Sep 27, 2025

Welcome back to Wall Power. I’m Marion Maneker.

The lumpy art auction schedule got a little lumpier this fall, with both the New York midseason sales and the first simultaneous Hong Kong sales all taking place at the same time. Tonight, I’ll give you some results from both sides of the world, as well as lots to keep an eye on over the weekend and into early next week. In New York, Phillips’ New Now and Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sales are done; in Hong Kong, Christie’s has completed its 20th/21st century evening sale. I’ll try to isolate lots to watch and identify the meaningful sales below the fold. But first…

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Phillips’ New Now totals $6 million: Phillips sold $5.98 million worth of art in its New Now sale in New York yesterday—down about 20 percent from the previous year. The sell-through rate was a tough 72 percent, although a chunk of the failed lots came from a single consignment of Raymond Pettibon works. And yet the sale would have still been a weak market signal without those works.Phillips is in a difficult position as the market rotates toward historical works and away from the emerging artists that have been its traditional strength. The top lot was a Pettibon work on paper—a surfer, of course, in keeping with the conventional wisdom that the artist’s buyers want surfers or baseball players. That makes it all the more surprising that Phillips brought so much material to market featuring neither. (Though Pettibon aficionados also tell me that trains are desirable.) Anyway, a 1967 Lynne Drexler did well at $322,500. A Christopher Wool word painting (FEAR) the size of a sheet of paper (it’s also a work on paper) sold for twice the estimate with fees at $310,000, even with a third-party guarantor. A painting by Charline von Heyl, Wool’s partner, sold well to make $220,000 with fees over a $150,000 estimate. A Larry Poons painting that was estimated at $60,000 sold for almost $170,000. Works by Friedel Dzubas, George Rickey, Kennedy Yanko, Ghada Amer, and Kara Walker also sold well.
Christie’s Hong Kong 20th/21st century evening sale totals HK$566 million ($73 million): The top lot of the sale was a Pablo Picasso painting of Dora Maar from 1944 that was estimated at around $11 million but sold for close to $25 million. Another Picasso, from 1964, was estimated at more than $2.5 million but made $4 million with fees. Only three of the 38 artworks failed to find buyers.
Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated and Reflections on Pop results: Sotheby’s started the day strong with the $27 million sale of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein’s estate items. This is the fourth time Sotheby’s has sold a large number of works from the estate, but the buyers keep showing up and paying up. More details on that below. The Contemporary Curated sale that followed had trouble keeping up with the Lichtenstein material and totaled under $21 million, though the result was on par with the previous year’s sale.
Christie’s announces the Carol and Terry Wall collection with Paris exhibition of John Singer Sargent paintings: The stunning Sargent and Paris exhibition, which debuted at the Met this spring, opened at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris earlier this week. At the same time, Christie’s opened an exhibition of three John Singer Sargent paintings from the Carol and Terry Wall collection in its Paris headquarters. One of the works, Capri, from 1878, depicts two women dancing on a rooftop and is nearly identical to one of the paintings in the Musée d’Orsay show. It will be sold in New York in November with a $4 million estimate alongside Corner of the Church of San Stae, Venice, from 1913, which carries a $6 million estimate. Christie’s is also showing Gondolier’s Siesta, from 1902-03, in Paris. Back in New York, the sale will also include works by Mary Cassatt, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, and William Merritt Chase.
A trio of Lucian Freud paintings on offer at Christie’s in London: Christie’s announced that it would be selling three paintings by Lucian Freud from the same collection in its London evening sale on October 15. Self-Portrait Fragment, from 1956, is the most valuable, with an estimate of £6 million ($8 million). Woman with a Tulip, from 1944, is estimated at £3 million ($4 million). And Sleeping Head, from 1961-71, is estimated at £2 million ($2.67 million).

Now let’s get to the main event…

Sales From the Opposite Sides of the World

Three sales in New York and Hong Kong signal a market still struggling, with low estimates serving less as enticements than as reflections of its difficulties. Still, bright spots continue to shine for historical works.

Marion Maneker

The massive works announced for the fall season in London and New York appeared to signal some confidence swirling in the art market after a long three-month hiatus. That got me wondering, as I scrolled through the works assembled in Hong Kong over the last few days, if maybe consignors had finally gotten the memo and realized they needed to put attractively low estimates on their pieces to generate buying interest.

But with three sales done and dusted—two in New York and one in Hong Kong—we have some more sobering data: I’m sorry to say that those low estimates were less enticements than reflections of the current state of the market. A private art dealer offered me his market gut-check this week, theorizing that too many buyers have been chasing “bargains” in the past few years, picking up works because they looked cheap in comparison to prices from three years ago. Maybe, he said, they weren’t so much undervalued as on a one-way slide to oblivion.

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The problem with the art market is that you can’t always tell which is which—there are extended periods where an artist’s work can be untradeable, which doesn’t necessarily mean those works are worthless, but rather temporarily frozen. I’d be tempted to quote John Maynard Keynes about how, in the long run, we’re all dead. But that may not be true with art. The work that is now slouching toward oblivion might be incredibly valuable in the future.

Still, there are a number of bright spots in these sales that continue to reinforce the thesis I’ve been hammering—namely, that there is a turn toward historical works by proven artists, as buyers realize the value that lies in their lesser works. Buyers are still looking for great examples from those artists, but also less-great-but-still-good options for what they believe are bargain prices. With that, let’s examine the sales this weekend in Hong Kong and New York.

