Christie’s Contemporary “Gets It Right”

Alexander Calder Willem de Kooning Roy Lichtenstein Claes Oldenburg Jean-Michel Basquiat David Hockney Richard Diebenkorn Martin Kippenberger

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If there were doubts about Jeff Koons's market legs after Tuesday evening’s underwhelming performance at Sotheby’s, they were left in the dust thanks to the chugging power of Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Engine (1986), in stainless steel and bourbon, which attracted at least three bidders and sold to the telephone for $2,322,500 (est. $700,000–$1 milion).

Even the sometimes disparaged expressionist painters of the 1980s made waves, as Eric Fischl’s Dog Days (1983), an audaciously sex-themed and outsized diptych scaled at 84 by 168 inches, sold to the telephone for $1,874,500 (est. $800,000–$1.2 million).

The seller acquired it from the Mary Boone Gallery in November 1983 for $20,000, according to the gallery.

Part of the evening’s rousing success can be credited to auctioneer Christopher Burge, who navigated the sale like a seasoned skipper, injecting humor when due.

At one point during heated bidding for Piero Manzoni’s kaolin-on-canvas Achrome from 1958–59, a bidder tried to split the next bid to $50,000, instead of the appropriate $100,000. “In these tough times, I’ll take it,” quipped the auctioneer.

Burge got tough with powerhouse Larry Gagosian, though, who brazenly taunted him during the bidding on Richard Prince’s raggedy-looking 2007 bronze sculpture of a picnic table and basketball hoop, Untitled (Upstate).

“Are you going to sell it?” challenged Gagosian, as if Burge were taking imaginary bids off the chandelier, to which Burge shot back, “If you bid, you’ll find out.”

Gagosian complied, taking it for $1,082,500 (est. $1–1.5 million).

As the elated crowd exited the salesroom, one of the attendees speculated as to why the Christie’s sale was so much stronger than Sotheby’s. “They just got it right,” said New York/London/Zurich dealer Iwan Wirth, who scored the record Martin Kippenberger at Sotheby’s on Tuesday evening. “It was all fresh material, and I was really surprised. We’ve probably seen the worst of it, just like it is in the real world.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.