Sotheby’s Contemporary Sale Smashes Records

Courtesy Sotheby's

Francis Bacon’s “Triptych, 1976" (unpublished estimate in the $70 million range) sold for $86,281,000, a record for the artist and the most expensive work of contemporary art ever sold at auction.

Photo by David Gursky

The view from the floor at last night's record setting auction.

Andy Warhol Mark Rothko Dan Flavin Tom Wesselmann Francis Bacon Yves Klein Takashi Murakami Jeff Koons

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The sale’s $362,037,000 total beat its $356,650,000 high estimate and exceeded the firm’s previous high-water mark for a contemporary sale, set at $315.9 million in November. Christie’s still holds the record for a contemporary sale, achieved last May when it made $384,654,400.

Eight works made more than $10 million each, 14 exceeded $5 million, and 55 made over a million. For number crunchers, that works out to an average lot price of $4,959,410. Eighteen artist records were set.

Only ten of the 83 lots failed to sell, though this included the magisterial Mark Rothko abstraction Orange, Red, Yellow from 1956 (unpublished estimate in the region of $35 million), which, in the low point of the evening, failed to elicit any interest. Sotheby’s, which had a financial stake in the painting, surely felt the pain most acutely. But that was an anomaly of an extraordinary evening.

A Glowing Start
Things got off to a glowing start with Dan Flavin’s iconic fluorescent sculpture ’Monument' for V. Tatlin from 1969 (est. $600–800,000), which sold to a telephone bidder for a record $1,553,000. New York private dealer Jay Cantor was the underbidder.

Sculpture proved a hot commodity throughout the marathon sale, with Jeff Koons’s wildly underestimated cherubs in porcelain, Naked, from 1988, (est. $1.5–2 million) streaking to $9,001,000. New York collector Aby Rosen and art trader Jose Mugrabi were part of a posse of underbidders.

Four lots later, the room exploded with another gush of money for My Lonesome Cowboy (est. $3–4 million), Takashi Murakami’s outrageous 1998 sculpture of an ejaculating youth, which sold to a telephone bidder for a record-shattering $15,161,000. New York dealer Philippe Segalot was the underbidder.

When the bidding reached $6 million, a shout of delight was heard in the salesroom; the voice belonged to the pony-tailed, white-leather-sneaker-clad artist himself, who watched the action from a skybox.

“Whether you like it or not,” Segalot later said of the work, “it is a masterpiece.”

The Lauffs Collection
Segalot later returned with a vengeance for the first offering from the much-heralded Helga and Walther Lauffs collection — Yves Klein’s stunning gold-leaf monochrome MG 9 from ca. 1962. Segalot outgunned a stubborn telephone bidder, driving the work to a record $23,561,000 (est. $6–8 million) and eclipsing the mark set at Christie’s New York in November 2000, when RE I made $6,716,000. That gigantic four-fold increase reflects the market’s current lust for masterpieces.

Segalot battled the same telephone bidder for the next lot, IKB I from 1960, another Klein monochrome from the Lauffs, this one comprised entirely of the artist’s patented shade of blue. Segalot won out at $17,401,000 (est. $5–7 million). Sources speculate that he was bidding for both Kleins on behalf of a billionaire client who had competed unsuccessfully for the Murakami sculpture earlier.

Segalot’s New York partner, Franck Giraud, joined in two lots later for another Lauffs icon, Piero Manzoni’s white and starkly minimal kaolin on folded canvas, Achrome from 1958 (est. $4.5–6.5 million), which shot to a record $10,121,000.

San Francisco dealer Anthony Meier was the underbidder. “When you go against somebody with the pockets that Franck Giraud was bidding for,” said Meier, “it’s pretty hard to compete.”

Also in great demand was Robert Smithson’s Alogon #3 (1967), a wall-mounted sculpture comprising 20 units of painted steel (est. $1.5–2 million), which shot to a record $4,297,500. The winning bidder was David Zwirner, who has his own interest in the Lauffs collection; his New York galleries David Zwirner and Zwirner & Wirth teamed up with Zurich and London's Hauser & Wirth to buy 155 works from the collection, a selection of which are on view in Chelsea. Jeffrey Deitch was the underbidder. The work eclipsed Smithson's previous record of $710,400, set at Christie’s New York in November 2005.

Pop art also sizzled, as was evident as Tom Wesselmann’s 1963 Great American Nude No. 48, a multimedia work including oil, collage, and a real-life radiator (est. $6–8 million), sold to a telephone bidder for a record $10,681,000.

This was another eye-popping jewel from the Lauffs, who, though listed among the world’s greatest art connoisseurs, simply gave Paul Wembers, a brilliant museum curator from Krefeld, Germany, carte blanche to assemble a cutting-edge postwar art collection.

All in all, 22 lots from the Lauffs collection made more than $96 million total, sailing past pre-sale expectations of $47.1–65.2 million. The entire collection came with an undisclosed financial guarantee from Sotheby’s, and the house surely made a bundle on the upside in return for their gamble. Several more works from the collection are scheduled to hit the block at Sotheby's later this year.

Bacon and the Last Supper
A billboard-scaled, 35-foot-long Andy Warhol canvas, Detail of the Last Supper (Christ 112 times) (1986) in yellow acrylic on black silkscreen (est. $10–15 million), found a new home, selling to uber Warhol trader Jose Mugrabi for a relatively modest $9,561,000.

But even 112 Christs were just a mild distraction to the epic telephone duel over the evening’s cover lot, Francis Bacon’s gold-and-glass-framed Triptych, 1976 (unpublished estimate in the $70 million range), which went to an anonymous European telephone bidder for a record $86,281,000.

The mythology-infused and intellectually complex composition, which replays some of Bacon’s favorite angst-ridden themes and crackles with his bravura painting technique, crushed his previous record, set at Sotheby’s last May when Qatar’s Al-Thani ruling family paid $52,680,000 for the artist’s Study from Innocent X.

The triptych now ranks as the fourth most expensive artwork ever to sell at auction and the most expensive in the contemporary category.

“Every single dollar is deserved,” said auctioneer and contemporary art head Tobias Meyer about the Bacon in a post-sale remark. “It’s one of the greatest paintings of the 20th century.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large for Art+Auction magazine. For more on the May sales, read his A+A Sales Preview, his pre-sale Overvalued/Undervalued column, and his report on Christie's postwar and contemporary sale earlier this week.