Big in Hong Kong

Christie’s Hong Kong evening sale opened with a strong performance by a Salvo landscape. The Italian artist made a lot of work, but his landscapes have dominated the top prices paid at auction since his market revived suddenly two years ago. Spring Morning, from 2007, was priced to pull in bidders at HK$700,000, and indeed it did. The final selling price with fees was HK$5 million, which is about $650,000—the third-highest price for a Salvo painting sold at auction. Just after that came a Botero nude, Woman in the Shower, from 2005, which was estimated at HK$3.8 million, or about $500,000, and had a third-party backer. A probably more appealing work depicting a similarly callipygian figure had sold for nearly $1.3 million just two years ago. The final price for the Botero was just under HK$5.5 million, or about half the number for the previous work.

That set the tone for the rest of the sale. There were some very strong results, like the $25 million Picasso, and some works that failed—notably a David Hockney painting and an Adrian Ghenie self portrait. A Jadé Fadojutimi painting made three years ago that had been backed by a third party sold for about $500,000, a good price. There was strong bidding on two Yayoi Kusama pumpkins: One, a painting, sold for HK$35 million; and the other, a sculpture, made about HK$12 million. Both works had third-party backers. A George Condo painting made in 2011 sold for HK$18 million, which is $2.34 million—on the low end of the artist’s going rate and significantly below the $3.8 million the consignor paid for the work in 2021. Perhaps more significant was the sale of a Lucy Bull painting that had previously set the record for the artist when it sold in Hong Kong in June of 2022 for $1.45 million. Today, it made $600,000. A painting by Ronald Ventura, Gateway (2013), sold for HK$4.5 million ($570,000), which seemed good against the estimate but was a haircut from the $710,000 the owner paid 11 years ago. A large painting by Mr. doubled the HK$3 million estimate to sell for HK$6 million. There are two more works by Mr. coming up at Phillips tomorrow at lower estimates that will be worth watching in the wake of this sale. A Marc Chagall from 1930 was estimated at HK$5.5 million but sold for triple that number to make HK$15 million, or nearly $2 million. A work by Xue Song also outperformed estimates by a good margin to make almost HK$2.3 million, or $300,000, the artist’s second-highest auction price. Finally, surprise bidding pushed Zeng Fanzhi’s Untitled 09-1-5 from its HK$3 million estimate to an HK$9 million selling price, which is nearly $1.2 million. That might be a good sign for the artist’s two mask paintings coming up at Phillips tomorrow and Sotheby’s on Sunday, respectively. Zeng’s Society No. 3 has an estimate around $2 million, which is below the $2.8 million paid for the painting in 2016.

Some other lots I’ll be watching this weekend—at least when I’m not out on the water—include Ruth Asawa’s S.013, which is for sale at Phillips with an estimate of $280,000 after being bought from the artist’s estate in 2011 for just under $100,000. (The SFMOMA Asawa retrospective will open at the New York MoMA in a few weeks.) Tom Wesselmann’s Smoker #17 sold for $5.9 million in 2007; it’s on offer at Phillips with an estimate of $2.6 million. And Yoshitomo Nara’s Pinky, from 2000, is being offered with a $7.7 million estimate. That shouldn’t really come into play, since Nara no longer seems to be making the incredibly popular large paintings of small girls that have been his calling card for so many years. Sotheby’s has its own Nara, Can’t Wait ’til the Night Comes, from 2012, with an $8.35 million estimate and an irrevocable bid.

Works to watch at Sotheby’s are the opening lot by Li Hei Di; it was painted in 2023 and has an estimate of $90,000. There’s a run of vaguely Asian-themed Roy Lichtenstein works from the artist’s estate, including Vista with Bridge, from 1996, that’s backed with a guarantee and estimated around $3.6 million. There’s also a painting by Zhang Xiaogang, once a leading artist in the first generation of Chinese contemporary painters, on offer from his Big Family series that carries an estimate around $500,000—it was last auctioned in 2009 for almost $725,000. A little later, an Amoako Boafo painting that was bought three years ago for $625,000 is estimated at $200,000. Is that clever marketing or the sign of a tapped-out market? We’ll see this weekend.

Tales From the Lichtenstein Estate

Sotheby’s stand-alone sale of works from the Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein estate performed very well. The total for the sale was $27 million. There were some standout results like The Gun in America, a lithograph, which had a paltry $20,000 estimate and sold for nearly $350,000; and Bobby Kennedy, which made $355,000 against the same estimate. More expensive works, like Wimpy I, which was estimated at $1 million, also sold for much higher prices—in this case, $2.86 million. Galatea, a sculpture, was estimated at $800,000 but sold for nearly $2.2 million.

The results from Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sale didn’t quite catch the momentum from the earlier sale, with lots consistently hammering at prices 10 to 15 percent below estimates. Christie’s will be the last to go during this midseason session in New York. The top lot is a $2.5 million Joan Mitchell painting. There’s a colorful Sam Gilliam beveled canvas work estimated at $800,000 that was bought directly from the artist. There’s also a large, yellow, sun-dappled portrait of a blonde lady by Alex Katz painted in 1988 with a $700,000 estimate. That’s the same number they put on Norman Lear’s Kenneth Noland circle painting. A couple of years ago, buyers couldn’t get enough of these, though buyers like a little more color in their Noland circles. But this one is very striking and much cleaner than similar works I’ve seen in collectors’ homes. So the beat goes on in the lower reaches of the art market. Art is selling but not at the prices we once saw. What will it take to revive the market’s mojo? We’ll see what October brings.

Wall Power will be back on Sunday. Until then,

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