Entertainment
Picasso Valued at $140M Heading to NYC Auction
NEW YORK (AP) — A radiant masterpiece by Pablo Picasso from the 1950s will lead an auction in May where it could top $140 million.
“Women of Algiers (Version O)” will be offered at Christie’s on May 11.
The vibrantly colorful 1955 painting features a scantily attired female in the foreground amid a jumble of smaller female nudes. The central figure is Picasso’s muse Jacqueline Roque, who became his second wife in 1961.
The oil on canvas was part of a 15-work series Picasso created between 1954 and 1955 that was inspired by “Women of Algiers in their Apartment” by Eugene Delacroix, an 1834 work Picasso greatly admired that hangs in the Louvre in Paris.
The hefty pre-sale estimate hovers near the current record for any artwork sold at auction, held by Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud.” It sold at Christie’s for $142.4 million in 2013.
Christie’s did not reveal the seller, but said the collector acquired the painting in 1997 for $31.9 million when Christie’s sold the collection of noted New York collectors Victor and Sally Ganz, who at one time owned all 15 works in the series.
“One can arguably say that this is the single most important painting by Picasso to remain in private hands,” said Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman of impressionist and modern art.
The work has been in several major museum retrospectives in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently it appeared in exhibitions at the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Tate Britain.
“Women of Algiers (Version O)” will be offered with a group of two dozen other blue chip works created between 1902 and the end of the 20th century in a stand-alone sale called “Looking Forward to the Past.”
In May 2010, Christie’s set an auction record for any work by Picasso when it sold his 1932 painting “Nude, Green Leave and Bust” of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter for $106.5 million.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024
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Entertainment
O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer
Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.
By Post Staff
Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.
Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.
At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.
Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).
He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”
The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.
It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.
He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.
He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.
The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.
Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.
Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.
In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.
When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.
Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.
“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.
“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”
“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.
“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”
Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.
He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.
Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.
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Oakland Post: Week of April 10 – 16, 2024
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