A portrait of Angelina Jolie depicting the famous actress with blood dripping from her mouth, one of photographer Martin Schoeller’s best-selling works at auction, will be offered at the upcoming edition of Art Miami this December.
The print is being offered by New York and Amsterdam’s Amstel Gallery for $60,000, according to Page Six. Schoeller took the portrait as part of his “Close Up” series, which predates Jolie’s romance with former husband Brad Pitt.
Though the seller is not identified, the Post quotes an “art world insider” who speculates: “Maybe Brad is cleansing his collection of all things Angelina.”
Photographic prints entitled “Angelina with Blood” (L) by Martin Schoeller and “Movie Star” (R) by David Drebin are pictured during a press preview ahead of the ‘Photographs’ auction at Christie’s auction house in London, on November 22, 2010. Courtesy of ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images.
According to artnet’s Price Database, several of the roughly 40 works by Schoeller that have come to auction are images of the famous actress. His top-selling works are two chromogenic prints titled Angelina with Blood (from 2000 and 2003).
The highest selling is number 5 out of an edition of 7, which fetched £30,000 ($48,816) at Christie’s London in November 2010. The second highest price was for the last of an edition of seven, which garnered £18,750 ($28,047) at Christie’s London in November 2008.
It’s not clear if the print on offer at Art Miami is a resale of one of these prints, but given the time that has passed since these sales, the mark-up to $60,000 is certainly reasonable.
Other of Schoeller’s top selling prints at auction are portraits of actors and political figures such as Bill Clinton, Jack Nicholson, Henry Kissinger and George Clooney. It looks like Angelina “with blood” carries a slight premium, since the third highest auction result of the actress sans blood is $24,000, achieved at Christie’s New York in 2006.