LongHouse Auction Online

Kiki Smith’s “Woman and Sheep,” a maquette-sized bronze cast from her larger series in LongHouse Reserve’s gardens, is available for bidding online at Paddle8 in LongHouse’s benefit auction.

This year’s auction features unusual and exceptional works by Ross Bleckner, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Richard Meier, Christo, Donald Lipski, Takashi Soga, Ross Watts, Jack Youngerman, and many more.

Jul. 9, 2015

Jennifer Landes

LongHouse Reserve’s “On Gossamer Wings” benefit will be held on July 18, but the art auction tied to it is already online at the Paddle8 website.

Of particular note are two sculptures offered in a miniaturized form of the installations currently on the LongHouse property. They are Ms. Smith’s “Woman with Sheep” and Mr. Soga’s “The Sea of the Ear-Ring-M14.”

Although the size of Ms. Smith’s bronze reclining female figure is small, 41/2 by 20 by 9 inches, it would require someone accustomed to weight-lifting to pick it up with one hand. The sheep, even smaller, is also quite hefty. The estimate is $40,000 and the opening bid is $20,000. Mr. Soga’s brass and lead work, which is 41/2 by 111/2 by 8 inches, replicates a much more colossal kinetic piece, on view in the garden, of a tall rectangular block holding up a giant cantilevered ring. Its starting bid is $1,250 on an estimate of $2,500.

The Cindy Sherman photograph “Untitled (Smithsonian),” dated 1975/2004, is a gelatin silver print that looks similarly inspired to her “Untitled Film Stills” but is also quite separate from it. The earlier series relied on settings and props as much as her dressing up in the character of some non-specific archetype. This is instead an extreme close-up of her face, decked out in 1920s-style makeup, Garbo-style. It has an estimate of $7,500 and an opening bid of $5,000.

Mr. Watts’s “mantra (o): roundabout” is a painstakingly handwritten series stating, merely, “round and round” over and over, using the text to provide not just the compositional shape but also the shading and shadowing that gives the circle a target or labyrinthine appearance. The estimate is $5,250, and the starting bid is $2,600.

The lithograph by Christo, “Wrapped Automobile (Project for 1950 Studebaker Champion Series 9G Coupe)” from this year, includes real cloth and thread collage. It is numbered 49 out of 50 artist’s proofs from an edition of 200. Its estimate is $6,500.

Larry Rivers, Claes Oldenberg, and James Rosenquist are represented with lithographs. Ceramic artists in the auction include Uko Morita and Jun Kaneko. Garden furniture is offered, as well as lines of musical composition by Nico Muhly.

Donald Lipski is represented by a wall sculpture of books, steel, and plastic. Robert Wilson, whose own Watermill Center party happens the following weekend, has given LongHouse two original charcoal and pencil drawings, each with an estimate of $3,250.

Other East End artists are well represented, among them Hope Sandrow, Lucy Winton, Steve Miller, Stephanie Brody Lederman, Ned Smyth, Bastienne Schmidt, Phillippe Cheng, Ralph Gibson, April Gornik, Eric Dever, Grant Haffner, Robert Harms, Scott Bluedorn, Mary Ellen Bartley, and Alice Aycock.

The auction was still being added to last week, and more lots may be included as the benefit nears. Online bidding will close at 11 p.m. on the night of the benefit.