Art sales: is it a house, or a work of art?,

According to the UK - Telegrpah Market news: Hercules and Achelous
Next month in New York, for the first time ever, Christie's is including a house in a sale of post-war and contemporary art. Along with some multi-million-dollar Rothkos and Warhols will be the Kaufmann House, a minimalist 3,200-square foot residential house in the Californian desert designed in 1946 by one of the leading modernist architects of the day, Richard Neutra.

The Kaufmann House is a minimalist 3,200-square foot residential house in the Californian desert
In doing this, Christie's is marketing architecture as art and expecting the buyer to pay the premium - in this case between $15 million (£7.3 million) and $25 million (£12.4 million).

Andrea Fiuczynski, Christie's president in Los Angeles, says they are including it in an art sale because, "not only is it a timeless masterpiece, and the last important example of modernist architecture in the Americas to remain in private hands, but it is also symptomatic of the trend to include design in contemporary art sales. The barriers between the two disciplines have now become blurred."

Named after department store magnate Edgar J Kaufmann, who commissioned it, the Kaufmann House is the epitome of the international modernist style, with its cantilevered roofs, steel tube supports and floor-to-ceiling sliding glass walls. Yet in 1989, when its then owner, the singer Barry Manilow, offered it for sale, there were no takers.

For more than three years it lay neglected until the present owners, Brent and Beth Harris, discovered it, worried that it might be demolished and bought it for $1.9 million. Over the next six years they spent $5 million restoring it, but are now selling it as part of their divorce settlement.

advertisementOnly a handful of houses have been sold through a fine art auctioneer, and all have been mid-20th-century modernist houses presented within the contexts of specialised decorative arts or design sales.

What they show is the appeal such houses have to art collectors. In 2000, for instance, the British art dealer Anthony d'Offay sold Philip Johnson's small 1950 Rockefeller Guest House in Manhattan for $12 million through Christie's to cosmetics billionaire and art collector Ronald Lauder.

In 2003, the British property developer and art collector Lord Palumbo sold another modernist classic building, Farnsworth House by the Fox River in Illinois, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1951, at Sotheby's for $7.5 million.

It was bought by America's National Trust for Historic Preservation after a bidding war with the New York property developer and art collector Aby Rosen. David Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, said of the house: "It is worth more as a work of art than as a house on the Fox River."

And last year at Christie's, US hotelier André Balazs bought Maison Tropicale, Jean Prouvé's 1950 pre-fabricated modernist house on stilts, currently on view until Sunday outside Tate Modern, for $5 million. "It's not just a house on stilts," says Balazs. "It's a work of art - it's a piece of beautiful sculpture."

Next month also sees the sale of the Esherick House in Philadelphia, designed in 1961 by Louis I Kahn, by Chicago design auctioneer Richard Wright, who has estimated it at $2 million to $3 million. "I'm not saying it's art, but there is a link," says Wright. "There is a new generation of art collectors who are interested in design, and that influences what I do. If it were just a home on that site it would be worth $1 million. The point is that it is an architectural gem by Kahn."

These sales comes after a decade in which mid-century modernist houses have seen an upturn in demand. In California, Neutra's houses have been snapped up by movers and shakers in the West Coast media, pop and arts community such as designer Tom Ford and Gerald Casale of the new wave band, Devo.

Neutra's Singleton House in Bel Air, bought by hair stylist Vidal Sassoon for $6 million in 2004, sold this year after restoration with an asking price of $20 million.

Fiuczynski says most enquiries for the Kaufmann House have come from contemporary art collectors who already own at least one modernist house. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which has expressed its desire to collect significant examples of mid-century residential architecture, may also find a generous benefactor.

Preservation is an issue. Six years ago a similar house designed by Neutra in Palm Springs, which had just been purchased for $2.45 million, was torn down by the new owners, causing an uproar among preservationists. But Christie's asking price will surely make it uneconomic for anyone even to consider such an option.
 
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