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Too Precious
for a Recession: The Spring 2009 Post-War &
Contemporary Art Auctions in New York
By Brian
Appel
A year ago, when
experienced dealers and collectors felt
contemporary art prices had reached a level that
many considered unsustainable, the art market
still seemed invincible to the growing malaise
in the financial and housing sectors.
On the 14th of May
2008, at Sotheby’s, a Francis Bacon triptych
realized a whopping $86.3 million setting a new
world record for the most expensive work of
contemporary art at auction. The following
evening, at Christie’s, a Lucien Freud portrait
commanded $33.6 million toppling the previous
world record at auction as the most expensive
artwork for a living artist.
Last spring saw
seventeen works reach above the $10 million
level pushing the city’s total from all three
auction houses to what would become the New York
contemporary art market peak of $955 million in
sales.
That was before the
Lehman Brothers collapse on September 15th,
2008, arguably the worst financial news since
the crash of 1929. Eerily enough, it was the
same day the art market bubble reached its
London climax where the first session of Damien
Hirst’s “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”
auction raised $127.2 million.
Less than two
months later, against a backdrop of reeling
financial markets and nervous investors, the
evening and day sales of post-war and
contemporary art at New York’s top three sank
with a thud to $331 million.
The cratering
economy continues to impact the dramatic
post-war and contemporary art auction
downshift.
This spring’s
combined New York total—not seen since
2004—bottomed at $213 million.
Eli Broad, the
billionaire property developer and major player
in the art market --his foundation owns about
1,900 contemporary works-- put it succinctly when I
bumped into him at the Sotheby’s pre-sale
exhibition in May and queried him about why the
market had flattened so profoundly since last
spring:
“Young collectors
with money, hedge fund managers and the newly
rich from Russia, the Mid-East and China who
were buying for investment have disappeared.
Buying art for passion, the learning experience
and addiction has returned to the market”.
Sotheby’s
Even with a tight,
“priced to sell” selection of works that
attempted to satisfy the hunger for art that
would hold their value—brand name artists with a
wide collecting base—bidding was thin. Only
fourteen lots out of the 39 that sold reached
beyond $1 million.
Attracting high
quality consignments was challenging at best.
Collectors, for the most part, didn’t want to
part with a prized painting, drawing or
sculpture unless they had to.
Compared to the
record-shattering $362 million that was raised
in the same period last spring, the house was
only able to generate a disappointing $47
million, five million dollars below their low
estimate.
JEFF KOONS
BAROQUE EGG WITH BOW (TURQUOISE/MAGENTA),
1994-2008
83 1/2 by 77 1/2 by 60 inches
this is one of four versions each uniquely
colored
Est. $6/8 million
Sold for $5,458,500
Sotheby's, "Contemporary Art Evening Auction",
N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #9
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Jeff Koons’
“Baroque Egg with Bow (Turquoise/Magenta)”,
(1994-2008), a monumental high-chromium
stainless steel sculpture from his “Celebration”
series, was the evening’s top lot.
Part of an
ambitious body of sixteen paintings and twenty
sculptures that focus on toys, presents and
other small childhood objects born of Koons’
enduring preoccupation with childhood
experiences and child-like consciousness, the
sculpture teases the senses through scale and
the “undulating waves of color” from the
crinkles of the turquoise foil wrapping and the
glints of light reflecting off the magenta bow
of the egg.
Fourteen years from
concept to execution, and produced in five
uniquely colored versions, it explores the
“readymade” transformed into “high art”.
Larry Gagosian, the
artist’s uber-rich dealer, had featured the
seven foot high egg last fall in “For What You
Are About to Receive,” an exhibition curated by
Victoria Gelfand, a director of Gagosian London
and Sam Orlofsky of Gagosian New York. Held at
the Red October Chocolate Factory in Moscow, the
powerhouse show featured Picasso, Giacometti,
Pollock, de Kooning, Bacon, Fontana and a gaggle
of mid-career artists like Richard Prince,
Robert Ryman, Chris Wool and Mike Kelley.
The egg’s reported
$20 million asking price was unsuccessful in
wooing an ultra-high net worth buyer.
Gagosian ended up
acquiring it Tuesday night in what Tobias Meyer,
the worldwide director of Sotheby’s contemporary
art department and the evening’s auctioneer,
described as “a recalibrated market”.
With buyer’s
premium, the evening’s “star” lot reached $5.5
million, a financial universe away from the easy
credit-boom years in November of 2007, when
“Hanging Heart (Magenta Gold)”—also from the
“Celebration” series—was purchased by Victor
Pinchuk, the billionaire Russian oligarch. At
the time, it set the bar for the most expensive
artwork sold by a living artist commanding $23.5
million.
Despite having to
lower his expectations $1.2 million below the
published low pre-sale estimate, Daniel S. Loeb,
the hedge fund manager and consignor of “Baroque
Egg with Bow (Turquoise/Magenta)”—whose
compensation in 2007 was $270 million—still made
a good chunk of change.
With a reported
$5.7 billion in funds, the founder of Third
Point LLC, was said to have purchased the
sculpture five years earlier from Mr. Gagosian
for an estimated $3 million.
Martin Kippenberger
Untitled, 1988
Oil on canvas
94 1/2 by 78 3/4 inches
Est. $3.5/4.5 million
Sold for $4,114,500
Sotheby's, "Contemporary Art Evening Auction,
N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #7
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
*WORLD
RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION
Iwan Wirth, a Swiss
contemporary art dealer and gallery owner, and
one of the most powerful players in contemporary
art, set a new record price for the Martin
Kippenberger oil on canvas cover lot of the
house’s evening sale.
