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Andy Warhol
Tunafish Disaster
While auction houses are forbidden from explicitly sharing certain details prior to the sale of a lot, such as the reserve price, a good deal of information gets signaled to a favored collector—particularly if interests align. This was certainly the case for Gagosian and Mugrabi, who were told by Sotheby’s not to worry about the most valuable of Froehlich’s three Warhols, Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Brown (Tunafish Disaster), a 1963 painting—of two suburban housewives whose deaths from food poisoning had briefly been the subject of tabloid notoriety—with an estimate of £3.5 million to £4.5 million. Sotheby’s already had interest in it, Mugrabi told Gagosian: “The Tunafish Disaster is pretty covered. That’s going to sell.”
- The Trials of Art Superdealer Larry Gagosian, Eric Konigsberg