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Welcome back to the Wall Power Inner Circle. I’m Marion Maneker. Tonight, I’m going to try to sum up what happened at Phillips’ evening sale, Sotheby’s modern evening sale, and Christie’s impressionist and modern day sale. That’s a lot. Then again, there’s a lot going on in this market, which is more complex than what the headlines suggest.
Mentioned in this issue: Emma Lasry, the Nahmad family, Steven Platzman, Rachel Carr Goulding, Kim Heirston, Alex DiPersia, and more artists than you can shake a stick at…
Let’s get started…
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- Sotheby’s modern evening sale does $186.4 million: Sotheby’s saw strong bidding for the Joseph Hazen collection, which made a total of $28.2 million. Fifty of the 60 lots offered were sold—an industry average sell-through rate.
- Phillips’ $51.9 million night: Phillips had solid sales in the $1 million to $5 million range last night. Four lots were withdrawn prior to the sale; five lots passed. Olga de Amaral’s Imagen perdida 27 sold for a price three times the estimate. A Jean-Michel Basquiat that had been in David Bowie’s collection was the top lot, at nearly $6.6 million.
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- Christie’s makes $41.1 million: Led by a $3.2 million Claude Monet sketch of Vétheuil, results from the day sales of impressionist and modern art were 10 percent higher than last year, with works on paper seeing an 86 percent sell-through rate. There were strong prices for works by Amedeo Modigliani, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Auguste Rodin, Camille Pissarro, and Pablo Picasso. As an advisor texted me this morning: “Very very encouraging to see given the uncertainty elsewhere.”
- The Solow Giacometti: Let’s get the big and obvious issue from last night out of the way: Alberto Giacometti’s Grande tête mince did not sell. There’s no avoiding the fact that going through with the sale anyway adds to the overall impression that the art market, especially at the top of the price spectrum, is depressed—though many in the industry will be quick to point out that a decision by one strong-willed consignor does not necessarily speak for the entire market.Going into the sale, everyone was well aware of the softness at the top of the market. (As I pointed out yesterday, one of the few buyers who has recently demonstrated the willingness to spend at that level has been publicly advocating for holding on to cash.) In that context, the sale’s failure was not surprising—the work was by far the most expensive object on offer for the week, with a $20 million lead over the runner-up. And all evidence points to an auction market that is focused on lower-value works.
Although this example of the Giacometti bust is hand-painted by the artist, collectors were clearly pricing the object based on the two previous sales of other casts of the bust that sold a decade ago for $50 million. Never mind that inflation has made that $50 million worth $70 million today, which was the consignor’s whisper number. It’s certainly understandable why Sotheby’s would want to have a very high-value work in a season when the house is trying to rebuild its market position. Even with the risks involved, their goal was to make a statement.Most market participants would be aware that the original buyer, Sheldon Solow, made his own decisions. It doesn’t seem too much to assume that his son and foundation would behave in a similar manner. That said, when the auction started, and there was no announcement that the bust was withdrawn, most people assumed Sotheby’s had secured a bidder. So it was not only a surprise that no one stepped forward, but also mystifying that a sophisticated and sensitive auctioneer like Oliver Barker chose to prolong the chandelier bidding. He even introduced a chopped bid at $64 million to extend the ruse, calling out a final bid of $64.25 million several times before bringing down the gavel and announcing that the work had passed. Sotheby’s must have believed there was a bidder at $64.5 million. That person did the company and the auction market no favors.
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Bidders at the big houses drove works by Giacometti, Munch, Olga de Amaral, Basquiat, Cézanne, de Kooning, László Moholy-Nagy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Calder, and others above estimates. Plus, a Chagall boomlet.
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Sotheby’s modern sale on Tuesday night opened with aggressive bidding. A Los Angeles art advisor competed with three other bidders for a Jean Arp sculpture that eventually sold to another woman in the room for almost two and a half times the estimate. Beaumont Nathan’s Emma Lasry bid on a colorful Robert Delaunay still life that was bid up over the estimate range. There were four bidders on František Kupka’s Flux et reflux, even though it was backed by an irrevocable bid. It ended up selling for a price well above Joseph Hazen’s other Kupka work, despite the fact that that one had an estimate that was 66 percent higher. Hazen’s Giacometti, Femme debout (Poseuse I), sold for a price 40 percent above the estimate.
