Eager to surprise her new husband, Mrs. Pincus said, she sweet-talked a concierge at the hotel to tell her everything he could about Moore. She learned that the artist had tea delivered to his room early every morning. That night she slipped the concierge a note to go on Moore’s tea tray telling him what fans she and her husband were and asking him if they could possibly meet.
“The next morning the phone rang,” Mrs. Pincus went on. “David answered it and said, ‘It’s a man, and it’s for you.’ He wasn’t happy.” The caller was Moore, who invited the couple to breakfast.
For David Pincus, a clothing manufacturer, and his wife, that meeting — followed by countless visits to Moore’s home and studio in England — began a lifelong passion for artists and for collecting. Over a 50-year marriage the couple got to know many of the biggest talents of their day: Andy Warhol, John Chamberlain, Mark di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Wall.
The couple also became involved with museums like the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they served on boards, gave money and donated as well as loaned these institutions countless works of art.
Mr. Pincus died in December, and now Mrs. Pincus is selling a significant portion of her collection at Christie’s in New York on May 8 and 9, including seminal examples of paintings by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning: Abstract artists who are all the rage now. The collection is expected to bring a total of about $100 million.
Mrs. Pincus said the decision to hold an auction has been difficult. “Our foundation needs money,” she explained, referring to the Pincus Family Foundation, which supports various causes including pediatric AIDS initiatives, museums and hospitals.
Laura Paulson, a deputy chairwoman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, knew the couple for nearly 30 years. “They had a boundless appetite for art and would go all over the world buying from artists and from galleries,” she said. “David had an intuitive eye.”
Often their purchases reflected current events, Ms. Paulson explained. For example, in 1965, when the Institute of Contemporary Art organized Warhol’s first museum retrospective, the couple ended up buying his “Sixteen Jackies” (which they sold at Christie’s in 2006 for $15.7 million).
“Responding to the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the couple also bought eight Warhol paintings of electric chairs,” Ms. Paulson added. Over the years they sold or donated them to museums.
Top among the paintings up for sale is a 1961 Rothko, “Orange, Red, Yellow,” which the Pincuses bought from the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1967. Measuring nearly 8 feet by 7 feet, the painting is unusually large and of vibrant orange and reds. It is estimated to sell for $35 million to $45 million.
There have not been many paintings by Pollock at auction recently, and Christie’s will be selling “No. 28,” from 1951, one of his combinations of drip and painting in shades of silvery gray with red, yellow and shots of blue and white. Its estimate is $20 million to $30 million.
The auction will also include Newman’s, “Onement V,” from 1952. The last of a series of five paintings, it is the only one that is not in an American museum. The canvas, of rich blues, is expected to bring $10 million to $15 million.
Christie’s will also be selling the Pincuses’ de Kooning paintings and sculptures. One of the paintings, “Untitled V,” from 1983, was included in the recent de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to bring $4 million to $6 million.
Asked why she thinks there is such a craze right now for abstract art, Mrs. Pincus paused and said: “I have no idea. When we started out, our friends said: ‘Are you crazy? Why are you putting that junk in your house?’ “
WORKS ON THE WATERFRONT IN BROOKLYN
A series of rectangular modules fashioned from galvanized steel, acrylic, Douglas fir, glass and plastic currently sits in the lobby of the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of its Biennial. The work of Oscar Tuazon, born in the United States and based in Paris, “For Hire,” as the installation is called, is not just a visual environment; it has its practical uses too. On May 20 it will move to the Whitney’s fourth floor, where it will function as a runway for a fashion show by K8 Hardy, founder of the feminist art collective LTTR.
For his next act Mr. Tuazon is creating three site-specific sculptures for Pier 1 at the new Brooklyn Bridge Park. On view from July 19 through April 26, the works will incorporate local trees, and like the sculpture at the Whitney they will be functional as well as interactive. (One will serve as a passageway along the pier.)
Having site-specific installations is a first for the park, for Mr. Tuazon and for the Public Art Fund, which has organized the project.
“We know that Brooklyn is an incubator for young artistic talent, so this is especially appropriate,” said Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund. “Michael Van Valkenburgh’s vision for Brooklyn Bridge Park has created one of the most extraordinary new landscapes in the middle of New York City, and now, for the first time, one of our most exciting emerging artists has the chance to respond to it.”
Mr. Tuazon’s installation is just one of many projects on the Public Art Fund’s spring and summer schedule. Perhaps the most unusual will occupy the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, on Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, from June 20 to Aug. 26. A twin-engine airplane rotating on its own axis, called “How I Roll,” is the first public art project in America for the Italian artist Paola Pivi. “It will be one of those projects that stops people in their tracks,” Mr. Baume said.
via nytimes.com