Dakis Joannou, a
Greek industrialist and a leading collector of
contemporary art in Europe, was the seller. The
painting realized $4.1 million with buyer’s
premium, $100,000 over the low estimate.
One of only two
lots that had a guaranteed minimum price for the
consignor prior to the auction, “Untitled”,
(1988), a self-portrait of the artist in the
role of painter in his high-rising white
underwear makes a sly reference to the famous
photograph taken by David Douglas Duncan of a
virile Picasso in his underwear.
Kippenberger had
painted himself as an aging-badly artist whose
failure to achieve the “triumph” of painting
became his apparent subject. Tacitly
exaggerating his own feigned incompetence, the
artist ‘floats’ upward under the influence of
two “mobile testicular balloons” that allude
arguably to the buoyant art market of the
1980s.
The artist’s
sinking belly and hiked up genitals is in
self-mocking contrast to his hero Picasso, whose
macho image went hand in hand with the enormous
impact—some would say the number one
influence—on 20th century culture.
JEAN-MICHEL
BASQUIAT
Red Man One, 1982
Acrylic oilstick and paper collage lais down on
canvas and mounted on wood
76 by 47 3/4 inches
Est. $4/6 million
Sold for $3,554,500
Sotheby's, "Contemporary Art Evening Auction,
N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot 23
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
“Red Man One” from
1982, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s forceful acrylic,
oilstick and paper collage painting landed in at
$3.6 million, slightly less than midway between
its pre-sale low/high estimates of $3 million to
$5 million.
A synthesis of the
artist’s interests, most notably in Robert
Rauschenberg’s “Combines” but also in the
diverse range of artists from Pablo Picasso to
Jackson Pollock and Dubuffet, ancient to modern
graffiti art, black history, racism and death,
Basquiat’s painting reveals a direct engagement
with the analogues of art and life as
experienced through his “autobiographical
struggle for identity”.
With his trademark
crown, raw childlike graffiti, skull-like
features, ring of thorns around the head, and an
articulated skeletal form derived from the
artist’s interest in Leonardo da Vinci’s
anatomical drawings, the work vibrates with an
intellectual vigor and chaotic beauty of the
life he lived.
Painted on a canvas
that is hand stretched onto a rudimentary
stretcher made by hand from found materials, the
work makes a defiant comment to many of his
colleagues who were using pristine, expensive
canvases and stretchers in their work.
With the painting’s
missing upper right corner of the rectangular
composition and a stretcher bar that extends
beyond the work in the lower left, The marquee
artist’s interest in sculptural elements in
combination with his signature frenetic style,
contribute to the grand bravado of the work and
its radical innovations on the contemporary
portrait.
ALEXANDER CALDER
Ebony Sticks in Semi-Circle, 1934
Wood, steel and string standing mobile
54 1/2 by 44 by 27 inches
Est.: $1,000,000-$1,500,000
Realized: $3,498,500
SOTHEBY's, N.Y., "Contemporary Art Evening
Sale", N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #15
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Renowned for the
invention of the mobile, Alexander Calder’s
global brand has been among the few to command
strong prices after the collapse of the credit
markets and the recession.
One of only two
lots to hammer at double the high pre-sale
estimate at the house—the other was “Untitled
(Blow Me)”, an oil on canvas of an extinguished
candle executed by a twenty-six year old Dan
Colen in 2005—the wood, steel and string
standing mobile incited the most prolonged
bidding war of the evening.
Five bidders went
after it including Eli Broad who was the
under-bidder. “Ebony Sticks in Semi-Circle”,
(1934), held in a private collection since 1960,
was the fourth highest lot of the evening
hitting $4.5 million.
CHRISTOPHER WOOL
Untitled (P105), 1989
Alkyd and acrylic on aluminum
95 1/4 by 63 1/2 inches
Est.: $1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized: $1,874,500
SOTHEBY'S, N.Y., "Contemporary Art Evening
Sale", N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #3
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
*WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION
Dakis Joannou, the
seller of the Kippenberger cover lot, was also
the consignor of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled
(P105)” from 1989—the only other
house-guaranteed work in the sale,
Mr. Wool, born in
1955, is best known for black-and-white
paintings from the 1990s in which large block
letters spell gnomic, vaguely aggressive words
and phrases like “Fool,” “Bad Dog” and most
famously, “Sell the Car Sell the Kids.”
One of the more
optically alive painters out there, Wool is at
his best when using his arsenal of pictorial
devices to signal basic tensions between the
painted and silkscreened, the handmade and the
mechanical mark.
His punchy,
postmodernist fusion of black comedy and
concrete poetry is mesmerically realized in this
early 1989 alkyd and acrylic on aluminum
painting with the word COMEDIAN spelled out in
three lines—all upper case—one on top of the
other: “COM”, “EDI”, “AN”. Wool’s
confrontational but restrained, personal/impersonal
psycho-drama word painting sold for in the
middle of its pre-sale estimate for $1.9
million—a record for the artist at auction.
RICHARD PRINCE
Can You Imagine, 1989
Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
75 by 58 inches
Est.: $600,000-$800,000
Realized: $1,370,500
SOTHEBY'S, N.Y., "Contemporary Art Evening
Auction", N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #35
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Speaking of word
dramas, Richard Prince, the man best known for
his sophisticated critiques of the insidious
myths of middle-American, blue-collar consumer
culture had two of his classic Borscht Belt Joke
paintings in the Sotheby’s evening line-up.
Reflecting on the
heady blend of sexual identity, fantasy and
frustration that is the cornerstone of the
psychological under-pinning of 1950s, low-brow
stand-up one-liners, Prince’s Joke paintings
seem to locate each and every one of society’s
taboos and systematically transgress them one by
one.
