Mar 20, 2026

Welcome back to Wall Power. I’m Marion Maneker, back in New York after an enlightening trip to Philadelphia—more on that in the next few issues.

Next week, Art Basel is opening its fair in Hong Kong, followed by several days of auctions at Sotheby’s, Phillips, and Christie’s. These simultaneous sales are still a new feature of the global auction calendar; all three houses have built permanent salesrooms in the island city within the last several years. They’re all long-term investments, and the houses will have to wait for them to pay off, but there are finally some eight-figure works on offer this season to help gauge demand in the region. To that end, I have a preview of the Hong Kong sales below.

Before we get there, some notes on the TEFAF sales, which revealed the payoff for a dramatic auction bet; the collector interest surrounding the Guggenheim’s Gabriele Münter show; why Chuck Close got fed up looking at his wife’s friend’s face; and how the New Museum makes a statement with a staircase.

Mentioned in this issue: Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter, Yayoi Kusama, Walter Spies, David Zwirner, Zao Wou-Ki, Mark Rothko, Sanyu, Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, Tracey Emin, Gallery 19C, Zeng Fanzhi, Nicolas Party, Zhang Xiaogang, Pace, Utermann, and more.

Now, let’s get warmed up…

Terms of Art

Making good on Lemmen: If you’re patient enough in the art world, you might end up seeing the full arc of a sales saga. I was reminded of that yesterday, when TEFAF sent out the final sales report for this year’s fair. For Texas’s Gallery 19C, which specializes in once-unfashionable 19th century art, the fair saw the culmination of an aggressive bet on a minor artist.

The gallery, founded by Eric Weider (whose father and uncle pretty much invented the sport of bodybuilding and built an empire around it), was able to sell a post-impressionist Georges Lemmen portrait of the artist’s sister crocheting, which had been offered at Sotheby’s less than a year ago for $50,000. The work was guaranteed and backed by an irrevocable bid, and no one thought the $50,000 estimate was a realistic prediction of where the work would sell. But I’m not sure anyone expected the portrait to make nearly $700,000 with fees. That’s twice the highest price previously paid for a Lemmen at auction.

I saw the work on Gallery 19C’s stand at a recent New York art fair, and wondered when, and if, the gallery’s bet would pay off. After all, time is money, and the longer it took, the less profit 19C would see. But Maastricht’s huge concentration of collectors seems to have been the right match: Gallery 19C reports the painting sold with an asking price of $1.2 million.

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More TEFAF sales: German gallery Utermann sold Max Beckmann’s Orchard Still Life with Green Bowl for €1 million, and an abstract head by Alexej von Jawlensky to a European collector for €750,000. (I don’t have data to back this up, but I’ve noticed more of these small paintings on the market and selling well.) Utermann also sold Dollhouse Picture, by Gabriele Münter, the subject of a great show currently at the Guggenheim until April 26, for €200,000 to an American collector.

Haboldt & Co. reported selling Adriaen Coorte’s Still Life with Gooseberries on a Stone Ledge, and Maria van Oosterwijck’s A Swag with Fruit and Flowers Hanging before a Niche, for somewhere close to €1 million. Paul Coulon sold Yves Klein’s Untitled Blue Sponge Sculpture; the ask was €2.5 million. And Tomasso sold a 14th century marble figure to the Met for €1.5 million.
A tale of two staircases: The New Museum’s new building really does look great, and the gallery spaces have gone from being quirky and constrained to open, flexible, and conducive to discovery and delight. But I couldn’t help noticing that both the original building and the new extension, by architecture firm OMA, have signature staircases.

