Patek Philippe and Cartier were among the brands owned by the art giant.
Warhol’s acolytes sought constant affirmation from their iconoclast friend and benefactor, as they did in the Sun King’s court. When he worked with Warhol in the 1980s, Marc Balet, the art director of Interview magazine, tried to impress him by showing off the Swiss Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso watch he had just purchased. “I wore it to the Factory,” In an interview, he refers to the artist’s famed studio, where his circle congregated. “I was so proud of it and wanted him to see my most prized possession and be jealous. He looked at it and shrugged: ‘Oh, yeah. I have some of those.’ ”
As a result of his death from complications following gallbladder surgery in 1987, 313 watches were found in Warhol’s East 66th Street townhouse and were auctioned at Sotheby’s the next year, along with over 10,000 other objects, in a landmark 10-day auction. Collectors around the world were captivated when a large cache of fine watches belonging to the same owner appeared on market for the first time. In addition to the build of a timepiece, the price could now be magnified by its journey. It sure helped that Warhol had an astute eye as well as an adventure-filled life. He created watches that were classic and refined, far from what he had championed with his silk screens. Unlike their to-and-fro at auction, they rarely reappear to feed an ever-hungrier market. When they do, they make newspaper headlines around the world—first as a result of the interest they generate among niche collectors, then again as they break auction records. On December 9, you can get your hands on a 1954 Patek Philippe Ref., signed by Hausmann & Co. The auction is expected to sell for $50,000 to $100,000 at Christie’s. It sold for $3,100 in 1988 at Sotheby’s.
Christie’s in Geneva sold Warhol’s circa-1943 Rolex Oyster 3525 in stainless steel and pink gold for over $470,000 last year, more than twice its low estimate. “It was the highest price ever achieved by a Warhol-owned watch to date,” says Remi Guillemin, Christie’s watch specialist. “There was huge interest in it after it went on a tour of showrooms around the world.” In addition to its pop-art provenance, the 3525 was the first Rolex Chronograph to be fitted to an Oyster case and it was known as the “P.O.W.” watch after Rolex gave the model to British prisoners of war to replace Nazi-seized watches. A Rolex watch was issued to soldiers with the understanding that they would not be required to pay until the war was over. Nevertheless, the Warhol touch is golden: A similar “civilian”-owned example sold at Monaco Legend Auctions two months later for $85,000.
“If one of the three Cartier Tank watches that Andy owned came to the sale, that would be sensational,” details Guillemin. “When a Tank owned by Jackie Onassis was auctioned in 2017, it had a high estimate of $120,000 and sold for $379,500. The association with Warhol would be a major draw.” Jackie O’s going to Kim Kardashian is a parable about modern celebrity and the agency of money over credibility. “everyone would be famous for 15 minutes in the future,” While fame once came with a status that could not be bought, today it can be valued if it is genuine. It failed to sell at Sotheby’s for $180,000 to $280,000 last year for a Rolex 6538 “James Bond Submariner.” It is not a replica of the model Sean Connery wore in Dr. No in 1962, but it was owned and worn by Marlon Brando, who sold it for “.952 million in 2019. Similar models usually sell for less than $25,000.It was possible to buy Warhol’s gold Tanks at Sotheby’s for $4,950 at the end of his era, then at Leslie Hindman in Chicago for $10,625 in 2012. Who knows how much it will be today? The graphic style may be the most Warhol of the trove, fitting perfectly with the artist’s own Halston black outfit. “Warhol had a passion for icons,” tells the founder and CEO of the vintage-timepiece website and showroom Craft & Tailored, Cameron Barr,. “He liked things that were as simple as they were sophisticated. He was photographed wearing a Cartier Tank Louis frequently. It was introduced in 1918, but its design is timeless. As he said, ‘I don’t wear a Tank watch to tell the time. In fact, I never wind it. I wear a Tank because it’s the watch to wear.’ ” The watch designer worked under Francesca Cartier Brickell’s grandfather Jean-Jacques Cartier, who ran the jeweler’s London branch from 1945 to 1974. He described the house and the jewellery.” style as “the absence of unnecessary twiddly bits.” “The Tank is the perfect example of this less-is-more approach,” she added.
In the 1960s, Francesca Cartier Brickell recalls speaking with a watch designer who worked under her grandfather Jean-Jacques Cartier, who ran the jeweler’s London branch from 1945 to 1974. “Looking at what he bought, it’s clear he was obsessed with the design aspects of watchmaking,” shares former head of Christie’s watch department and now founder of Collectability, John Reardon. “He loved retailer sig- natures, shaped watches, and classic design. Within the world of Patek Philippe, we can see his taste for classic Calatravas as well as more avant-garde pieces, such as the Patek Philippe Gilbert Albert–designed Ricochet collection watch. The Patek Philippe 2526 with enamel dial with a Serpico y Laino Caracas retailer signature is the piece I would most like to see at auction again. 2503 he owned sold for $75,000 at auction in 2016, so his 2526 could bring a record price.”