“Can You Imagine”,
the earlier of the two works, fuses a flat, more
conceptually Catholic, understated style of
text—a canary yellow silkscreen—onto a cool,
monochromatic sea-blue ground of acrylic paint.
RICHARD PRINCE
My Girlfriend, 2005
Acrylic and paper collage on canvas in two
joined panels
92 by 72 inches
Est.: $600,000-$800,000
Realized: $662,500
SOTHEBY'S, N.Y., "Contemporary Art Evening
Auction", N08550
May 12, 2009
Lot #44
Illustration:
SOTHEBY'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Compared to the
nervy, chromatic ecstasies of the 2005 “My
Girlfriend”, with its paper collaged, hand-made
letters and eerily obfuscated background
reminiscent of Jasper Johns’s flags, targets,
numbers and maps, the more cerebral, minimal
painting of “Can You Imagine” is a tour de force
within Prince’s oeuvre and could be said to
reference the color field paintings of the
greats like Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt and
early Frank Stella.
With a pre-sale
estimate of $600K-$800K, the rarer, “Can You
Imagine” from 1989, soared to $1.4 million. The
later, more gestural and color-charged work from
2005 realized $662K.
Christie’s
In auction house
parlance, “well-timed” deaths have always been
an important formula in attracting sought-after
works to the block.
London-based
Christie’s, owned by the French billionaire
Francois Pinault, faired better than the
publicly traded Sotheby’s this time out
partially because early on they were able to
secure nineteen lots for their evening sale from
the storied collection of Betty Freeman, a
leading patron of contemporary music and an
early supporter of Sam Francis, Clyfford Still
and Dan Flavin.
The estate’s
impressive property also acted as a magnetic
sales tool in attracting other consignors to the
sale.
With pre-sale
estimates of $23 million to $37 million, the
Freeman collection alone generated $31.6 million
in sales buoying the night’s total to $93
million. Thirty out of the 49 lots that sold
reached the $1 million mark—twice that of
Sotheby’s—and more than 90% of the 54 lots
offered during the Christie’s sale found
buyers.
Like Sotheby’s
however, the evening’s figures paled when
compared to last spring’s mammoth total of $348
million.
DAVID HOCKNEY
Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966-1967
Diptych--acrylic on canvas
72 by 144 inches
Est.: $6,000,000-$10,000,000
Realized: $7,922,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", #2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #14
Illustration:
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
*WORLD RECORD FOR
THE ARTIST AT AUCTION
“Beverly Hills
Housewife”, from 1966-1967—David Hockney’s
portrait of Ms. Freeman standing in the patio of
her well-appointed, modernist mansion—secured
the number one lot at the evening sale at
Christie’s.
The artist’s homage
to this luminary of the Los Angeles cultural
landscape also won the top spot of the entire
spring contemporary art season, bringing in a
cool $7.9 million.
Described by the
house as a “perfect timeless tribute to the
philanthropist”, it is also a potent realization
of the artist’s preoccupation with the rarified
west coast lifestyle that he had found in
magazines and the movies and in the gay novels
of John Rechy.
The six foot high
by twelve foot wide acrylic diptych explored not
only the dazzling light and affluent existence
of the Freeman’s sun-drenched Californian home,
it also served as a template for Hockney’s
increasing obsession with the flatness of the
picture plane and of his allied fascination with
the uninflected, anonymous surface of the
photograph.
Photography for
Hockney was a way to work outside the canons of
European art and pioneer a new way of depicting
subject matter.
Hockney proclaimed
the greater “reality” of the camera and tried to
create a new vocabulary for art by reducing the
sense of artistic intrusion to a minimum. He
attacked the falsity of surfaces and applauded
looking at the world with the aid of science and
technology and he tried to recreate the look of
photography in his paintings.
“Beverly Hills
Housewife” became a painting about the facts of
daily life as if by themselves they stated some
enormous truth.
The trimming away
of inessentials turned out to be the perfect
metaphor for the ‘new’ conservative times in the
marketplace and the painting—executed when the
artist was only 29 years old—shattered his
previous record of $5.4 million set back in June
of 2006 at Sotheby’s in London.
RICHARD DIEBENKORN
Ocean Park No. 117, 1979
Oil, graphite and charcoal on canvas
45 by 45 inches
Est.: $4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized: $6,578,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", #2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #29
Illustration:
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
”Ocean Park No.
117”, a three ¾ foot by three ¾ foot abstract
Richard Diebenkorn oil, graphite and charcoal on
canvas from 1979 secured the number two spot in
the house’s top ten at $6.6 million, making it a
fine foil to the ‘photographic’ portrayal of the
perfect American idyll in Hockney’s west coast
composition.
A hyper-perfect
example of the body of work which the artist
produced between the years 1967 and 1987
entitled “Ocean Park”, Diebenkorn’s simple yet
shimmering arrangement of yellows and blues
punctuated by a palette of contrasting pinks and
greens and orange coalesce in elegant bands of
color to create the artist’s trademark
“mysterious transparencies” that make up the
unique pictorial language that secured
Diebenkorn’s status as a key figure in Twentieth
Century art.
Tipping a hat to
Cezanne’s collapse and juxtaposition of
foreground and background, Matisse’s chromatic
brilliance and organization of space within
geographic scaffolds, and Mondrian’s
relentlessly logical geometric reduction, “Ocean
Park No. 117” represents a consolidation of
these achievements and more.
Classic, safe and
blue-chip, the painting hammered near the high
end of its pre-sale estimate, nearly toppling
the artist’s record of $6.8 million set by
Christie’s in the spring of 2007.