The one in the original structure seemed like a secret passageway, despite running the length of the building and serving as the main connection between the third and fourth floors. It now terminates in a small gallery. The new building’s signature feature is a multistory atrium, surrounded by a swirling metal staircase that screams radical architecture, but maybe in a Beetlejuice kind of way. I suppose that’s to be expected from a museum focused on “new” art. But the surrounding neighborhood is rapidly filling with new architecture that makes the museum seem unnecessarily dated. That said, Massimiliano Gioni’s first show is unapologetically maximalist, ambitious, and giddily overwhelming… in a good way.
Chuck Close is sick of looking at your face: Pace just opened a great show of Chuck Close works on paper. One wall of the gallery is densely hung—salon-style, as they say—with Close’s portraits of friends and fellow artists done over the course of four decades. Included are Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Lucas Samaras, Kiki Smith, James Turrell, Kara Walker, Zhang Huan, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, not to mention pictures of Arne Glimcher and several self-portraits. But before you get to that showstopper, you walk through several arrangements of source material—often large-format Polaroids—and experimental depictions of the picture-making process.

As many will know, the core of Close’s practice was to divide head-on portraits into a grid of chromatic values that could be reconstituted in a number of ways. Here we see a recurring interest in the color printing process, where Close experiments with cyan, yellow, and magenta versions of the same image, and then some fully realized color image. (Look out for the one that cleverly shows all of the variations of color combinations in a single image.) The subjects are all Close’s friends and mentors, but that doesn’t mean the painstaking process of realizing these images didn’t take its toll. On the gridded photograph Close used to make one of the portraits of Robert Ellson, his wife’s friend from junior high school, there is an inscription: “To Bob, I hope I never see this face again.”

With that, let’s look toward Hong Kong…

Hong Kong Garden

Joan Mitchell and Gerhard Richter lead an auction calendar that will provide the latest test of the art market’s long recovery—and whether the island city, where the Big Three auction houses have invested heavily to bolster their Asian footprint, is finally getting its groove back.

Marion Maneker

As the art market continues to heal with stronger sales in London, the next indicator of a recovery should come in Hong Kong. The market peaked in the island city in 2021, despite political unrest and Covid closures. But over the following years, auction sales dropped by 26 percent, and remained low through 2025, even though the first fall auctions, with all three auction houses selling simultaneously, seemed to portend a recovery. This season, we’ll see whether all that spade work can result in some real market momentum.

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The top lots are two abstract works by Western artists priced above $10 million. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t many key works by compelling Asian names on offer, with long market track records and deep collecting bases. At Christie’s, the top lots are works by Gerhard Richter, Walter Spies, Sanyu, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Zao Wou-Ki, and Marc Chagall. At Sotheby’s, works by Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, Keith Haring, and Zeng Fanzhi star alongside Zao and Kusama, too. And at Phillips, Tracey Emin, Zhang Xiaogang, and Nicolas Party are featured. Now, let’s get into the details…

Sotheby’s $14M Mitchell

The top lot of the season is Joan Mitchell’s late abstract painting, La Grande Vallée VII, painted in 1983. The two-panel work, filled with thick yellow, green, blue, and some red brushstrokes, sold in the thick of the Covid closures in July 2020 for nearly $14.5 million. It comes back to market in Hong Kong with an estimate around $14 million, meaning the seller is willing to get most of their money back, although the buyer will have to pay some 20 percent or more in fees. There’s no guarantee on the work.

A unique Yayoi Kusama fiberglass, Pumpkin, made in 2015 and bought directly from David Zwirner gallery, is being offered with an estimate just above $5 million. Any bidder willing to hit that price will end up paying north of $6 million, which is about what three similar but unique works have sold for in the last five years. Two of them sold in 2024 for $6.8 million and $7.1 million. That suggests the estimate has a tiny bit of room above it, but the work is fairly fully priced. The Kusama auction market has been cycling down over the last few years after peaking in 2023, so any upward movement in Pumpkin prices might signal a revived market.

Sotheby’s also has an early Zao Wou-Ki painting that was acquired directly from the artist. Estimated around $3.8 million, the painting contains Chinese characters painted in red. The highest price achieved for a work with characters from the same period is $7.6 million. A 1949 transitional Mark Rothko painting, titled No. 10, is estimated at close to $3.6 million, which is not much of a jump from the $2.5 million paid at auction in 2014. An untitled Keith Haring enamel-on-metal painting from 1982, featuring a large gold cross and figures holding hands, is being offered with an estimate around $1.8 million. It previously sold in 2007 for just under $700,000.

