So, in my continuing series on potential purchases in a post-lottery win state of mind, I’m adding some additional art to my unbuilt home(s). This one could be a bit early, seeing as how the lottery drawing and the auction are on the same night, however buying millions of dollars worth of art before you have the money pretty much as “the secret” as it gets.

Tomorrow night’s Impressionist/Modern evening sale at Christie’s in New York has quite the piece, an Alberto Giacometti sculpture, Le Main from 1947. It measures 28 inches long and would be a great addition to the Paris apartment, for an estimate of $10m – 15m. Jean-Paul Sartre gave some words for the introduction to Giacometti’s exhibition catalogue in which this piece was displayed back in 1948, style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #FFFACD">“I can consider separately from the tree itself this wavering branch,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, “but I cannot think of an arm rising, a fist closing, apart from a human agent. A man raises his arm, a man clenches his fist; man is the indissoluble unity and the absolute source of his movements.”

Jean-Paul Satre

There’s a lot of great information in the lot for the auction. It continues on with the work’s provenance and notes about the piece and the period of Giacometti’s life that the work was created in.

A bronze cast of La Main was included in this show. The hand is our prime intermediary between the mind and the world, it allows thought to act upon and transform the world. The outstretched hand expresses the human need to grasp, to reach out towards the world and to aspire within it; the hand enables us to realize our potential in accomplishing all things. In the face of another, the hand may embrace in love or ward off in fear, extend itself in joy or lamentation. No part of the human body, except for the head itself, is a more potent symbol for the totality of the human endeavor. Giacometti’s La Main, as fragile as it may appear, carries the emotional and symbolic weight of all these gestures.

The accelerating evolution in Giacometti’s work during the years 1945-1947 stemmed from a sequence of hallucinatory revelations that the sculptor experienced as he reintegrated himself within the cosmopolitan life of Paris, as the city emerged from the deep nightmarish sleep of the Occupation and, amid continuing privations, slowly returned to life during the years following the Liberation. These epiphanies reveal the ways in which the inner life of the artist’s mind contended with the reality of the outer world and the circumstances of his existence. They trace a continuation of the pre-war surrealist impulse in the sculptor’s life and work.

Alberto Giacometti with Le Main among others.

It could be a little bit much for my budget but I’m thinking about dipping into some contemporary auctions, and bidding on some without the million+ price tag. But this work would truly be a pleasure to wake up to everyday.

This particular auction has one other piece by Giacometti, Torse de femme, conceived in 1932. The lot notes for this piece have Peggy Guggenheim all throughout.

In 1960, Peggy Guggenheim, at the incentive of the dealer Alexandre Iolas, decided to continue the edition of Walking Woman II and commissioned Bianchi to make five more casts.5 Giacometti authorized these casts, even though Paolo Barozzi in his memoirs claimed that Giacometti had not been consulted and was irate.6 The casts are invoiced in April 1960. In May 1961, a seventh bronze cast (numbered 0) was made for Alberto Giacometti to give to a friend. An eighth cast was made in July 1969 at the foundry which had been bought in the meantime by Stefan-Costi in Trevisa. This cast, done without the authorization of Annette Giacometti from the original plaster, was later accepted by her among the legal edition as a tribute to the old friendship between her husband and Peggy Guggenheim.

Peggy Guggenheim with Piazza by Giacometti and Picasso’s On the Beach (La Baignade).