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Frolic, 1977
Oil and magna on canvas
80 1/8 by 66 1/8 inches
Est.: $4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized: $6,018,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", #2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #6
Illustration:
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
It was a big night
for Roy Lichtenstein. All three of his oil and
magna on canvas paintings sold for a combined
total of $9.7 million.
“Frolic”, a Pop Art
homage to both Picasso’s 1932 painting “Bather
With Beach Ball” and his own work from 1961
entitled “Girl With Ball”, the painting is a
playful rampage through the history of art.
Sold in the middle
of its estimate for $6 million, the six ½ foot
by five ½ foot work depicting a blonde woman
dancing across the beach employs references to
the Surrealist Hans Arp—the second figure
recalls the artist’s biomorphic abstractions—and
points an ironic finger to the comics by
cleverly placing an anchor in the background.
Popeye is recalled as much as the beach.
The cover lot on
Christie’s catalog, Freeman’s “Frolic”, is the
perfect cross-germination of Lichtenstein’s own
idiosyncratic style of hand painting made to
mimic the appearance of print.
With a playful
conceptual twist, the oil and magna on canvas
reduces all the elements in the painting to the
level of cliché.
Lichtenstein is at
the top of his game here disassembling the way
we see, manipulating the viewer’s reactions, and
commenting on the way that artists communicate.
Larry Gagosian’s
paddle was seen picking up the painting, beating
out two other bidders on the phone.
PETER DOIG
Night Fishing, 1993
Oil on canvas
79 by 98 1/4 inches
Est.: $3,000,000-$4,000,000
Realized: $4,674,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", #2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #27
Illustration:
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Since his
retrospective at Tate Britain in London last
summer, Peter Doig’s mysterious and
other-worldly oil on canvas works have gained in
popularity. The depiction of a lone fishing
boat at dusk is arguably the most celebrated
theme in the artist’s oeuvre.
Cast against a vast
expanse of water and framed by a curiously
depth-less vision of a mountainous silhouette,
the large-scale “Night Fishing” from 1993 is a
figurative reality pushed to the brink of
abstraction.
Critics have
suggested that the artist’s densely-detailed
work combines the influences of the great
Impressionist masters, most particularly Monet,
with the abstract painterly processes of Mark
Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
Both in its subject
matter and execution, “Night Fishing” can also
be seen in the vein of the great German Romantic
painters of the 19th century, such as Caspar
David Friedrich.
One of fourteen
lots that found buyers that exceeded its
pre-sale high estimate, the six ½ foot by eight
¼ foot oil sold to Victoria Gelfand from the
Gagosian Gallery for $4.7 million.
ANDY WARHOL
The Last Supper (Camel/57), 1986
Synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas
118 by 348 inches
Est.: $4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized: $4,002,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", #2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #44
Illustration:
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD., 2009
Despite the steep
contraction in some segments of the contemporary
art market, Andy Warhol is still bubbling. The
artist was the top performer at the New York
spring auctions.
Warhol’s one/two
punch—interest in the shallowness and apparent
objectivity of the photographic image and his
infatuation in the power of the media to
manipulate emotion—has made him the undisputed
giant of post-war art.
It is a strange
coincidence that Alexander Iolas, —who was an
early champion of Warhol’s work having arranged
his first solo exhibition—commissioned what
turned out to be among the artist’s final works
of art.
The “Last Supper”
paintings—executed just months before he died on
Feb. 24th, 1987 of a botched routine gall
bladder operation—were painted over a period of
one year using a cheap, common, reproduction of
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” as the study
for his paintings. He also bought a tacky,
three-dimensional version for inspiration.
Andy created a
whole group of hand-painted “Last Supper”
paintings and various details. To work on these
large hand-painted canvases—he also made
silkscreen versions both large and small—he
would staple the canvas on the wall on the top
floor of his East 33rd Street studio and then
climb up a ladder to paint with the use of a
projector.
“The Last Supper
(Camel/57)” is at once religious and
sacrilegious, reverent and brazenly commercial.
The presence of the number 57 and an image of a
camel logo on the surface presents the viewer
with a colossal enigma. Might the work be an
attack on organized religion, or is it the
practicing worshipper Warhol—who attended church
on a regular basis—breathing new life into
contemporary religious painting?
This monumental
picture—almost ten foot high by thirty foot
long—is executed on an industrial scale, with an
industrial look, and yet, has a painting
technique that paradoxically reveals the traces
of brushwork, of the artist’s touch.
Despite its
enormous size, the painting sold to an anonymous
buyer for $4 million—a bargain at $½ million
below the low pre-sale minimum estimate.
RICHARD PRINCE
Untitled (Upstate), 2007
Bronze
Table: 82 1/2 by 58 1/4 by 28 1/2 inches
Hoop: 142 by 48 by 31 inches
Est.: $1,000,000-$1,500,000
Realized: $1,082,500
CHRISTIE'S, N.Y., "Post-War & Contemporary Art
Evening Sale", 2167
May 13, 2009
Lot #46
Illustration: CHRISTIE'S
IMAGES LTD., 2009
Changing course
from his infamous pictures of pictures where the
artist re-photographs found advertising images
from magazines, Richard Prince—the ultimate
image cannibal—appropriated his own 1995-1999
photographic series into an incongruous, surreal
bronze sculpture.
The original
photographic series “Untitled (Upstate)”, from
which the sculpture is co-opted, documents and
re-contextualizes the downscale markers of
social class and suburban existence that seems
to now dominate American cultural life around
Prince’s house in upstate New York.
