| Rabbit | |
|---|---|
| Artist | Jeff Koons |
| Year | 1986 |
| Medium | Stainless steel sculpture |
| Subject | Rabbit |
Rabbit is a 1986 series of three identical stainless steel sculptures by Jeff Koons. One of the editions of Rabbit is one of the most expensive work sold by a living artist at auction, being sold for $91.1 million in May 2019. [1]
In May 2019, the sculpture was auctioned for $91.1 million, breaking the auction record for an artwork by a living artist. [2] The work, which was sold by the estate of the late magazine publisher S. I. Newhouse, was one in an edition of three (plus an artist's proof) and the last still held in private hands. [3] It was later revealed that the art dealer Robert Mnuchin purchased the work for the billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen. [4]
In the initial sale of the work, Koons's art dealer Ileana Sonnabend kept one edition and sold the other two for $40,000 each: to the advertising magnate Charles Saatchi, and the painter Terry Winters. [5] In 1991, Saatchi sold the piece to American collector Stefan Edlis for $945,000. [6] Around the same period, Larry Gagosian brokered the deal between Winters and Newhouse, for $1 million. [7] In 2011, at Abu Dhabi Art, Gagosian remembered it as his favorite art deal and "the one transaction that stands out the most." Gagosian regretted not being able buy the piece himself, stating it was "a startling price at the time, a million dollars."
After Sonnabend's death in October 2007, her heirs sold her edition of the piece as part of a package of art works for $400 million to GPS Partners – set up by the art dealers Philippe Ségalot, Lionel Pissarro, and Franck Giraud, on behalf of a consortium of collectors including Carlos Slim, Sammy Ofer, François Pinault, and Qatar's ruling Al Thani family. [2]
In 2000, Edlis's edition of Rabbit was given as a partial donation to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where it is still on display. [6]
The other edition of Rabbit is part of the permanent collection of The Broad in Los Angeles, where it is on view to the public as part of the museum's collection of Koons works. [8]
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The Gagosian Gallery is a modern and contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibition spaces – including New York City, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong – designed by architects such as Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf.
Lawrence Gilbert "Larry" Gagosian is an Armenian American art dealer who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas S. Cramer, Eli Broad, and Keith Barish, he developed a reputation for staging museum-quality exhibitions of contemporary art.
Ileana Sonnabend was a Romanian-American art dealer of 20th-century art. The Sonnabend Gallery opened in Paris in 1962 and was instrumental in making American art of the 1960s known in Europe, with an emphasis on American pop art. In 1970, Sonnabend Gallery opened in New York on Madison Avenue, and in 1971 relocated to 420 West Broadway in SoHo where it was one of the major protagonists that made SoHo the international art center it remained until the early 1990s. The gallery was instrumental in making European art of the 1970s known in America, with an emphasis on European conceptual art and Arte Povera. It also presented American conceptual and minimal art of the 1970s. In 1986, the so-called "Neo-Geo" show introduced, among others, the artist Jeff Koons. In the late 1990s, the gallery moved to Chelsea and continues to be active after Sonnabend's death. The gallery goes on showing the work of artists who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s including Robert Morris, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Gilbert & George as well as more recent artists including Jeff Koons, Rona Pondick, Candida Höfer, Elger Esser, and Clifford Ross.
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Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.
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The year 2019 in art involved various significant events.
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Stefan Edlis was an Austrian born American art collector and philanthropist. As a collector he initially focused on Pop Art.
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