Turning to the top 10 lots by hammer ratio, seven of them were bid to six-figure premium prices. That’s an improvement from recent seasons, when the bulk of the lots with the most aggressive bidding remained at much lower price points. This is a positive sign. The two most valuable lots on the list were another Renoir and a work by Tetsuya Ishida, the Japanese artist who died in 2005 at the age of 31. His estate has been represented by Gagosian since 2023. Chinese-born French artist Feng Xiao-Min saw his work bid aggressively to four times the estimate and a final price of $392,221. Another French painter, 95-year-old André Brasilier, saw intense bidding for his recent work. Two historical Vietnamese artists, Le Pho and Nguyen Nam Son, were bid to the same $210,000 price. And Hong Kong illustrator Kasing Lung rounded out the lots that saw dynamic bidding over $100,000.

Finally, the market share numbers show a fairly consistent decline from the top three artists—Zao Wou-Ki, Yayoi Kusama, and Jean-Michel Basquiat—to the next three historical artists (Magritte, Renoir, and Chagall). Chu Teh-Chun seems to occupy a unique strata. That final group of mostly contemporary artists, including Yoshitomo Nara, Christine Ay Tjoe, Zhang Enli, and Adrian Ghenie, also contains the venerable Pablo Picasso, with just under 2 percent of the dollars spent.

I know many of you read the aforementioned Financial Times interview with Sotheby’s C.E.O. Charles Stewart—I received a lot of comments through various channels. (Keep ’em coming, folks.) I’m still confused about it, myself. I understand the impulse to do the interview. Sotheby’s is trying to bounce back from a bad year, filled with bad press. The company needs to build confidence with consignors. One only has to look at the past two sales cycles in London and Hong Kong, where Sotheby’s trailed its rival in the duopoly, posting volumes that were half those of Christie’s. If this imbalance—which reflects lopsided consigning—persists, it won’t be much of a duopoly anymore. We are still a long, long way from that scenario, but the houses remain much further apart than most of us thought they would be at this point. Of course, much of the problem comes from Sotheby’s attempt to reorient the fee structure away from an ever-increasing buyer’s premium, toward a more sustainable cost-sharing between buyer and seller. In December, when they abandoned that new fee structure, it seemed like it’d be only a matter of time before the auction house returned to its previous form by reinstalling the old fee structure and making attractive deals that would lure back consignors. So far, that doesn’t seem to have happened. I haven’t heard any reports that Sotheby’s has refused to make attractive offers. So we can cross that off the list of reasons for the consignment gap. The second possibility is that, after extensive cuts to the staff, there are just fewer people in-house to hit the phones and bring in consignments. Finally, there’s a third issue of confidence around the company. Do consignors feel Sotheby’s can get the job done for them? To me, that’s the backdrop to this interview. Sotheby’s has to rebuild, and all of its efforts should be focused on bolstering the market’s perception of the company and this wobbly moment in both the art market and the global economy. Would putting its C.E.O. in front of the FT accomplish that? Perhaps, but only if Stewart were focused on answering the kinds of questions that might be holding consignors back. You can judge for yourself whether he pulled it off, but the headline focused on Brexit. The subhead referred to “choppy economic waters.” The pull quotes were about how small the audience is and how few opportunities Sotheby’s has to engage clients. To make matters worse, the interview was clearly conducted a month ago, when Stewart was in London for the auctions. He chose to comment on President Trump’s tariff plan, which, at the time, might have seemed less of an obstacle. His comments that Trump’s levies “seem targeted at boutique segments” and “intended to send more of a signal than have a truly disruptive economic impact” have not aged well. As one person who works for a large global gallery commented to me, the interview doesn’t help the industry very much. It focused on all of the negatives and offered few concrete and positive examples of the health of the art market or Sotheby’s robust comeback. Yes, we’re told that there’s a massive wealth transfer about to happen, but we didn’t need Stewart to tell us that. And it would’ve had far more impact if it had been a comment accompanied by the announcement of a major consignment. Anyway, P.R. works best when it amplifies real momentum.

While you mull over these deep thoughts, I’ll be working on our next newsletter, coming to you on Friday. Until then, M