These identity
markings of a once economically optimistic
middle America—rickety basketball hoops in
driveways, inexpensive out-of-ground swimming
pools, strippers with jeans and tattoos, and
garages sitting in overgrown fields—now move
from the bottom rung of a cultural class system
that places theme parks and tabloid TV above
big-ticket cultural forms like opera and serious
theatre from the periphery of upscale
consciousness to the rarefied domain of the art
gallery.
A lone basketball
pole with hoop and a ‘distressed’ picnic table
are magically ‘fused together’ in an incongruous
pairing that looks at once both comedic and
forlorn.
The pairing appears
impractical—flying balls would damage the food
and make sitting on the benches of the picnic
table hazardous—but on an allegorical level,
“Untitled (Upstate)” is a precisely calculated
intellectual endeavor holding us in thrall of
its theatrics of transgression.
Might this not be a
form of political theatre in which a huge
phallus (the basketball ‘pole’) penetrates a
picnic table (a focal point in the back yard
often with a ‘hole’ in the middle to hold an
umbrella) symbolically providing a home for the
pleasures of ‘low culture’ sex but also acting
as a form of rebellion, with its dedication to
crossing boundaries and violating social
strictures?
Conduct that is
considered contrary to community standards of
justice, honesty or good morals is elevated from
the nadir of the social structure to the “top”
where serious critical interpretation is taken
for granted.
The very concept of
“bad taste” takes a hard right turn. With
Richard Prince, upward aspirations now look like
so much nostalgia for earlier times.
Phillips de Pury &
Co.
The already
beleaguered, much-diminished Phillips de Pury &
Co. (now owned by the Russian luxury distributor
Mercury) has little capital and clout to win big
contemporary art estates away from the duopoly
of Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and they struggled
this season with an evening tally of $7.7
million, far below its $12 million low
estimate.
Last May saw the
boutique house navigate a different planet—the
urbane Simon de Pury & Co. enjoyed a vigorous
$59 million in sales.
This season took
its toll. Only thirty-one of the evening’s 43
works found buyers for a 72 percent by lot sell
through, and the twelve lots that were passed,
including what was to be the evening’s star
lot—Robert Gober’s six-foot-eight-inch tall
version of a Farina Hot Wheat Cereal box—fell by
the wayside. Percentage sold by value was a
disappointing 57%.
PHILIP GUSTON
Anxiety, 1975
Oil on canvas
57 1/2 by 80 1/4 inches
Est.: $1,000,000-$1,500,000
Realized: $1,082,500
Phillips de Pury & Co., "Contemporary Art Part
1",
NY010209
May 14, 2009
lot #22
Illustration:
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO. IMAGES LTD., 2009
The evening’s top
seller at $1.1 million was Philip Guston’s oil
on canvas of a telephone and an egg sandwich.
Entitled “Anxiety” from 1975, the five foot by
six ½ foot oil on canvas represents potent
symbols for the artist that take on a
self-portrait quality.
Developed when he
was an acclaimed star of the
Abstract-Expressionists alongside Willem de
Kooning and Mark Rothko, and before
transitioning into a figurative artist, Guston’s
famed creamy brushstroke did not disappoint.
Like thick butter
applied to a hard surface with each stroke
subtly squeezed out at its edges, Guston’s
paintings create a “micro-sculptural” effect to
the eye setting off an ocean of feelings from
the viewer that don’t ever come in the same
configuration.
The painting
undertakes a journey that is as much
metaphysical as literal—a trip in more than one
sense.
CECILY BROWN
Suddenly Last Summer, 1999
Oil in linen
100 by 110 1/4 inches
Est.: $600,000-$800,000
Realized: $662,500
Phillips de Pury & Co., Contemporary Art Part 1,
NY010209
May 14, 2009
Lot #24
Illustration:
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO. IMAGES LTD., 2009
Like Guston’s
“Anxiety”, Cecily Brown’s “Suddenly Last
Summer”, from 1999, works at the hallucinatory
edge between figural representation and gestural
abstraction.
Odd little totems
and fetishes swirl and embed themselves in this
flickering, strikingly painterly work.
Suffusing her marks with associative
suggestivity, Brown translates the oil on linen
work onto a sprawling, titillating landscape of
flesh literally oozing sex.
An unabashedly
erotic take on the Ab-Ex exploration of
abstraction and figuration, Brown devours the
sexual power and energy typically associated
with the male-dominated movement and exaggerates
it in a distinctly female arena.
Two telephone
bidders went after this virtual peep show of a
painting, ultimately garnering $662K with
premiums, $50K below the pre-sale low estimate.
MARK TANSEY
Reader, 1990
Oil on canvas
77 by 49 3/4 inches
Est.: $500,000-$700,000
Realized: $482,500
Phillips de Pury & Co., Contemporary Art Part 1,
NY010209
May 14, 2009
Lot #38
Illustration:
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO. IMAGES LTD., 2009
Mark Tansey
utilizes a flat, descriptive style and depicts
primarily landscapes, naturalistic figures in
arrested movement and domestic interiors.
Monochromatic in
palette, the paintings exude a flavor of the
old-fashioned, drawing upon sepia-toned
photographs, American plein-air paintings and
grisaille painting of the 15th century.
Tansey’s
inspiration for the Phillips oil on canvas is
more than likely a series of late landscape
paintings of caves by the French realist painter
Gustave Courbet.
In “Reader”, Tansey
has appropriated the subject matter from Courbet
but has deliberately rendered the dark and
mysterious cave inaccessible. Essentially the
artist has blocked off “the source”—the symbol
of creativity and of female sexuality—by a dense
layer of stenciled text by the French
post-modern thinker Jacques Derrida.
The philosopher,
who explained the world as a totality of
meanings, would have approved how the artist has
cleverly overprinted and made obscure, to create
the textures of the landscape.
