Postwar & Contemporary Art

Christie’s

29 lots offered
£392,750 ($12.1 million)
sold total
49 percent unsold by value
21 percent unsold by lot

Phillips

53 lots offered
£4,250,750 ($6.1 million)
sold total
41.3 percent unsold by value
34 percent unsold by lot

Sotheby’s

27 lots offered
£17,879,250 ($25.8 million)
sold total
9.3 percent unsold by value
7.4 percent unsold by lot

Damien Hirst Bridget Riley Andy Warhol Mark Rothko Francis Bacon Lucio Fontana Keith Haring Jeff Koons

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With all but 2 of its 27 lots finding buyers, the svelte session at Sotheby’s on the 5th seemed to signal that the contemporary-art market is alive and kicking. The sale took in £17,879,250 ($25.8 million), with Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, 1961 (est. £5-7 million; $7.2-10.1 million), bringing £4,409,250 ($6.4 million), the top price in any of the contemporary sessions.

Large-scale photography retained its selling power. Veil IV, 2007, by Rashid Rana, more than doubled its high estimate, going for £313,250 ($452,000), and Andreas Gursky’s Monaco, 2006 (est. £400-600,000; $577-865,000), was snapped up by Stefan Ratibor, of the Gagosian Gallery, for £517,250 ($746,000). Ratibor also paid the second-highest price of the evening, laying out £2,841,250 ($4.1 million) for Jeff Koons’s wood sculpture Stacked, 1988 (est. £2.2-3.2 million; $3.7-4.6 million). The consignor, the Chicago collector Richard Cooper, realized a hefty return on the work, which he bought for $250,000 at Sotheby’s in 1997, before the Koons rocket took off.

As the evening’s most consistent underbidder, the New York dealer Jose Mugrabi lived up to his reputation for building artists’ markets without actually buying. Mugrabi was in the chase for the Fontana, two Warhols, a Keith Haring and a Damien Hirst consigned by Viktor Pinchuk. He did manage to close on one work: Zeng Fanzhi’s Untitled (Mask Series), 1998 (est. £300-400,000; $433-577,000), which he purchased for £601,250 ($867,000).

"Art is better than ever," says Mugrabi. "Is it better to give money to Madoff to disappear or give money to banks that close?"

Philip Hoffman, of London’s Fine Art Fund, was also seeking good investments. Among his prospects was Bridget Riley’s rare 1974 painting Gala, (est. £600-800,000; $865,300-1.2 million), which he believed "could be very expensive in five years." Hoffman lost the Riley to a bidder who paid £735,650 ($1.1 million), but the real loser seems to have been Sotheby’s, which is rumored to have guaranteed the work for £1 million ($1.4 million).

Christie’s managed to find buyers for 23 of its 29 lots a week later, but the jarring buy-ins of pieces by the pre-meltdown stars Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko pared the sale’s total to a mere fraction of its low estimate. The £4 million to £6 million ($5.8-8.7 million) that the house had expected Bacon’s Man in Blue VI, 1954, to make seemed reasonable for a fresh-to-market work by the artist, despite its all-too-relevant subject matter: a screaming businessman. But as the London dealer Ivor Braka points out, "For those of us with long memories, Bacon is an artist who has often been very thin at auction."

The spurned Rothko also suffered from an estimate based on a formerly explosive market. Although Green, Blue, Green on Blue, 1968 (est. £2.5-£3.5 million; $3.6-5 million) brought $6,089,000 in the free-spending culture of 2007, today’s sober buyers saw the work for what it is: a small, unimpressive painting.

The only offering to break the £1 million mark was Koons’s Monkeys (ladder), 2003 (est. £1.4-2 million; $2-2.9 million), which sold to the ubiquitous Ratibor for £1,385,250 ($2 million).

Phillips had less luck with Koons at its sale the following night. The artist’s stack of 30 sports balls failed to attract a single bid, sinking under its outlandish estimate — £1.8 million to £2.2 million ($2.6-3.2 million) — and a recent history of multiple trades: Aby Rosen acquired it for $435,000 at Phillips in 2004, then sold it as part of a large Koons package, reportedly valued at $11 million, to the Korean dealer Yung Hee Kim, who is believed to have been the 2009 consignor.

Although the Koons fell flat, bidders chased a few of the 53 lots, including Martin Kippenberger’s caustically clever ode to Sigmund Freud, Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself), 1994 (est. £400-600,000; $576-863,000), which brought £432,000 ($622,000), the top price of the night.