Usual Boys and Girls Sell High at Sotheby’s

LONDON—The contemporary art market boomed at Sotheby’s on Wednesday evening in a marathon two-and-half hour sale, achieving a total of £94,701,550 ($188,853,831), just shy of its £96.6 million pre-sale high estimate.

Only four of the 75 lots offered failed to sell, translating to rates of 5 percent unsold by lot and 10.5 percent unsold by value.

Ten artist records were set, including for Marlene Dumas, who remains the most expensive living female artist, after her powerhouse depiction of streetwalkers, 1995's The Visitor (est. £800,000–1.2 million), fetched £3,177,250 ($6,336,072), smashing her previous mark of £1.8 million, set at Christie’s London in February 2005. New York private dealer Nancy Whyte was the underbidder.

Three works sold for over £5 million pounds, 27 for over £1 million, and 48 for over $1 million. The average lot price was £1.33 million, the firm’s highest ever in Europe in the category. In terms of the global breakdown of buyers, 49 percent were European, 39 percent were American, 3 percent were Asian, and 8 percent were other.

“I think the market is continuing its onward march, blissfully ignorant of all the turmoil in the financial markets,” said New York private dealer Christopher Eykyn. “It certainly hasn’t been a bad investment so far.”

Not surprisingly, the evening’s top lot was Francis Bacon’s small-scaled but potent Study for Head of George Dyer from 1967, which sold to a telephone bidder for £13,761,250 pounds ($27,442,685). The pre-sale estimate was in excess of £8 million, and the work was guaranteed. The seller acquired the work from Marlborough Gallery in London in March 1967 for £2,000, according to Gilbert Lloyd, head of Marlborough in London.

One of the evening’s few casualties was Bacon’s underwhelming Figure Turning from 1962 (est. £10–15 million), which was not guaranteed; the bidding flopped at £7.75 million.

Jean Michel Basquiat’s six-foot square painting Untitled (pecho oreja) from 1982–83, offered by the rock group U2, made £5,081,250 ($10,133,029) against an estimate of £4–6 million. The underbidder was New York art trader Jose Mugrabi.

Mugrabi was also the underbidder for Richard Prince’s Overseas Nurse from 2002–03, losing this time to fashion legend Valentino. The work, which carried a guarantee, sold for a record £4,241,250 ($8,457,901). Its estimate was £4–6 million.

A big part of Sotheby’s success came from the fresh and highly sought-after material from the collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs from Krefeld, Germany, which made a total of £18,983,000, double its high pre-sale estimate of £8.9 million. The entire collection was guaranteed.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.