Christie's announced today that an edition of Jeff Koons's Equilibrium tank of floating basketballs (est $12m) and Maurizio Cattelan’s statue of a kneeling Hitler ($10m-$15m) will lead its curated Sunday 8 May sale Bound to Fail. Organised by Loic Gouzer, the deputy chairman of post-war and contemporary art, the sale is a new addition to the auction house's typical New York sales roster (traditionally limited to just two nights, modern and contemporary). Its title comes from a Bruce Nauman sculpture of a tied headless torso, Henry Moore Bound to Fail (1967), estimated at $6m to $8m.
Koons's basketball pieces, which work through a delicate balance of salt and fresh water, require a lot of upkeep, which perhaps accounts for the ambitious estimate. The record for a work from the series currently stands at just $6m, set at Gouzer's 2014 If I Live I‘ll See You Tuesday sale. The estimate for Cattelan's Hitler sculpture, whose record stands at $7.9m, is similarly aggressive.
Many of the other 30-plus lots will highlight artists traditionally not thought of as “market darlings”, or whose work deals with failure, among them Paul McCarthy, Caroll Dunham, Martin Kippenberger and Mike Kelley. But it’s not all about failure: expect a Wade Guyton and a Richard Prince in there as well.