{"id":142220,"date":"2025-11-19T19:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/142220\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T19:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:31:06","slug":"at-marquee-sales-midpoint-market-celebrates-victory-for-top-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/142220\/","title":{"rendered":"At Marquee Sales Midpoint, Market Celebrates Victory for Top End"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEditor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance<\/a>,\u00a0the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe\u00a0$690 million<\/a>\u00a0that Christie\u2019s took on Monday night during its 20th\/21st century sale in New York was a staggering figure, but it still came up short of the $731.5 million pre-sale high estimate. That may have curbed any high-fives and backslapping meant to salute an art-market resurgence after two rickety years, but Sotheby\u2019s double-header on Tuesday evening gave people reason to believe that the top end is truly on the up.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sotheby\u2019s<\/p>\n

\n\tSotheby\u2019s trove of works from the late cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, together with its \u201cThe Now & Contemporary\u201d sale, brought in\u00a0a combined $706 million,\u00a0<\/a>leaving the $680.7 million pre-sale high estimate in the dust. It was enough to lead\u00a0Helena Newman, the house\u2019s Europe chairman, to declare after the sale that Sotheby\u2019s \u201cmade history\u201d at the Breuer. (All quoted prices include fees unless stated otherwise.)<\/p>\n

\n\tChristie\u2019s combined Monday total on 79 lots was a 42 \u00a0percent increase over its equivalent sale last November, which brought in $486 million on 72 lots. Sotheby\u2019s result last night\u2014from 68 lots\u2014was a massive 279 percent rise against May, when it sold the same number of lots for $186.1 million. (Sotheby\u2019s double-header sale last November, covering the Sydell Miller collection and a modern art sale, generated $309 million across 56 lots.)<\/p>\n

\n\tA handful of record sales propped up Sotheby\u2019s eye-watering $706 million total. The house sold Lauder\u2019s\u00a0Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer\u00a0(1914\u201316) by Gustav Klimt for $236.4 million. It was the highest price for any work of modern art sold at auction, and the second-highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction, period (still eclipsed by the $450.3 million paid for Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s\u00a0Salvator Mundi\u00a0in 2017). By the end of the night, three Klimt works had swelled the coffers by $400 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat old auction-house maxim\u2014\u201cGood works always sell well at auction\u201d\u2014repeated by specialists before and after the sale, proved its worth. It might be contagious: art-world commentator and onetime\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0contributor\u00a0Jeff Magid\u00a0also used it. \u201cMy bold prediction for the state of the art market after this auction week\u2014I think great art will sell really well at auction,\u201d he told his Instagram followers on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne person who wasn\u2019t getting too carried away, though, was the Fine Art Group founder\u00a0Phillip Hoffman, who told\u00a0ARTnews, \u201cWhile there\u2019s certainly more interest, I wouldn\u2019t say that the market is rushing back. There\u2019s still a distinct lack of buying activity at the young contemporary galleries. The lower to mid-market remains a tough place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Hoffman noted that there were no lots sold above $20 million in May, a price category that has been alive and well this week. Iconic works will sell, increasingly at record numbers. \u201cWhile the market is not back to the highs of three or so years ago, there\u2019s a lot of money around. I\u2019ve always said to my clients, this is the time to buy, and if you\u2019ve got iconic works like Lauder did, there is no bad time to sell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Klimt sold after a 20-minute battle between six phone bidders.\u00a0Patti Wong, former international chairperson for the house, who is now part of New Perspectives Art Partners with Hoffman, was in the room bidding until the Klimt hit $200 million. Sotheby\u2019s beleaguered owner, the billionaire\u00a0Patrick Drahi, was grinning from ear to ear at the back of the auction room when the gavel came down.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lauder portion of the evening totaled $527.5 million, while \u201cThe Now & Contemporary\u201d sale took in $178.5 million. A\u00a0Jean-Michel Basquiat\u00a0painting was the latter\u2019s top lot, bringing in $48.3 million, and\u00a0Vincent van Gogh\u2019sThe Sower(1888) set a new auction high for a pen-and-ink work by the artist at $11.2 million. However,\u00a0Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s\u00a0notorious golden toilet\u2014America\u00a0(2016)\u2014was one disappointment of the night. Though it went for $12.1 million, its melt value, it attracted only a single bid and failed to live up to the hype after being installed in a bathroom in Sotheby\u2019s new headquarters at the Breuer Building. Sotheby\u2019s said it was acquired by a \u201cfamous American brand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tChristie\u2019s sales on Monday night were characterized by deep bidding.\u00a0Mark Rothko\u2019s 1958\u00a0No. 31 (Yellow Stripe)\u00a0sold for $62.2 million after 20 bids,\u00a0Henri Matisse\u2019s 1937\u00a0Figure et bouquet (T\u00eate ocre)\u00a0sold for $32.3 million after nearly 30 bids, and\u00a0Le songe du Roi David\u00a0(1966) by\u00a0Marc Chagall\u00a0went for $26.5 million after 32 bids.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis felt like what an auction should feel like,\u201d\u00a0Alex Rotter, Christie\u2019s global president, told\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0after the sale. \u201cI feel the tide rising. The collections added a lot of depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJussi Pylkk\u00e4nen, former global president of Christie\u2019s and founder of the London-based advisory Art Pylkk\u00e4nen, told\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0that this week\u2019s results signal that \u201cthe top of the art market is back on track, with works of quality over $10 million generating great competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cThe evening sales here in New York continue the trend of a flight to quality which began in London and Paris last month. The market has clearly turned a corner, but in doing so it has shifted. Contemporary art continues to struggle as the focus of collectors moves firmly back to the great classic modernists who have performed so well here in New York: Klimt, Matisse, Rothko, Agnes Martin, Diebenkorn, Chagall, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, and Basquiat. The fact that Cattelan\u2019s much-vaunted America received only one bid is a graphic and memorable illustration of this market development. The days of heavy speculation in contemporary art seem numbered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tArt market economist\u00a0Clare McAndrew, who compiles the Art Basel UBS reports, echoed Hoffman\u2019s sentiment and told\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0Wednesday that \u201cthe right supply will always generate strong sales on the secondary market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCollectors will always be willing to pay amazing sums for high-quality, scarce works by artists with a solid historical footprint who present relatively low risk,\u201d she said. \u201cOn the demand side, there are more billionaires in 2025 controlling more wealth than ever before, so there is no shortage of discretionary purchasing power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmanda Lo Iacono\u2014the former deputy CEO at Phillips<\/a> and the founder of CounterA, a platform that manages compliance, payments, and logistics for artworks\u2014was also on the same page. She told\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0after Tuesday\u2019s sale: \u201cCommitted buyers haven\u2019t left the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe warned, however, that it\u2019s important to look at the wider market when assessing its health. \u201cThe structural pressures on the market haven\u2019t shifted, and the top of the market is not a proxy for the broader ecosystem,\u201d she said. \u201cEvening sales tell us how the top of the market feels\u2014not how the market functions. You get a clearer read of that in the day sales, which are showing stronger sell-through rates than we\u2019ve seen over the past year. The appetite is intact, and with the right adjustments the market has room to build on this momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance,\u00a0the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[86359,7123,146,85,46,81388,1834],"class_list":["post-142220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-2025-fall-auction-sales","tag-christies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-phillips","tag-sothebys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}