Art Basel 37: The Pace Report: Eight-Figure Sales and a High-Stakes Chess Match at PaceWildenstein

Agnes Martin Willem de Kooning John Chamberlain Contemporary Market Bruised but Resilient After London Sales London Contemporary Week Lurches Into Action at Phillips The Best of Basel Dollars? Who Needs ’Em? New Offices for Linda Pace Foundation

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The pair were huddled over an Isamu Noguchi interlocking and organic-shaped chess table with colored Plexi chess pieces that were designed by Noguchi in 1946. The Noguchi Foundation made a posthumous run of 10 of these chess tables and this one is the last availabe at $50,000.

Glimcher got trounced in fewer than 20 moves but didn't feel all that bad. "[Tyson] is going to buy the table," predicted Glimcher just as his colleague, Susan Dunne chimed in, "I just sold his painting here so he can afford it."

Dunne was referring to a Tyson from 2006, Operator Painting: Shells and Sheep, that sold for $100,000.

But that six-figure sale was peanuts compared to other deals racked up by the gallery, including Willem de Kooning's big and juicy 1976 Untitled XII that sold for "north of $10 million," according to Dunne.

ArtInfo heard from other sources that the de Kooning sold for $15 million, about the same price as another from the same period made last month at Sotheby's New York, flying past its high estimate.

"We got offered it right before we got to Basel," says Glimcher.

Referring to his father, Pace founder Arne Glimcher, the younger Glimcher noted, "Arne had a much tougher time selling it back in the 1980s" when late de Koonings were a hard sell, even at prices a tiny fraction of their current values.

The gallery also sold Agnes Martin's Untitled #9 from 2003 for $1.8 million, which according to Dunne "is a new price for a late Martin."

Other transactions included a postcard-size Mark Rothko, Study for Harvard Mural, from 1962 for $300,000; and The Guardian, Kiki Smith's near life-size bronze from 2005 for $150,000.

Michel Rovner's Document 1 from 2006, a unique handmade 'book' encased in a handsome vitrine, sold for $150,000.