Frame by frame, Enron art to be sold

The first round of the auction, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday, is scheduled for May 15-16 in New York. Up for sale will be the most valuable pieces, including Claes Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches and nine other artworks.

About 50 other pieces will be auctioned by Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg in the fall.

Much of the collection was bought by an in-house art committee, chaired by Lea Fastow, wife of indicted former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. Given a $20 million budget, she traveled to New York; Venice, Italy; and elsewhere in search of pieces.

The spree continued from late 2000 to the following fall, when Enron went into the tank and shopping was stopped, having spent about $4 million.

"It's like The Beverly Hillbillies," said Hiram Butler, co-director of the Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery in the Heights. "What's not fun -- flying around, buying art?"

Examining a partial list of the artists and pieces represented in the collection, Butler, who specializes in contemporary art, "I'm wondering, `Who are these guys?' "

Five pieces that will be auctioned May 15 are the highlights "are all `A' quality" representative pieces of contemporary genres, including pop, op (for optical) and minimalism, said Amalia Dayan, a contemporary art specialist at Phillips de Pury.

Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches, a vinyl pop sculpture of a what appears to be a melted light switch, is by far the most valuable piece in the collection. Enron bought it from Phillips de Pury three years ago for about $590,000, including commission.

Phillips estimates it will go for $500,000 to $700,000 -- though it could well bring more, Dayan said.

"It's absolutely one of his best, best, best pieces," she said. "It's an icon. The value for Oldenburg is rising. I think it's much, much undervalued."

Phillips recently sold Oldenburg's Light Switches: Hard, a wood sculpture, for $630,000.

At the May sale, Donald Judd's minimalist sculpture of two boxes is expected to go for $100,000 to $150,000.

Phillips is seeking $40,000 to $60,000 for Jack Pierson's Stardust. It is a "found-art" piece -- Pierson found letters that spell Stardust and turned them into art.

Bernd and Hilla Becher's eight photographs of water towers are expected to go for $40,000 to $60,000.

The Bechers "are very important. They are forerunners of contemporary German photography. And these are quintessential examples of their work," said Andrea Crane, a Phillips contemporary art specialist.

Phillips de Pury says the collection should only fetch from $1.3 million to $1.8 million, according to bankruptcy court documents.

At least one piece has already been sold. Days before Enron declared bankruptcy in December 2001, the Smithsonian American Art Museum bought Martin Puryear's Bower, a wooden latticelike sculpture, for $782,000.

When it bought the Puryear, Enron paid a then-record price for one of his works -- about $16,000 less than the Smithsonian paid.

Money raised in the auction will be set aside for company creditors, who have filed 23,000 claims with a face value of $400 billion. Claims adjudged to be valid will share funds apportioned in the company's plan of reorganization, which could be approved by year's end.

Lea Fastow worked at Enron from the early 1990s, rising to become assistant treasurer. She resigned in 1997, after her first child was born.

Andrew Fastow faces federal fraud and conspiracy charges for his role in creating off-the-books partnerships that hid Enron's true financial condition and allegedly enriched him, relatives and friends.

Also on the art committee were Jeff Shankman, former president of Enron Global Markets and a decorative and fine arts collector; Enron executive Mike McConnell; Ned Rifkin, former director of the Menil Collection and now head of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and Barry Walker, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. No one was paid.

The committee had high ambitions. When it disbanded in fall 2001, it was in the process of commissioning a huge outdoor piece that it hoped would become the city's landmark, much the way the Gateway Arch is in St. Louis, Walker has said.

Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson planned to transform the futuristic circular walkway linking Enron's towers to a mammoth public artwork. The piece, Milky Way, would have been filled with shimmering stars.

Part of the $4 million the committee designated for spending would have gone toward commissioned works. Some artists never completed the works when the company went into its slide, and the full commissions were never paid.

