Dollars? Who Needs ’Em?

Courtesy Van de Weghe Fine Art

Van de Weghe Fine Art found a European buyer for Jean-Michel Basquiat's “The Dingoes That Park Their Brains with Their Gum” (1988) for $5.3 million.

Courtesy L&M Arts

L&M Arts sold a rather saccharine figurative work by TianBing Li, "Bataille derriere la table #2 (Battle behind the table #2)" (2008) for $195,000.

Damien Hirst Sol LeWitt Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Willem de Kooning Lucian Freud Roy Lichtenstein Jean-Michel Basquiat

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But all of the fair’s action wasn’t reserved for contemporary wares; two Pablo Picasso paintings from the 1960s sold at Madrid’s Elvira González gallery. Buste de Jeune Garcon and Nu Allonge et buste et home, both from 1964, sold to European clients for approximately €1 million and $2.5 million, respectively.

“I think there are sales,” said dealer Fernando Gonzalez, “But it’s not like last year.”

New York’s Richard Feigen would probably agree. Though much talked about and admired, a major and luscious 60-by-48-inch Willem de Kooning painting, Woman, from circa 1969–70 and priced at $15 million, was still available at the veteran dealer’s booth on opening day, much to his surprise. “Dealers have been making low-ball offers at half the asking price,” he said, “so they can make a big profit, but I doubt the owner is interested at that level.”

Perhaps Feigen’s somewhat out-of-the-way location, off the more heavily trafficked main drags of the blue-chip stands, had something to do with it. In any event, the painting ranks high in eye-candy stature.

Fellow New Yorker Christophe van de Weghe, however, fell more in the PaceWildenstein and Acquavella camp.

“I sold everything to the Europeans,” said the surprised dealer, including a life-size Duane Hanson Cowboy in bronze and polychromed with oil, mixed media, and accessories from 1984, for $550,000 — a work that had not sold when the gallery offered it at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.  

Van de Weghe also sold Roy Lichtenstein’s Imperfect Sculpture (1995), the last in an edition of six in stained cast iron and painted steel plates for $650,000, and, for $5.5 million, a small but glowing untitled Mark Rothko from 1968 in acrylic on paper and mounted on panel. And the superb late Basquiat The Dingoes That Park Their Brains with Their Gum (1988), in acrylic and oil stick, found a European buyer at $5.3 million.

The level of action, especially given the somewhat lower turnout, bodes well for next year. Imagine what could happen if the Americans decide to come back and give the Europeans a run for their money.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.