Macklowes' War of the Roses: A fabulous art collection is being auctioned off in New York because of a divorce

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Painting by Twombly: Gold Bars of Contemporary Art

Photo: Sotheby's

When Harry Macklowe, an up-and-coming New York real estate mogul, used to invite business partners to lunch, he didn't reserve a table in the restaurant. He preferred to bring the guests home with him, where he - figuratively speaking - could more easily cook them soft. As can be read in a "New York Times" article from 1967, his wife Linda was responsible for the impressive ambience, choosing the menu, china and flowers. A special attraction, all the art on the wall, was thanks to her good taste.

Modern images formed the backdrop of their marriage and its success. But now this collection is on sale, this evening 35 highlights will be auctioned in the New York premises of Sotheby's, more works will follow next year. According to the sales catalog, this art is made "for eternity", which sounds a bit insensitive in this context because it did not apply to the collectors' marriage. Because the Macklowes may have grown old together, but then they couldn't stand each other anymore.

In 2016, Linda Macklowe filed for divorce after 57 years of marriage. After that, it got no style. Harry Macklowe, now 84 years old, even had two monumentally enlarged portraits of himself and his new love posted on a building in the middle of Manhattan to annoy his old love, Linda. The two arguers seemed unable to divide their collection apart, so a court ordered 65 works to be sold. The added value is one billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive collections ever to be auctioned.

The estimate for today's first tranche already adds up to several hundred million dollars. The upper estimate for a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti alone is 90 million dollars, plus a dripped picture by Jackson Pollock, a warm pastel Mark Rothko, decorative Cy Twomblys, the "Nine Marilyns" by Andy Warhol or a painting by Gerhard Richter. All gold bars of contemporary art. The auction will go down in history as a “decisive moment”, claims Sotheby's and, as a precaution, has the company's best-known auctioneer flown in from London, Oliver Barker, who always looks so unspoilt.

The market itself is rather cynical, people's misfortune is their happiness.

It is an old and important trader wisdom that it is mainly deaths, debts and divorces that keep him going.

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Russell Crowe and his then-wife Danielle Spencer: Flea market with "Gladiator" props.

Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images

It doesn't always have to be about a huge collection or about art at all. The Australian star actor Russell Crowe had an upscale flea market held in Sydney in 2018 under the title "The Art of Divorce". Among other things, he made props and costumes from the "Gladiator" films for money. Not only did Angelina Jolie split up with Brad Pitt in 2021, she also parted ways with a painting that was supposedly a gift from him - and that Winston Churchill once painted. Not a great art, but a great name, and it was worth more than eleven million dollars.

But sometimes real art lovers sell too. For the actor Edward G. Robinson, "the saddest thing I have ever experienced" was the loss of his pictures in the 1950s. Hollywood's most sought-after gangster actor owned paintings by Vincent van Gogh and other European painting legends, as well as by the not so well-known Mexican Frida Kahlo. Much went to a trader in the course of the divorce and from there to the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos. Even decades later, Tony Curtis sympathetically mentioned in his autobiography how bad it had once been for his esteemed colleague Robinson to part with the pictures, but he now wanted to get rid of his wife.

But why did Henry Ford II turn the auto dynasty of the same name into cash parallel to the second divorce? He could easily afford his breakups. Perhaps the sale or auction also serves as a redeeming ritual in certain circles. A divorce auction is like a thick line.

You don't even have to be married to draw it. After their separation in 1998, the opinions of Rolling Stone star Mick Jagger and ex-model Jerry Hall differed widely about how binding your yes-word once was in Bali. Years later, Hall auctioned the dress she had worn for the occasion, along with some paintings. In a small picture by the well-known artist Lucian Freud, she could even be seen herself, naked and heavily pregnant: Her and Jagger's fourth child was born soon after the last portrait session.

The number four wife of American billionaire Ron Perelman was actress Ellen Barkin.

After the unsightly breakup (armed security guards observed them while packing according to rumors), she had the jewelry he had given auctioned in 2006, "these are simply not memories that I want to wear every day."

At that time it was not about the valuable paintings that the businessman had brought into the relationship.

Fifteen years later (and remarried) he is allegedly not quite as rich as he used to be and his art collection arguably poorer by a few works.

So far, the art market has always been able to rely on fate and its twists and turns.