Art in 2009 : Luxury, Advertising, Charity

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

On April 7 at Artcurial in Paris, the evening, devoted to design, is starting with five works of glass which could not be more contemporary.

Three of these pieces (lots 300, 302, 304) show a bottle placed on a puddle. Another one, more original (lot 301), reminds me the butler cat by Diego Giacometti: the body of the bottle supports a tray with two glasses. For the fifth (Lot 303) the puddle is replaced by a pile of large bubbles and other bubbles are escaping from the cap.

These crystal works 40 cm high were produced by Baccarat on a design by Jean-Paul Gaultier. The word EVIAN is clearly visible, in big applied letters. They were shown in London, Melbourne, Moscow, New York and Tokyo, and are presented on a dedicated website Evian Gaultier.

The profits from this sale will be donated to the RAMSAR Convention, which acts for the preservation of wetlands and water resources. The starting bid of each work is 3 K €.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Our five bottles have not attracted major debates.

The first one has not been sold. The next three were each sold 3.8 K € fees included. The last lot, 304, was pushed up to 4.3 K € fees included.

That is a lot of efforts for a gloomy outcome. Works and objects which are too recent do not attract the buyers due to lack of benchmarks. Artcurial has probably been wrong not to give an estimate.