Postwar & Contemporary Art

Postwar & Contemporary Art

Christie’s
587 lots offered
$331,422,600 sold total
9 percent unsold by value
7 percent unsold by lot

Sotheby's
83 lots offered
$362,037,000 sold total
13.2 percent unsold by value
12 percent unsold by lot 

Phillips de Pury & Company
64 lots offered
$59,001,000 sold total
8.1 percent unsold by value
14.1 percent unsold by lot 

Robert Rauschenberg Andy Warhol Pablo Picasso Mark Rothko Lucian Freud Roy Lichtenstein Francis Bacon Yves Klein

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The tightly edited May 13 sale at Christie’s contained 26 fewer lots than the Sotheby’s session, but its impressive mix of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art and Minimalism helped it achieve the house’s second-highest tally ever for a contemporary-art evening auction. The positive tone was set early on when Eva Hesse’s 12-inch-square Untitled, 1968, a grid in ink and graphite on paper (est. $800,000–1.2 million), sold to the San Francisco dealer Anthony Meier for $1,497,000. Similarly petite and subtly powerful, Carl Andre’s wood sculpture Fir Crankshaft Exercise, 1964 (est. $300–400,000), went for $577,000 to the New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch, who outbid the London collector Edward Lee.

The session contained a few particularly strong examples of Abstract Expressionism, led by Mark Rothko’s red and gold No. 15, 1952 (est. on request, about $40 million). The painting, which last sold at auction at Sotheby's New York in November 1999 for $11,002,500, shot to $50,441,000. But the star of the evening was undoubtedly Lucian Freud’s life-size 1995 portrait of a reclining, fleshy female nude, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (est. $25–35 million), which went to a phone bidder for a record $33,641,000, the highest price at auction for any living artist. The buyer was reportedly the 41-year-old Russian oligarch and multibillionaire Roman Abramovich, who until recently was known as a collector of late 19th-century Russian Impressionist works.

For the first time ever, real estate was included in the lineup. The architect Richard Neutra’s modernist Palm Springs icon, the Kaufmann House, 1946 (est. $15–25 million), obsessively restored by the sellers, sold for $16,841,000 to a telephone bidder who, according to a source at Christie’s, is Russian. But shortly after the auction, the contract was “terminated by the seller by reason of a breach of its terms by the buyer,” says a Christie’s spokesperson.

The highly anticipated and guaranteed Double Marlon, 1966, by Andy Warhol (est. on request, about $25–35 million), consigned by the London fashion magnate Peter Simon, was purchased by a telephone bidder for $32,521,000; when it last appeared on the block, put up by Charles Saatchi at Sotheby’s New York in November 1992—a rotten time in the art market—it brought just $935,000. Two lots later, Francis Bacon’s mini triptych Three Studies for Self-Portrait, 1976 (est. $25–35 million), fetched $28,041,000, also from a phone bidder. Remarkably, this work had most recently sold for just $5,168,000, at Sotheby’s New York in November 2005, at the outset of the current Bacon juggernaut, to the Seattle real estate developer Richard Hedreen.

Although the session offered few fireworks, eight artist records were set, including ones for Yves Klein and Takashi Murakami (both broken the next night at Sotheby’s) and for Richard Prince. The latter’s Man-Crazy Nurse #2, 2002 (est. $6–8 million), was bought for $7,433,000 by the New York dealer Christophe van de Weghe, who says that the American client he was bidding for had been willing “to go much higher.” Buzz and activity in the room halted when Lichtenstein’s Ball of Twine, 1963, widely considered to be overestimated at $14 million to $18 million, came up. The canvas, consigned by Peter Brant and reportedly carrying a hefty guarantee, was bought in after a phantom bid of $12 million, making it one of three lots that failed to sell that night. The artist’s later and more sensibly estimated Reflections on the Prom, 1990 (est. $3–5 million), fetched $8,777,000 from a phone bidder, who beat out the London dealer Daniela Luxembourg.

There was also a pricey casualty at Sotheby’s May 14 evening sale—Rothko’s Orange, Red, Yellow, 1956 (est. on request, in excess of $35 million), which had been guaranteed, failed to sell. Still, top-tier property achieved extraordinary results. Eighteen artist records were set, including one for Robert Rauschenberg, who died just two days before the sale; his 1963 silkscreen Overdrive (est. $10–15 million) sold for $14,601,000. A new high was also achieved for the Indian sensation Subodh Gupta, whose depiction of airport passengers, Saat Samunder Paar VII (“Across the Seven Seas”), 2003 (est. $500–700,000), was bought by a representative from London’s Hauser & Wirth for $825,000.