A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

But first…

I was standing just inches away from David Kownator, the chief financial officer of Sotheby’s, when Gustav Klimt’s orange-and-teal Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer finally sold for a $236 million premium price after 20 minutes of bidding. Sotheby’s had taken a very big bet on the Leonard Lauder estate, which included three Klimts—outbidding its rivals by tens of millions to secure a premier, brand-defining sale for its launch of the Breuer Building.

Sotheby’s, which has made the Breuer its whole personality lately, could not have scripted a better night. Altogether, the two evening sales made just a sliver under $706 million, with the Lauder collection pulling in $527 million and the evening sale of contemporary art making an additional, and quite strong, $178 million.

Patrick Drahi and his son Nathan hovered separately in the back of the room for much of the sale, underscoring the importance of the night to the entire company and its owners. Perhaps more telling, Drahi’s trusted lieutenant and the former C.F.O. of Sotheby’s, Jean-Luc Berrebi, also sat through both sales to the end, warmly greeting his former colleague Brooke Lampley when she left at the end of the evening with her new boss, Larry Gagosian.

Selling three extremely high-value Klimts in one sale is a high-risk venture in any market. But it was especially fraught for Sotheby’s, and the entire market, after nearly three years of declining auction sales. After all, just six months ago, Sotheby’s had allowed a consignor to roll the dice on a $70 million Giacometti that did not have a bidder. The repercussions of that decision have been echoing through the media ever since. Both Sotheby’s and the broader art market needed something to change the narrative.

But that wasn’t a foregone conclusion even as of late Tuesday morning. When Sotheby’s online catalogue was finally updated to reflect the third-party guarantees for two of the three Klimts, it seemed like the most one could hope for was a solid placement for the paintings. Indeed, the bidding on the Lederer portrait started with a frantic low-ball bid (if you can call $135 million low) from a client of Helena Newman. That was followed by advisor Patti Wong’s $140 million bid. Then five bidders pushed the lot past the $150 million mark, which must have been a relief to everyone at Sotheby’s.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

But it wasn’t until David Galperin entered at $171 million, knocking out Wong, that the two final bidders slugged it out to $205 million in the room, or $236 million with fees. “Sotheby’s had been cautious all the way—not leaving anything to chance,” Wong wrote to me this morning. She also said that a Sotheby’s expert had opined to her in the salesroom that one of the landscape pieces could have made $100 million if it had been offered without the distraction of the Lederer portrait. There’s a good case for that argument, based on the $104 million sale of Paul Allen’s Klimt landscape and Lauder’s powerful provenance.

Anyway, Wong marveled that the portrait had doubled the record public price of $108 million set in London two years ago for Lady with a fan, from 1917. And she was impressed with the number of bidders. “I was asked if Asian U.H.N.W. collectors have Klimt at the top of their collecting list,” she added. “That I cannot answer you. But why not? Or rather, who doesn’t?”

After the applause—a much-needed release from the tense bidding—I leaned in to congratulate Kownator. “Your week just got a whole lot better,” I said. Without skipping a beat, Kownator replied, “My year just got better!”

You don’t see galleries defending their artists at auction much any more, as Hauser did with Taylor. But Hauser also bid on Rashid Johnson’s work, Anxious Red Painting August 20th, from 2020, which had an irrevocable bid and sold at around the estimate level. And near the very end of the sale, Larry Gagosian beat a determined telephone bidder to buy Jeff Koons’s Hulk (Rock), from 2004-13. The work had an irrevocable bid and a $2 million estimate, but Gagosian went all the way to a $3.55 million hammer price to buy his returning artist’s work for more than $4.4 million with fees. Gagosian was able to place some of Koons’s Hulk works earlier this year, so presumably he had a buyer.

Meanwhile, former Gagosian C.O.O. Andrew Fabricant bought the Yves Klein sponge sculpture for $19 million. It was the second-highest lot in the sale behind Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto), from 1981, which was bought for $48 million by Jen Hua, a deputy chairman covering mainland China and one of the contemporary portion’s most active bidders.

Nearly as dramatic as the Klimt bidding was the extended battle for Cecily Brown’s High Society, from 1997-98. Sotheby’s London contemporary art crew engaged in an internecine war of attrition as Branczik bid against Ottilie Windsor, Aleksandra Ziemiszewska, and Tom Eddison, who ultimately prevailed to set a new record for the artist. The hammer price was double the $4 million estimate—covered by an irrevocable bid—and the final price with fees was $9.8 million.

On the whole, most of the lots performed very well against their estimates. But that doesn’t mean everything went well, and some of the consignors couldn’t get out of their own way. Expensive works by Barkley Hendricks and Kerry James Marshall were bought in, and I’m told both had offers of irrevocable bids that were rejected. Even in a market where momentum is building, bidders can be touchy and easily offended.

That brings us to Cattelan’s golden toilet. America is a great work of art, but I’m not sure it is a great art object. It works best in a public setting, as we all have seen over the last two weeks, with people lining up to see and be photographed with it at the Breuer. As with Comedian, the duct-tape-and-banana work, the real art is the frisson of reaction it generates from viewers. The moment it stops titillating, it ceases to be a work of art. In latching on to the publicity value of Comedian, I’m not sure Sotheby’s fully grasped that the market response was not positive. The work sold to a cringey crypto investor—not really a club most collectors want to join.

To make matters worse, Sotheby’s added an additional stunt to the sale of America. The opening bid was meant to be keyed to the spot price of the gold needed to fabricate the toilet. But instead of opening the bidding at that $9.2 million level, the auctioneer announced the first bid would be $10 million, negating the whole point of the gimmick. Thankfully, there was only one bid at $10 million, from a specialist known to work with Bezos, which sparked some speculation that Lauren Sánchez might be the buyer. The lot was quickly closed for a premium price of $12.1 million. By Sotheby’s own logic, that makes the “art” value of America less than $3 million—hardly worth the hoopla. This morning, Sotheby’s told us the buyer was “a famous American brand” that might be making an announcement soon. This put us back in the realm of the Birkin bag prototype that a Japanese retailer bought as a marketing tool.

In that sense, Cattelan is having the last laugh. If America has a transcendent point beyond the well-deserved critique of American cupidity, it’s the idea that everything can and will be co-opted by commerce, including America itself. Late this afternoon, it was reported that the buyer was Ripley’s Believe It or Not.