An Uneasy Artist and 6,136 Pills

An Uneasy Artist and 6,136 Pills

Top Five Prices

1. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait (1978)
£21,580,000
(est. £8-12 million)
Anonymous

2. Damien Hirst, Lullaby Spring (2002)
£9,652,000

(est. £3-4 million)

Anonymous

3. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warrior (1982)
£2,820,000
(est. £1.5-2 million)
Anonymous

4. Gerhard Richter, Teyde-Landschaft

(Teyde Landscape) (1971)
£2,596,00
(est. £1.4-1.8 million)
Gregor Muir

5. Lucio Fontana, Concetto Speziale, attese (1965)
£2,484,000
(est. £1.4-1.8 million)
Anonymous

Damien Hirst Andy Warhol Gerhard Richter Francis Bacon Jean-Michel Basquiat Tracey Emin Lucio Fontana The Week That Was (October 3 – 10, 2008)

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The total impressively exceeded the pre-sale high estimate by £16.4 million and perhaps, more importantly, just missed nicking archrival Christie’s record £74 million result on Wednesday evening with 35 fewer lots offered.

On top of those enviable statistics, Sotheby’s eclipsed its previous high for a European contemporary evening sale, set here in February, by a crushing £26.7 million. For the first time it had an average per-lot tally of more than a million pounds sterling.

Of the 66 lots sold, 15 exceeded one million pounds and 26 fetched more than a million dollars.

Eight artist records were broken and only six lots failed to sell. Three of these were by Andy Warhol, including a large “Dollar Sign” painting (90 by 70 inches) from 1981 that crashed and burned at £1.5 million. Fortunately for the Warhol market, this spurned work had a serious condition problem—an ironed-out crease in the canvas that was plainly visible.

“It was really a special night,” said Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art in Europe, “and it was thrilling to be part of it.”

The buoyant mood was primed by the rock-star-like appearance of Tracey Emin, cheerleading for the first five lots benefiting the NSPCC Therapeutic Services charity. Emin shouted for more bidding as Damien Hirst’s Beautiful Explosion of Vanity Painting (With Butterflies) (2007) sold to London dealer Jay Jopling of White Cube for £1,140,000 ($2,271,564).

Then Emin exited and the serious action began.


Top Five Prices

1. Lot 13, Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait (1978), sold for £21,580,000 ($43,000,308, est. £8-12 million)

The evening’s cover lot exceeded what were already great expectations, as the relatively late, full-length self-portrait of the artist seated triggered fevered bidding.

The biggest names in the art market barely had chances to get their paddles up as two determined phone bidders wore out the competition and then slugged it out in syncopated £250,000 increments. London jewelry magnate Lawrence Graff dropped out at £10,250,000, barely halfway through the ascent to Bacon’s second highest price at auction. That mark was set at Sotheby’s New York in May when Study from Innocent X (1962) fetched a record $52,680,000.

Still, Self-Portrait became the most expensive painting in a busy week of sales in London, easily beating out a Claude Monet Nympheas painting that earned £18.5 million on Tuesday night—further evidence that postwar art has eclipsed the once hallowed ground of the Impressionist and Modern.

It is believed Bacon painted fewer than 20 full-length self-portraits in his long career. He reportedly despised his own image, claiming he turned to self-portraits because, “people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself.”

The work, in which a lilac-colored background surrounds the seated artist, his leg crossed over the knee and left arm bent in an uneasily contemplative pose, went to an otherwise anonymous American private collector.

2. Lot 36, Damien Hirst, Lullaby Spring (2002), sold for £9,652,000 ($19,232,575, est. £3-4 million)

Call it diamond-encrusted skull mania or just plain market madness, but Hirst’s spectacular stainless steel medicine cabinet with 6,136 handmade pills became the most expensive work by a living artist. The bone-jarring price hurdled Jasper Johns’s mark at auction and ended Lucian Freud’s brief 24-hour run as Europe’s most expensive living artist.

Executed in 2002, Lullaby Spring is part of the classic themed suite of the four seasons. Unlike the almost drab Lullaby Winter that sold in May at Christie’s New York for a relatively paltry though record $7,432,000, this “lullaby” offers a rainbow of colors. Perhaps Lullaby Spring looked cheap compared to the reported £50 million price tag for Hirst’s much hyped For the Love of God, the platinum cast, bejeweled skull currently on guarded view at White Cube in Mason’s Yard. Or perhaps, as Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s auctioneer and contemporary head, said in a post-sale press conference, recent market intelligence of an otherwise unidentified Jeff Koons sculpture selling privately for $20 million may have boosted confidence in the Hirst market.

Bidding started at £2.3 million and quickly escalated as at least six telephone bidders battled it out. Super-dealer Larry Gagosian, cell phone nestled to his ear, came in at £5.4 million but quickly dropped out, though he continued kibitzing with his client on the phone and laughing boisterously. An anonymous telephone bidder outdueled another telephone contender at the hammer price of £8.6 million, before the buyer’s premium (20 percent up to and including £250,000 and 12 percent thereafter) was tacked on. The winning bid brought sustained applause from the standing-room-only crush of spectators.

In addition to Gagosian, other surprise underbidders included storied London banker Nathan Rothschild, who was in the room bidding with his son Jacob, and Alex Acquavella of New York's Acquavella Galleries.