5 days ago
After Not Paying for $14.5 Million Pollock, an Art Collector Is Sued
In a rare dispute that divulges how some artworks worth extraordinary sums of money are sold, an auction house has sued the scion of a sugar fortune after he failed to pay the $14.5 million he had promised for a Jackson Pollock white-on-black drip painting.
Nobody bid on the Pollock during the live auction in November. But in an increasingly common practice, Phillips Auctioneers had previously received a financial commitment from the scion, David Mimran, as a third-party guarantor. Those agreements help auction houses lure expensive artwork by guaranteeing a sale and act as a kind of insurance policy for the seller.
Third-party guarantors agree to buy a painting or sculpture at a set minimum price if it does not sell for more at auction. If the sale goes above that price, the guarantor typically receives a percentage of the upside. That exact percentage is tailored to the agreement, which is usually confidential.
'It's becoming a tactic that a lot of art collectors are using essentially to make some quick money,' said Mari-Claudia Jiménez, a partner and founder of Withers Art and Advisory. 'If they guarantee something that they suspect is going to do very well, they can profit quite handsomely.'
A lawyer for Mr. Mimran, a film producer and the son of the sugar baron Jean-Claude Mimran, declined to comment. Luke Nikas, a lawyer representing Phillips, said in a statement, 'If Mimran didn't have a dollar to his name to pay for the artwork, as he claims, then he shouldn't have raised a paddle.'
The untitled Pollock, which was created circa 1948 and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in a 1998 retrospective, uses oil, enamel, pebbles and cutouts on paper mounted on Masonite. In its auction catalog, Phillips describes the 31-by-23-inch painting as 'an optically dazzling composition, punctuated by cutout shapes, and emerging from an explosive period of creativity and newfound sobriety.'
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