It wasn’t only the Hazen collection that attracted bidders. The Nahmad family, ensconced in their front-row seats, bid heavily on an Alexander Calder mobile, Paulette, from 1948, that sold for $5.6 million. Once owned by Burgess Meredith and Paulette Goddard, the work is a holdover from the Sydell Miller collection that did so well for Sotheby’s last fall. I also saw the Nahmads bid on a neoclassical Picasso work on paper, and a late Homme assis, from 1969—high-quality works that fit the family’s buy-and-hold approach.
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László Moholy-Nagy’s Am 3 was bid up from its estimate by more than 30 percent to make the artist’s second-highest auction price, at $5 million. Paul Cézanne’s portrait of his wife, from the collection of Rolf and Margit Weinberg, was bid 20 percent above the estimate to sell for nearly $7.4 million. Willem de Kooning’s Two Figures in Dunes, from 1968, achieved a hammer price nearly twice the estimate, selling for $3.2 million. Edvard Munch’s portrait of German fish-oil magnate Heinrich Hudtwalcker had five bidders, who drove the final selling price to $1.9 million. The buyer was an Asian collector. A Vincent van Gogh work on paper, once owned by dealer Jan Krugier, and later Marina Picasso, also sold to an Asian buyer.
Perhaps the biggest successes in the sale came from outside the traditional modern category. Frank Lloyd Wright’s lamp for the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois, sold for nearly $7.5 million after an extended, 10-minute round of bidding. The hammer price was twice the estimate. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Leaves of a Plant, from 1942, sold for nearly $13 million. The painting comes from O’Keeffe’s famous 1939 trip to Hawaii.
There was also a Marc Chagall painting from 1969 that sold within the estimate range, but well. The strong performance mirrors something I saw the night before at Christie’s, where two different works by Chagall outperformed expectations. All three paintings were made after 1955. I spoke to two different dealers who know the Chagall market, and both were surprised by the strength, especially at auction. Even when the market seems to be struggling, there are always pockets of strength and interest.
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Bowie’s Basquiat at Phillips
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Over at Phillips, the sale opened strong with a work by Yu Nishimura, the newest addition to the Zwirner stable, selling for $279,000—not a record, but close to one set in February. That was followed by Kiki Kogelnik setting a record price at $355,600. Ilana Savdie also hit a high-water mark at $228,600, in line with what White Cube is asking for works in her current show, which means her auction market is comparable to her primary market.
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The big successes of the sale included Jean-Michel Basquiat’s untitled work once owned by David Bowie, which sold for $6.6 million to San Francisco advisor Steven Platzman. Olga de Amaral shattered her previous record price of $700,000 when advisor Rachel Carr Goulding won Imagen perdida 27, from 1996, at nearly $1.2 million. Another advisor, Kim Heirston, bought a Charles White drawing for $700,000, which is the first significant auction price for the artist since May 2022. The actor turned art advisor Alex DiPersia took a stab at Danielle McKinney’s To Pretend, from 2020, but was eventually outbid by telephone.
There were some good sales for Jeff Koons, Sean Scully, and Barbara Hepworth as well. There were also some odd casualties, like a Le Corbusier painting that got bid to $1.4 million against an estimate of $1.5 million. In the current climate, most consignors would have taken that.
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I was looking at the impressionist and modern day sales on Sunday, and came across this petite Georges Valmier cubist work. It was estimated at only $3,000, a price even Mrs. Wallpower and I can afford. It’s a good piece and reminds me very much of this Picasso, which was once owned by Alfred Taubman and sold for $1.1 million a decade ago. I didn’t quite believe that it would sell anywhere near the estimate, but still… to me, it would have been like owning a Picasso for a fraction of the price.
In the end, the work sold for nearly $23,000. That’s still a very good deal, as far as I’m concerned. I tell you this story mostly because I hope there’s a mood in the market that values living with a great work of art that makes you happy over how much money you can make buying a work of art as an asset that will appreciate over time.
Also, the folks at Karma really want me to tell you that they were able to make a big sale at TEFAF. Milton Avery’s Morning Dunes, from 1958, which was painted in Provincetown during the summer and owned by MoMA for a time, had a $2 million asking price. I don’t know at what level the deal was made. But now I’ve done my part.
I’m off to Christie’s tonight for the contemporary portion of the week’s sales. I’ll let you know what happens on Friday.
Keep calm and carry on,
M
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