SMITHSONIAN BUYS ENRON SHOWPIECE

Enron might be the poster child for corporate corruption, but the bankrupt energy trader's top art purchase has been validated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In a widely overlooked story first reported last month, the Smithsonian museum purchased the showpiece of Enron's short-lived $20-million corporate art collection, Martin Puryear's Bower (1980), a large wooden lattice-work structure. Enron had bought the work at Sotheby's New York contemporary sale on May 15, 2001, for an eye-popping $764,750 (with premium), a record-setting price that was well above the work's presale estimate of $500,000-$600,000, and about 50 percent more than the reclusive artist's previous auction record, set the year before.

Enron's adventures in the art market were overseen by an "art committee" famously headed by Lea Fastow, wife of now-disgraced Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow (and still a member of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston modern and contemporary committee), and including two local museum luminaries, MFAH curator Barry Walker and Hirshhorn Museum director Ned Rifkin (then director of the Menil Collection in Houston). No word has surfaced as to the fate of the rest of Enron's art assets -- Claes Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches (bought at auction for $574,500, a near-record for the artist), a Donald Judd "stack" sculpture,

long with Carl Andre, Judd radically altered the course of American sculpture. While Andre was the first to explore the flat space of the floor, Judd pioneered the three-dimensional exploration of the wall. Judd's "Stacks" -- individual rectangular metal and Plexiglas boxes that resemble drawers and were conceived to attach to a wall, often in units of ten with space between them -- remain his most significant contribution.

Last auction season, a "Stack" shattered its previous record of $286,000 to sell for $819,750 (Sotheby's, Nov. 2000). Not only that, but the year 2000 also saw Judd set records for all of the other major categories of his sculpture.

It would be easy to say that the art market is finally coming around to appreciating Judd. But that would be too simplistic. Instead, the art market is finally getting smarter by recognizing that there are so few true innovators -- that once they are identified they should be bought without fear of price. That doesn't mean a collector should buy any Judd just to have one in the collection. However, since Judd was remarkably consistent, it becomes a matter of choosing between "good," "better" and "best."

Despite a year of record-breaking prices, there is still a bargain left in Judd's work -- the Swiss pieces. These sectional works resemble the inside of an open candy box and are among the most colorful of Judd's output. In recent times, two examples, each good representatives of the smallest size works from the series, sold for $37,375 (Sotheby's, Feb. 2000) and $35,250 (Sotheby's, May 2000), respectively.

Bridget Riley's In Attendance, Nam June Paik's Retrobot, Robert Therrien's sculpture of a double Dutch door, and works by Uta Barth, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Teresita Fernandez, Julie Moos, Jack Pierson, Alma Thomas and John Wesley.

The Puryear sale to the Smithsonian was handled by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York, according to a report by Bill Murphy in the Houston Chronicle. "The Smithsonian paid $782,000 for the work," Murphy wrote, "about $16,000 more than Enron paid." Presumably the dealer took a commission on the transaction, so Enron probably didn't make a profit on the deal. The museum actually made the acquisition in late 2001 and announced it back in June, though a museum spokesperson said that the museum didn't know where the work came from at first. As for the high price, the museum notes that Puryear sculptures of that period are "hard to find." The museum has been beefing up its contemporary collection with acquisitions of works by Deborah Butterfield, Alfred Jensen, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Liz Larner and Nam June Paik.

The Smithsonian now expects to open the American Art Museum's renovated facility -- the Patent Office building -- in 2006.

Phillips is seeking $40,000 to $60,000 for Jack Pierson's Stardust. It is a "found-art" piece -- Pierson found letters that spell Stardust and turned them into art.

The “art world” is such a joke. If Joe the mechanic picked up those letters and spelled “Stardust” with them, it would be worth maybe a dollar.

But since an annointed “artist” found them and did the same thing, the suckers will pay tens of thousands of dollars for it.

I’d laugh but, through the NEA, we fund the charlatans who perpetuate this scam.

Boy, if Republicans ever get control of both houses of congress and the presidency at the same time, we’ll find see an end to this “funding of the arts” nonsense.

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