Reading Karen K. Ho’s report that a Warhol soup can painting had been forfeited as part of the settlement of the 1MDB/Jho Low money laundering and fraud case, I wondered what it looked like.
I haven’t found it yet, because while searching the Justice Dept.’s 280-page complaint from 2020 I was distracted by the corny corruption of Sotheby’s executives falling all over themselves to loan Jho Low untraceable funds against some of the nearly $200 million in artworks Low & co. hoovered up.
“Just wanted to bring you up to speed on the big loan opportunity,” wrote one Sotheby’s Financial executive to his colleagues in early 2014. “[The borrower] doesn’t want us to use his name in our communications, he wants to be referred to as ‘the client’ and we will refer to this transaction as project Cheetah (referring to the speed at which we are trying to move).”
And then I was distracted by another Warhol, not part of the loan collateral, and current status TBD, but it did come from Sotheby’s. Jho Low acquired Round Jackie (1964) in November 2013 for $1,055,000 from Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in New York. It was one of two gold round Jackies that fabulist curator Sam Green sold to socialite Dodie Rosekrans. They both came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2011; one sold for $3.7m, and this one didn’t sell. Weird.
Anyway, Low gave Round Jackie to Swizz Beatz in early 2014, who hung it in New Jersey, then consigned it for sale somewhere before February 2020, when Vogue came for 73 Questions. The Justice Dept. came for it in July 2020, and it was sold at a US Marshals auction in February 2021. The price was $1.04 million.
As far as I know, Sturtevant never made a Jackie, so I will put this one on my to-do list.