The six ½ foot by
four ½ foot work netted $483K with premium,
$100K below its pre-sale low minimum but enough
to land third out of the top ten at the sale.
SHERRIE LEVINE
Buddha, 1996
Cast bronze
12 1/4 by 17 by 16 inches
This work is from an edition of six
Est.: $150,000-$200,000
Realized: $446,500
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO., "Contemporary Art Part
1", NY010209
May 14, 2009
Lot #9
Illustration:
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO. IMAGES LTD., 2009
The work of Sherrie
Levine is rich in art historical reference with
her use of image appropriation. By recycling
imagery of another artist, Levine creates at
once a work existing as an extension of familial
relationships and as a fresh, new piece in
itself.
“Buddha” from 1996,
(from an edition of six), is the artist’s homage
to Marcel Duchamp’s most famous readymade,
“Fountain”, a porcelain urinal he entered in an
exhibition in 1917. Levine’s take on the urinal
is not a simple replica honoring Duchamp’s
piece, but with its luscious shining bronze
surface, it deliberately accentuates the sensual
qualities that Duchamp denied in his own work.
The title
“Buddha”—itself a reference to the shape of a
Buddha statue that the urinal resembles—was the
only lot of the evening that realized more than
double its high estimate.
Reportedly sold by
Blake Byrne, a Los Angeles collector and board
member of the Museum of Contemporary Art there,
the work can be interpreted as an important
feminist inroad to the male canon of art
history. It generated the most excitement of
the evening. It sold for $446K.
JAMES ROSENQUIST
Untitled #1 (Neiman Marcus), 2002
Oil on linen laid on board
70 by 65 inches
Est.: $250,000-$350,000
Realized: $422,500
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO., "Contemporary Art Part
1", NY010209
May 14, 2009
Lot #20
Illustration:
PHILLIPS de PURY & CO. IMAGES LTD., 2009
As a leader in the
American Pop art movement in the early 1960s,
alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and
Claes Oldenberg, James Rosenquist drew on the
iconography of advertising and the mass media to
conjure a sense of contemporary life and the
political tenor of the times.
In “Untitled #1
(Neiman Marcus)”, 2002, from his “Speed of
Light” series, the artist taps into his
background of painting larger-than-life
billboard signs and its rich vocabulary of
commodity images to create a dynamic composition
that becomes an exercise in perception,
challenging the eye to take it all in.
Done without the
aid of computers, the “Speed of Light” series
takes its name from Einstein’s theory of
relativity and articulates the artist’s
perspective on experience and the passage of
time.
According to
Rosenquist, one spectator sees an event
differently from another spectator who is
traveling at the speed of light. The six foot by
five ½ foot oil on linen, hammered at the high
end of the pre-sale estimate. Art advisor and
private dealer Kim Heirston walked away with one
of the gems of the spring season paying $422K
with buyer’s premium.
Re-Cap
Price consciousness
is now a priority, but the appetite for classic,
exceptionally rare works from iconic artistic
careers still remains strong.
Forecasters predict
a prolonged period of weakened demand, but it is
rumored that private sales activity in the back
rooms of the auction houses are doing much
better where, free from the embarrassment of a
potential “buy-in” at the block that could
damage the provenance of a work of art, sales
have doubled.
If there is an
upside to the cratering economy it’s that art
that once seemed out of reach is now more
available because of changing fortunes.
PLEASE NOTE:
Thank you to
www.artnet.com for extending their Price
Database to track prices on some of the works of
art referenced in this article.
RESERVES & BUY-INS:
All lots from all
sales are offered subject to a ”RESERVE”, which
is the confidential minimum price below which
the lot will not be sold. The reserve cannot
exceed the low estimate printed in the catalogue
or on-line. If the auctioneer decides that any
bid is below the reserve of the article offered,
he may invent bids up to the reserve, after
which he has to find a real bidder. The
auctioneer may reject the same and withdraw the
article from sale if the highest bidder is below
the reserve of the article offered. The
withdrawal is accompanied with the sound of the
gavel and the auctioneer saying “PASS” as the
hammer goes down on the article. Passed items
are also referred to as “BUY-INS”, and appear as
missing lot numbers on the results page
published by the house after the sale.
HAMMER PRICE,
BUYER’S PREMIUM and ESTIMATES:
For lots that are
sold, the last price for the lot as announced by
the auctioneer is the “HAMMER PRICE”.
Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury & Co.
charge a premium to the buyer on the final bid
price on each lot sold. The “BUYER’S PREMIUM”
is 25% of the hammer price up to and including
$50,000, 20% of any amount in excess of $50,000
up to and including $1,000,000, and 12% of any
amount in excess of $1,000,000. Prices in the
“TOP 30” below include the buyer’s premium.
“ESTIMATES” do not reflect the buyer’s premium.
Estimates of the selling price might reflect
vendors’ expectations which might be too high or
reflect an auction house’s strategy to publish
unrealistically low figures to attract potential
buyers. In most cases, the estimates reflect
buyers’ and sellers’ expectations and/or prices
realized from previously recorded transactions.
Either way, auction house published low/high
estimates should not be relied upon as a
statement of the price at which the item will
sell or its value for any other purpose.