In addition to being fascinating, the story behind the 313 watches perfectly encapsulates Warhol’s eccentricity. As soon as he had disposable income, he began to buy pieces, and often styled them in a Warholian way, often putting a woman’s gold Rolex on his shirt cuff. None of his circle, however, knew how many watches he had accumulated.
“The first watches were found in the ornate fringed fabric canopy above his four-poster bed,”according to Daryn Schnipper,dDuring the auction of the first batch in April 1988, Sotheby’s vice president in New York, officiated the sale of the second batch which was hidden underneath a filing cabinet seven months later. “It’s important to remember that it was early days for the watch market,” she added. “People bid for them at the time purely because they had belonged to him.”
Despite being one of Warhol’s closest friends and employees, Paige Powell attended the auction despite being gifted numerous works by him. “I bought a watch from the 1950s, with Gene Autry’s face on it, for $1,800,” she recalls. In Powell’s view, it represents a strong connection to her late friend, who kept a scrapbook as a boy with pictures of Autry and Roy Rogers.
The working-class son of Rusyn émigrés, Warhol bought watches regularly and prolifically, along with cookie jars, American Indian art, and other ephemera. As an art dealer and collector, Todd Brassner, who died in an inferno that destroyed his art-filled apartment in Trump Tower in 2018, knew all the best dealers worldwide.
In both his art and timepieces, Warhol was drawn to repetition. In addition to variations on certain designs, like the Tank, he preferred shapes, such as square dials created by Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe in the 1950s and 1960s, which were very difficult to make. Moreover, he invested in highly detailed graphic work, which included a Patek Philippe piece from 1970 (which sold for $22,000 in 1988) as well as a large gold oval watch with a Cartier Audemars Piguet movement and Roman numerals that looked like they jumped from a Dal painting in 1973 (which sold for an even higher $37,400). There were also fascinating outliers in the collection, including a Bulgari gold spiral bracelet watch, a predecessor to the Bulgari Serpenti Turbogas (the 35 mm 18-karat pink-gold model with diamonds is currently $41,100). When anything over $5,000 was considered a high price at the 1988 auction, it sold for $9,900.
Cartier and Piaget are two of the most notable brands in the hoard. At the 1988 auction, buyers dispatched from the latter bought five of the seven lots bearing Piaget’s name for its Geneva archive. With its molded gold oval case and gold baton numerals, the first Piaget Vintage Inspiration watch launched the ongoing Vintage Inspiration series, which included a white gold limited edition watch released in 2015. There is a sweet spot between YSL Le Smoking chic and vintage Chrysler Building industrial Deco in the original Piaget frame.
Compared to the watch market, it is difficult to draw comparisons. In 2007, his paintings and prints skyrocketed in value before plummeting along with almost everything else in the art world in 2008, stabilizing and rising steadily since 2010, according to Artnet, with a 12.5 percent average annual rate of growth. The 1963 Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) by Warhol sold for $105.4 million in 2013, but there are also entry-level works. After that record-breaking sale, Christie’s held “flash auctions” of thousands of minor works – he was prolific — many under $10,000. It is difficult to create a reliable metric of inflation since not enough of his timepieces appear on the market. A rare Patek Philippe has appreciated significantly, but a Warhol provenance throws a curveball. These are watches tied to a glamorous past and narrative that can command whatever Warhol worshippers are willing to pay. He owned one 1930 Longines for Wittnauer silver aviator watch, but there are scores of Maos and Marilyns out there, but only one 1930 Longines for Wittnauer silver aviator watch.
There are several accounts of Warhol’s hoarding tendencies included in Blake Gopnik’s epic biography, Warhol. It is said that he liked to carry diamonds in his breast pocket. Although he never used them, he just enjoyed knowing they were there, a fabulously valuable collection that had no real purpose. It was that feeling of glamour created by physical association that he invested in the “Business Art” that shaped his last 15 years: projects with little hands-on involvement but his name attached, so it didn’t matter how little he did. In many ways, the 1988 auctions at Sotheby’s were his greatest expression of the medium. People bid for watches he had chosen and touched, perhaps even strapped around his wrist. Warhol fashioned a new market in just two days seven months apart. He made classic, craft-heavy watches sexy without even being there.
