An "Abusivo" Evening at Christie’s

LONDON— Christie’s staged the highest-tally Post-War/Contemporary Art sale in Europe Wednesday evening, earning a whopping £74,072,800 ($147,256,726). It eclipsed the previous mark of £70,429,200 set at the same house in February, coming in only about a million pounds shy of its high estimate, £75 million.

Only 11 of the 101 lots failed to find buyers in a marathon, but often dull, two-and-a-half hour sale. Fifteen artist records were broken and 17 lots sold for more than a million pounds, while 42 topped the million-dollar mark. More than half of the evening’s lots carried financial guarantees, a calculated risk that paid off handsomely for the hard-charging auction house.

Unfortunately, it was a lousy evening for spectator sport, given the numbing number of lots on sale, as six separate and awkwardly choreographed clusters of private collections hit the block.

Some buyers were galled by the overload of property. “It’s a little bit unacceptable,” said New York trader Jose Mugrabi, who bought Andy Warhol’s Four-Foot Flowers (1964) for £2,596,000 ($5,160,848, est. £2.5-3.5 million), “and a little bit abusivo.” But the long evening didn’t crimp Mugrabi’s buying appetite or stamina—he nabbed two other Warhols and a Christopher Wool painting.

Despite the gripes, the contemporary art market continued to perform in near flawless fashion. The evening action resumes at Sotheby’s on Thursday.

Top Five Prices:

1. Lot 35, Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard (1992), sold for £7, 860,000 ($15,625,680, est. £4.5-5.5 million)

Freud’s standing and decidedly sober portrait of his close friend became the highest price for any living artist’s work in Europe and second only to Jasper Johns’s Figure 4 (1959), which sold for $17.4 million at Christie’s New York in May. The work easily eclipsed the previous Freud mark set in February 2005 at Christie’s London when Red-haired man in a chair (1962-63) sold for £4,152,000 ($7,703,153). Bernard, the late and noted picture editor and drinking pal of Freud, reportedly avoided modeling for the demanding artist for a long time, fearing it would be too laborious of an undertaking. But it turned out to be a very pleasant project, according to Bernard, with at least half the time filled with “a stream of good gossip, old song lyrics, and jokes.”

London dealer Ivor Braka tried one bid for the portrait but was quickly overtaken by an anonymous bidder who moments earlier nabbed lot 34, Peter Doig’s Figures in Trees (1997-98), for £1.08 million (est. £800,000-1.2 million). Both paintings were part of a larger trove of 20 British works sold by American collectors Elaine and Melvin Merians, which tallied £16,185,600 ($33,429,412).

2. Lot 60, Andy Warhol, Three Marilyns (1962), sold for £5,620,000 ($11,172,560, est. £5-7 million)

One of the Prince of Pop’s iconic figures, this skinny, vertical format composition of the screen goddess, executed in three serial repetitions and set against a turquoise background, is just 43 1/2 inches high and 9 3/8 inches wide. It was one of 16 Warhols offered during the epic evening, three of which failed to sell, shocking some observers who falsely believe Warhol is impregnable to ever-escalating and sky-high expectations.

A telephone bidder, identified by Christie’s as a private European buyer, was the only contender against its secret reserve, offering a hammer winning bid of £5 million before the buyer’s premium (20 percent of the first £500,000 and 12 percent thereafter) was added.

Overall, Europeans accounted for 37 percent of the lots sold, trailed by Americans at 27 percent, UK buyers at 25 percent, Asians at 10 percent, and Middle Eastern buyers at 1 percent.

3. Lot 40, Francis Bacon, Two Men Working in a Field (1971), sold for £5,060,000 ($10,059,280, est. £5-7 million)

Painted in 1971, the rare, outdoor setting of two muscular and impressively distorted men, bent over and raking away on an irrigated field, is full of art-historical associations. The late, great Bacon scholar David Sylvester made a reference to a Raphael cartoon housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was just around the corner from Bacon’s London studio. The artist used to stroll around those grand halls looking at great pictures.