Meanwhile, a Zeng Fanzhi “mask” painting is being offered with an estimate slightly under $800,000. There’s been a revival in demand for these once-seminal works by the artist. And finally, one doesn’t see many Mai Trung Thu nudes at auction, let alone a group of bathers. But Le petit cours d’eau, la baignade, a late painting by the Vietnamese painter who lived in Paris, is estimated at a little more than half a million dollars. The estimate reflects the market for the artist’s late paintings; his early works from the 1930s have reached as much as $3 million at auction.

Christie’s Richter Scale

A very red Gerhard Richter abstract painting leads Christie’s sale with an estimate just shy of $10 million. The recent success in London of a red abstract half the size, which sold for $10.1 million with fees, suggests there might be bidding on this larger work. Just to give you a sense of how much the market has changed in Hong Kong, a red abstract of similar size (though arguably more complex) sold at the peak of the market in 2021 for nearly $17.9 million, although the seller did have to compromise on the work since it was sold below the estimate.

Meanwhile, an important Walter Spies painting that has reset his market twice—in 2001, when it sold for $1 million, and then again in 2013, when it sold for $4 million—is being offered with an estimate of just above $6.1 million. The work is guaranteed and has a third-party backer, which is a vote of confidence that the market is primed for repricing for the German artist, who moved to Jakarta and then Bali in the 1920s.

There’s also a Sanyu painting acquired directly from the artist by a family that had long supported his work, and loaned their home for his last solo public exhibition in his lifetime, in 1965. It’s one of only 34 works by the artist featuring a horse, and is estimated at around $3.6 million. A Zao Wou-Ki painting from 1951 is being offered with an estimate of $3.5 million; it last sold 16 years ago for nearly $2.4 million. And a Marc Chagall painting from late in his career, in 1975-76, which previously sold in London in 2016 for $2.5 million, is being offered in Hong Kong with an estimate that works out to $2.9 million. With fees, the sale price will come closer to $4 million. Again, this is a measure of the depth of demand for Chagall, who has seen some strong recent sales even though this is not a major work.

Phillips’ Yayoi Intrigue

At Phillips, a Yayoi Kusama painting from 2020 is backed by a third-party guarantor and being offered with an estimate of $640,000. Tracey Emin’s 2022 painting of a female figure on a bed, titled I See the Mirror, is also backed by a guarantor and estimated at just under $450,000. The Chinese ink painter Liu Dan is represented in the sale with a 2011 painting titled Dictionary, which is one of four works in the series painted in 1991, 2005, 2009, and 2011. The 1991 version sold for $713,000 in New York 19 years ago. This version is estimated at $450,000 and is also backed by a guarantor. Of course, the market for Chinese art was different in 2007: Take, for example, Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline Series—Father and Daughter, which sold for $1.6 million in 2007, and then resold in 2023 for $730,000. It will be sold next week with an $450,000 estimate, and no guarantor yet.

A Nicolas Party painting that was bought at Phillips in 2022 and offered at Christie’s in 2024 is back at Phillips again, with an estimate less than half what the buyer paid four years ago. Finally, Christie’s caused a bit of a stir last fall when it sold a Julia Jo painting for $200,000. The house followed up with another work in New York in February that made only $63,000, and one in London in March that made just over $31,000. In Hong Kong, Christie’s has a 60-by-60-inch painting estimated at $28,000. And Phillips has this 2024 painting, estimated at $25,000. In this case, the artist’s primary dealer has been working hard to match interested buyers with early owners who want to sell, thus taking some of the speculative heat out of the market.

That’s enough for today. I’ll be watching these sales late next week to see how they play out. Look for results a little after that. In the meantime, on Sunday, Dan Duray is back with a Jonas Wood interview. You won’t want to miss it.

M

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