jamie Niven. The work fetched $145,000.

America: Now and Here is a nationwide tour which will stop in eight regions a year. The itinerant exhibition will be open to the public for six weeks in each location. Events will be held in custom-designed mobile truck galleries, civic centers and local schools, and include public programs, performances, lectures and…

Sotheby's Tobias Meyer conducting Sotheby's London auction, with Yves Klein's 1961 "Re 49" on the wall. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in London tonight totaled $61.8 million, about a third as much as last May’s New York contemporary sale. Results are respectable: eighty-three percent of lots found buyers. Nine of 53 lots failed to sell. The same London sale tallied just $42 million a year ago.

The evening’s top lot was Klein’s Re 49, Relief Eponge Blue, the surface arrayed with sponges, pebbles and coated in the artist’s signature blue hue.  The 1961 piece sold for $9.3 million to an unnamed U.S. collector, according to Sotheby’s.  The seller was HypoVereinsbank.

Other Kleins on the block included a gold leaf panel MG42 which sold for $732,848, six times the price it fetched in at auction 2000. Another piece, a fire painting titled F124 sold for $1.4 million. The artist’s retrospective continues at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum until Sept. 12.

Sotheby’s press department calculated any and all auction records, including one for a Boetti tapestry: Mappa fetched $1.3 million. Bharti Kher’s life-size elephant sculpture The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, set an auction record for the artist, selling for $1.5 million–also a record for…

Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park" sold for $722,500 to Alinder Gallery

The Alinder Gallery, based in Gualala, California, purchased Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, the top lot at Sotheby’s June 21 and 22 sale of the Polaroid Collection. The work sold for $722,500, above $500,000 high estimate. Overall the sale totaled $12.5 million with 88.8 percent of lots finding buyers. My earlier coverage of the sale is here.

The gallery, which specializes in Ansel Adams has a motto displayed on the landing page of its website:  “Better Art. Better Life.”

Adams took the photo of the misty mountainous landscape in 1938. The mural-sized print from the Polaroid Collection dates from the 1950s or 1960s and was printed four-feet wide and hung in a Polaroid office.

New York collector Adam Lindemann featured on cover of May-June 2010 issue of "Sotheby's At Auction"

On a recent visit to Sotheby’s I nabbed a copy of  Sotheby’s At Auction, essentially a glossy advertorial for upcoming auction property with a few articles sprinkled in the mix.

The cover features collector Adam Lindemann, photographed at home in New York, surrounded by contemporary and tribal art. Also prominently displayed is Lindemann’s green and purple faced watch, which I am guessing is probably a Marc Newson designed Ikepod–a brand Lindemann got involved with in 2005.

The cover story focuses on tribal collectors Lindemann as well as South African artist and collector Karel Nel and German collector Peter Henle.

Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," mural sized, est. $300K-$500K, sold for $722,500. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s conducted the first part of a two-day sale of images from the Polaroid Collection last night. The first session included 99 lots and was front-loaded with some of the collection’s best material. Not surprisingly all 99 lots sold. The estimates were pegged extremely low estimates and, one imagines, so were reserves.

The sale came on the heels of protest and hand-wringing from some members of the photography community who objected to the dispersal of the historic collection.

The session totaled $7.2 million, topping the $4.5 million pre-sale high estimate.

Today Sotheby’s will sell the remaining 473 lots. The auction is by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota. Sale proceeds benefit creditors of PBE Corp., formerly Polaroid, which filed for bankruptcy twice in the previous decade. (My earlier Bloomberg story about the sale here).

Landscapes by Ansel Adams fetched some of the biggest prices. New York collector Sunil Hirani was among the successful bidders for Adams large format images.

“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire some of the most iconic American photography by the best and most well known…

Tiffany "Dragonfly" table lamp sold for $554,500. Image: Sotheby's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

A circa 1898-1905 Tiffany’s ‘Dragonfly’ table lamp by Clara Driscoll fetched $554,500 today at Sotheby’s in New York, exceeding the $300,000-$500,000 presale estimate. The work was the sale’s top lot.

The lamp, made of leaded glass and patinated bronze and adorned with dragonflies in shades of blue and green, was snatched up by an anonymous phone bidder. The bidder also acquired four other Tiffany fixtures in the sale. The lamp’s design spearheaded a new genre of matched shade-and-base design in the Tiffany’s product line, according to Sotheby’s catalog.

Another ‘Dragonfly’ table lamp, circa 1905, sold at Christie’s New York in December 2009, for $602,500.

The lamp was among 76 lots sold today for $5,121,813. The sale was projected to total $4.3 to $6.4 million. 67 percent of items offered found buyers.

A 1925 three-panel gilt wood screen by Armand-Albert Rateau failed to sell. It was estimated to go for $400,000-$600,000, but the auctioneer was unable to find a single bidder after opening bids at $250,000. A 1926 Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann ‘Cla-Cla’ Reading Desk also did not receive any bids, failing to reach the presale…

Egyptian sandstone lintel acquired by Emory's Michael C. Carlos Museum. Image: Sotheby's

An early Roman marble torso of an Emperor sold for $7.4 million on Friday at Sotheby’s in New York, surpassing a $1.2 million high estimate. The torso dates to the first half of the first century A.D. and sold to an unnamed phone bidder. There were seven bidders vying for the piece. Contenders included New York dealer Hicham Aboutaam of Phoenix Ancient Art bidding in the salesroom, the Metropolitan Museum of Art-according to a source–as well as a major European collector.The torso was consigned by an Austrian family, according to Sotheby’s.

Sotheby’s sale totaled $17.5 million, far above the $4.8 million projected high estimate.

Other lots crushed pre-sale expectations. A 2nd century Roman imperial marble bust of Athena Giustiniani was estimated to sell for up to $900,000 and sold for $4.1 million.

The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University snagged an Egyptian sandstone lintel and door jamb relief fragment, dating back to 690 B.C. Estimated to sell for up to $15,000, the museum was compelled to pay $80,500 for the piece.

From Neuberger Berman and Lehman Brothers Corporate Art Collections: Julie Mehretu "Untitled I" 2001, Est. $600-$800,000, Image: Sotheby's

Click here for link to Bloomberg News.

By Lindsay Pollock

June 4 (Bloomberg) — Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the investment bank liquidating in bankruptcy, may reap more than $10 million from an art sale at Sotheby’s this fall, including a Julie Mehretu painting estimated to fetch a near 40-fold profit.

The swirling, abstract by Mehretu, the 2001 “Untitled 1,’’ is estimated to sell for as much as $800,000, according to Sotheby’s. The bank acquired the painting in 2001 for $21,726. Mehretu, who has a show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, recently completed a mural for the lobby of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s New York office.

Lehman is selling more than 400 contemporary artworks at Sotheby’s in New York on Sept. 25 in a single-owner sale, with the proceeds going to creditors.
“The idea wasn’t to purchase for investment,’’ said Naomi Baigell, a Sotheby’s senior vice president in charge of corporate art services. “They showcased what was going on each year. The idea was to bring new culture to the workplace.’’

The sale’s projected top lot is Damien Hirst’s 1993 “We’ve Got Style (The Vessel Collection-Blue)’’…