Art and Erdem – The Marrying of Sotheby’s London and Fashion Designer Erdem Moralioglu

Art and Erdem – The Marrying of Sotheby’s London and Fashion Designer Erdem Moralioglu 

As a lover of Art (yes, with a capital A), it was to my delight that I came across a late night showing of the London Sotheby’s inaugural Contemporary Curated auction art last Friday night. It was only until after the event that I discovered that the major British multinational art broker (founded in 1744) had teamed up with notable Canadian fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu for this exhibition! In a creative attempt to make the auction house accessible beyond the art world, Contemporary Curated sought to introduce a fresh perspective on curating through the meshing of different artistic disciplines.

The questions remains, was it a successful collaboration? Erdem himself stated that ‘Art is not my arena’, although he was quick to add ‘but I love it’. However, despite the designer perhaps not being an ‘artist’ in the conventional sense, his clothing most certainly take artistry to produce. Not only does his unique perspective offer an interesting exhibition but having the name ‘Erdem’ attached to the event provides, as Olivia Thornton director of the contemporary department stated, a motive for people ‘who might otherwise think twice about going into Sotheby’s’.

Certainly Thornton had a valid point, as looking around the event held in Sotheby’s New Bond Street venue, the crowd ranged from yuppies who had just come in from the City, to fashionable art students and then to people like me who were simply interested.

With a growing interest in the middle market, the sale attempted to show art which offered a ‘more accessible introduction point for the new collector’ (as stated in Contemporary Curated’s online event overview) and had more, let’s say, realistic price tags, with some works starting in at £500. Although the exhibition featured art from legends such as Andy Warhol’s painting Daisy, coming in at £20,000-30,000, and Roy Lichtenstein’s painting Nude in the Woods, from Expressionist Woodcut Series, priced at £6,000-8,000, it also showed works by today’s leading contemporary art figures such as Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and Yayoi Kusama.

The colourful and diverse mix of media, from sculptures to photography and painting, reflects the diversity of the curating process, something Erdem certainly had something to do with. And with the total sales of the auction held on the 15th of March amounting to £2,753,063, I am sure he must have been pleased with the results!

Art and Erdem – The Marrying of Sotheby’s London and Fashion Designer Erdem Moralioglu