Johns, Pollock Works Top Art Cache Set for Auction

Thirty-two contemporary artworks from the Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine collection will go on the auction block Nov. 9 at Christie’s New York.

Major works by such postwar American giants as Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman and Roy Lichtenstein will be included. The sale is expected to set records for several artists and to ring up a total of more than $20 million.

The event is certain to draw the attention of an international slate of major collectors. “I will probably attend the auction and hope to bid if any of the works are affordable,” said Los Angeles collector Eli Broad. Noting that the Tremaines had built “one of the most important collections of post-World War II art in the world,” he said, “I’m saddened that a museum didn’t get it. That’s where the art belongs.”

Johns’ “White Flag,” estimated to fetch more than $6 million, is expected to be the auction’s most expensive item. The record for a Johns--and for a living artist--is $4.2 million, paid last May for his seminal work, “Diver,” at Christie’s.

Pollock may break his $4.8-million record--the top auction price for contemporary art--with a 7-foot-wide drip painting in the Tremaine collection. “Frieze,” a widely exhibited horizontal canvas, dated 1953-55, is valued at between $4 million and $6 million.

Also expected to sell in the million-dollar-plus range are Kline’s 1956 black-and-white abstraction “Lehigh” ($1.2 million to $1.6 million), Newman’s 1969 “zip” painting “The Moment II” ($1 million to $1.5 million), and Rothko’s 1952 “Number 8,” a glowing red, orange and yellow abstraction ($1.2 million to $1.6 million).

Three works by Lichtenstein will be in the sale. One of his early cartoon images, “I Can See the Whole Room . . . and There’s Nobody in It!,” has been assigned the top Lichtenstein estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million.

James Rosenquist is also represented by an early Pop piece. His “Mask (Come Play With Me/Hey, Let’s Go for a Ride),” depicting a billboard view of American life, is expected to bring $100,000 to $150,000.

Among other artists with works in the sale are Josef Albers, Richard Artschwager, Claes Oldenburg, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol.

Works to be sold will be exhibited in Chicago, Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York prior to the auction. The Southland show is scheduled for Oct. 7-8 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Burton Tremaine owns the Miller Co., a Connecticut manufacturer of industrial lighting equipment. He and his wife, Emily Hall Tremaine, who died in 1987, began collecting in the 1940s, often buying directly from artists before they were well known. Their first purchase was “Victory Boogie Woogie,” Piet Mondrian’s 1944 masterpiece, which is not in the auction.

Exhibitions of the Connecticut couple’s collection were organized at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., in 1947 and 1984. The 1947 show, called “Painting Toward Architecture,” demonstrated the influence of contemporary painting on modern buildings. With the backing of Tremaine’s firm, the exhibition traveled to museums in 24 American cities. The 1984 show was called “The Spirit of Modernism” and included major examples of contemporary art movements.