Top 30
Contemporary Art -
Spring / New York / 2009
1) DAVID HOCKNEY
Beverly Hills
Housewife, 1966-1967
Diptych-Acrylic on
canvas
Overall: 72 by 144
inches
Est.:
$6,000,000-$10,000,000
Realized:
$7,922,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #14
*WORLD AUCTION
RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
2) RICHARD
DIEBENKORN
Ocean Park No. 117,
1979
Oil, graphite and
charcoal on canvas
45 by 45 inches
Est.:
$4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized:
$6,578,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #29
3) ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Frolic, 1977
Oil and magna on
canvas
80 1/8 by 66 1/8
inch
Est.:
$4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized:
$6,018,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #6
4) JEAN-MICHEL
BASQUIAT
Mater, 1982
Acrylic and
oilstick on canvas
72 by 84 inches
Est.:
$5,000,000-$7,000,000
Realized:
$5,850,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #41
5) JEFF KOONS
Baroque Egg with
Bow (Turquoise/Magenta), 1994-2008
High-chromium
stainless steel with transparent color coating
83 ½ by 77 ½ by 60
inches
Edition: one of
five versions each uniquely colored Est.:
$6,000,000-$8,000,000
Realized:
$5,458,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.,
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #9
6) PETER DOIG
Night Fishing, 1993
Oil on canvas
79 by 98 ¼ inches
Est.:
$3,000,000-$4,000,000
Realized:
$4,674,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #27
7) MARTIN
KIPPENBERGER
Untitled, 1988
Oil on canvas
94 ½ by 78 ¾ inches
Est.:
$3,500,000-$4,500,000
Realized:
$4,114,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #7
*WORLD AUCTION
RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
8) ANDY WARHOL
The Last Supper
(Camel/57), 1986
Synthetic polymer
and silkscreen ink on canvas
118 by 348 inches
Est.:
$4,000,000-$6,000,000
Realized:
$4,002,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #44
9) SAM FRANCIS
Grey, 1954
Oil on canvas
119 by 75 ¾ inches
Est.:
$2,000,000-$3,000,000
Realized:
$3,666,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #12
10) WILLEM DE
KOONING
Woman, 1953
Oil, charcoal, wax
crayon and graphite on paper laid down on canvas
24 by 18 ¾ inches
Est.:
$1,400,000-$1,800,000
Realized:
$3,666,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #31
11) JEAN-MICHEL
BASQUIAT
Red Man One, 1982
Acrylic, oilstick,
and paper collage laid down on canvas mounted on
wood supports
76 by 47 ¾ inches
Est.:
$3,000,000-$5,000,000
Realized:
$3,554,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”, May 12, 2009
Lot #23
12) ALEXANDER
CALDER
Ebony Sticks in
Semi-Circle, 1934
Wood, steel, and
string standing mobile
54 ½ by 44 by 27
inches
Est.:
$1,000,000-$1,500,000
Realized:
$3,498,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #15
13) ANDY WARHOL
Gun, 1981-1982
Synthetic polymer
and silkscreen ink on canvas
70 by 90 inches
Est.:
$2,200,000-$2,800,000
Realized:
$3,106,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #23
14) ALEXANDER
CALDER
Untitled, circa
1943
Wall relief—painted
and unpainted wood and wire
28 by 16 by 11
inches
Est.:
$1,200,000-$1,800,000
Realized:
$2,826,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #28
15) ANDY WARHOL
Brigitte Bardot,
1974
Synthetic polymer
and silkscreen inks on canvas
47 by 47 ½ inches
Est.:
$2,500,000-$3,500,000
Realized:
$2,770,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale; May
13, 2009
Lot #48
16) JEFF KOONS
Beach House, 2003
Oil on canvas
102 by 138 inches
Est.:
$1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized:
$2,658,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #25
2-WAY TIE
17) PIERO MANZONI
Achrome, 1958-1959
Kaolin on canvas
39 1/3 by 29 ½
inches
Est.:
$1,800,000-$2,200,000
Realized:
$2,602,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #38
17) DAVID SMITH
Large Circle (Voltri),
1962
Welded steel
50 by 12 by 9 ½
inch
Est.:
$2,500,000-$3,500,000
Realized:
$2,602,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”, May 12, 2009
Lot #19
18) JEFF KOONS
Jim Beam—J.B.
Turner Engine, 1986
Stainless steel and
bourbon
17 ¼ by 6 ¾ by 11
inches
Edition: this work
is an AP from an edition of three plus one AP
Est.:
$700,000-$1,000,000
Realized:
$2,322,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #21
19) CLAES OLDENBURG
Typewriter Eraser,
1976
Painted aluminum,
stainless steel, ferroconcrete and bronze
89 ½ by 80 by 70
inches
Edition: this work
is number three from an edition of three (‘1/3’
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, ‘2/3’ Nasher
Collection)
Est.:
$1,400,000-$1,800,000
Realized:
$2,210,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #10
*WORLD AUCTION
RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
20) ANDY WARHOL
Portrait of Man
Ray, 1974
Synthetic polymer,
acrylic and silkscreen inks on canvas
78 ½ by 95 ¾ inches
Est.:
$2,000,000-$4,000,000
Realized:
$2,098,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #9
2-WAY TIE
21) ALEXANDER
CALDER
Gypsophilia on
Black Skirt, 1950
Standing
mobile—painted sheet metal and wire
31 by 37 by 9
inches
Est.:
$600,000-$900,000
Realized:
$1,986,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #13
21) ROY
LICHTENSTEIN
Still Life with
Cash Box, 1976
Oil and magna on
canvas
70 1/8 by 54 1/8;
Est.:
$2,000,000-$3,000,000
Realized:
$1,986,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #19
3-WAY TIE
22) JOHN BALDESSARI
Painting for Kubler,
1966-1968
Acrylic on canvas
67 7/8 by 56 ½
inches
Est.:
$1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized:
$1,874,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #22
22) ERIC FISCHL
Dog Days, 1983
Diptych—Oil on
canvas
Overall: 84 by 168
inches
Est.:
$800,000-$1,200,000
Realized:
$1,874,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #40
22) CHRISTOPHER
WOOL
Untitled (P105),
1989
Alkyd and acrylic
on aluminum
95 ¼ by 63 ½ inches
Est.:
$1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized:
$1,874,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #3
*WORLD AUCTION
RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
23) LUCIO FONTANA
Concetto spaziale,
natura, 1959-1960
Terracotta
23 ½ by 26 1/3
inches
Est.:
$1,200,000-$1,800,000
Realized:
$1,818,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”
May 13, 2009
Lot #37
3-WAY TIE
24) JEAN DUBUFFET
Corps de dame, la
rose incarnate, 1950
Oil on canvas
46 by 35 ½ inches
Est.:
$700,000-$1,000,000
Realized:
$1,762,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #36
24) GERHARD
RICHTER,
Abstraktes Bild,
1984
Oil on canvas
79 by 63 1/8 inches
Est.:
$1,800,000-$2,500,000
Realized:
$1,762,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #29
24) ANDY WARHOL
Mona Lisa, 1979
Acrylic and
silkscreen ink on canvas
25 by 20 inches
Est.:
$1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized:
$1,762,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #22
25) ANDY WARHOL
Camouflage, 1986
Synthetic polymer
print and silkscreen on canvas
80 by 400 inches
Est.:
$1,800,000-$2,500,000
Realized:
$1,706,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #39
2-WAY TIE
26) ROY
LICHTENSTEIN
Mirror #3, 1971
Oil and magna on
canvas
60 by 48 inches
Est.:
$1,800,000-$2,500,000
Realized:
$1,650,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #17
26) MARK ROTHKO
Black, Red-Brown on
Violet, 1969
Acrylic on paper
mounted on panel
39 by 25 ½ inches
Est.:
$1,500,000-$2,000,000
Realized:
$1,650,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May 12, 2009
Lot #16
27) RICHARD PRINCE
Can You Imagine,
1989
Acrylic and
silkscreen on canvas
75 by 58 inches
Est.:
$600,000-$800,000
Realized:
$1,370,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #35
2-WAY TIE
28) AGNES MARTIN
Love and Goodness,
2000
Acrylic and
graphite on canvas
60 by 60 inches
Est.:
$1,000,000-$1,500,000
Realized:
$1,314,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #39
28) GERHARD RICHTER
Mirror Painting
(Blood Red), 1991
Pigment on glass
82 5/8 by 68 7/8
inches
Est.:
$600,000-$800,000
Realized:
$1,314,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #25
4-WAY TIE
29) CECILY BROWN
Girls Eating Birds,
2004
Oil on canvas in
three parts
Overall: 77 by 165
inches; Each: 77 by 55 inches
Est.:
$700,000-$900,000
Realized:
$1,202,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #47
29) HANS HOFMANN
Wild Vine, 1961
Oil on canvas
72 by 60 inches
Est.:
$600,000-$800,000
Realized:
$1,202,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”; May
13, 2009
Lot #30
29) JOAN MITCHELL
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas
49 ¾ by 43 inches
Est.:
$1,200,000-$1,800,000
Realized:
$1,202,500
SOTHEBY’S, N.Y.;
“Contemporary Art Evening Auction”; May 12, 2009
Lot #17.
29) WAYNE THIEBAUD
Lipsticks, 1964
Oil on canvas
12 by 9 inches
Est.:
$800,000-$1,200,000
Realized:
$1,202,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”, May
13, 2009
Lot #26
2-WAY TIE
30) ALEXANDER
CALDER
Seven Black on
Black, 1956
Standing
mobile—painted sheet metal and wire
37 ½ by 55 by 14
inches
Est.:
$400,000-$600,000
Realized:
$1,142,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale”, May
13, 2009
Lot #35
30) ANDY WARHOL
Four Marilyns
(Reversal Series), 1986
Synthetic polymer
and silkscreen ink on canvas
36 by 28 1/8 inches
Est.:
$600,000-$800,000
Realized:
$1,142,500
CHRISTIE’S, N.Y.;
“Post-War & Contemporary Art Morning Session”,
May 14, 2009
Lot #166
Top 15
Post-War/Contemporary Art Artists
[Spring 2009 /
Postwar and Contemporary Sales]
1) Andy Warhol
2) Alexander Calder
3) Jeff Koons
4) Roy Lichtenstein
5) Jean-Michel
Basquiat
6) David Hockney
7) Richard
Diebenkorn
8) Sam Francis
9) Martin
Kippenberger
10) Peter Doig
11) Willem de
Kooning
12) Richard Prince
13) Gerhard Richter
14) Dan Flavin
15) Cy Twombly
Spring 2008 Versus
Spring 2009
Post-War &
Contemporary Art Evening Sales
Spring 2008
$954,712,125
evening & day sales
combined
Spring 2009
$213,302,875
evening & day sales
combined
Sotheby’s
Spring 2008 /
$362,037,000
73 lots sold
55 over $1M
8-8 figures
[$469,807,775
evening & day sales combined]
Spring 2009 /
$47,033,500
39 lots sold
14 over $1M
0-8 figures
[$75,524,975
evening & day sales combined]
Christie’s
Spring 2008 /
$348,263,600
54 lots sold
46 over $1M
9-8 figures
[$414,011,950
evening & day sales combined]
Spring 2009 /
$93,734,500
49 lots sold
30 over $1M
0-8 figures
[$125,438,625
evening & day sales combined]
Phillips de Pury &
Co.
Spring 2008 /
$59,001,000
55 lots sold
15 over $1M
1-8 figures
[$70,892,400
evening & day sales combined]
Spring 2009 /
$7,752,500
31 lots sold
1 over $1M
0-8 figures
[$12,339,275
evening & day sales combined] |
