NEW YORK— Sotheby’s opened the contemporary-art auction season on May 12 with a solid if uninspiring session. Its sell-through rates of 81.2 percent by lot and 78.1 percent by value were respectable, but the $47,033,500 take fell short of expectations. Nonetheless, 14 lots brought seven figures — quite an improvement from the February session in London, when only 3 works made it into million-dollar territory.

The top lot was Jeff Koons’s Baroque Egg With Bow (Turquoise/Magenta), 1994-2008 (est. $6-8 million), consigned by the New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb. Winning it, somewhat ironically, for $5,458,500 was Larry Gagosian, who had valued the same piece at $18 million to $20 million in his gallery’s selling exhibition last fall in Moscow, where it failed to find a taker.

Of the four artist records set that night, two were for works from the collection of the Athens arts patron Dakis Joannou: Martin Kippenberger’s self-portrait Untitled, 1988 (est. $3.5-4.5 million), went to the dealer Iwan Wirth, of New York, London and Zurich, for $4,114,500, and Christopher Wool’s Untitled (P105), 1989 (est. $1.5-2 million), sold to the phone for $1,874,500.

Overall, the evening was characterized by familiar faces going after perennial favorites. The New York dealer Jose Mugrabi chased a slew of Warhols and a Basquiat, of which he managed to bag only Andy’s 14-square-inch Flowers, 1964 (est. $400-600,000), for $410,500. The Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, meanwhile, pursued Alexander Calder’s standing mobile Ebony Sticks in Semi-Circle, 1934 (est. $1-1.5 million), but pulled out once the bidding reached more than twice the high estimate. "You’ve got to stop somewhere," says Broad, who watched as the piece ultimately fetched $3,498,500.

Bidders seemed more willing to go the distance the following night at Christie’s. The sale grossed $93,734,500, with a sizzling sell-through rate of 91 percent by lot and 94 percent by value.

Five artist records were set, including one for David Hockney, whose Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966-67 (est. $6-10 million), went to a telephone bidder for $7,922,500. The sweeping diptych was one of 20 works on offer from the collection of the late West Coast philanthropist Betty Freeman. Among other high earners from the Freeman trove were Roy Lichtenstein’s Frolic, 1977 (est. $4-6 million), which Gagosian grabbed for $6,018,500, and Portrait of Man Ray, 1974 (est. $2-4 million), a jumbo Warhol that brought $2,098,500.

For the most part, whatever was fresh to the market and conservatively estimated was scarfed up. Richard Diebenkorn’s emblematic Ocean Park No. 117, 1979 (est. $4-6 million), sold for $6,578,500. And Willem de Kooning’s Woman, 1953 (est. $1.4-1.8 million), consigned by the heirs of the New York collector Evelyn Annenberg Hall, brought $3,666,500.

The evening’s rousing success can be credited, at least in part, to the auctioneer Christopher Burge, who steered the sale like a seasoned skipper. Among his navigational instruments was a dry sense of humor, wielded, for instance, during the heated competition for Piero Manzoni’s Achrome, 1958-59. Someone proposed a rise of $50,000 over the previous bid, instead of the appropriate increment of $100,000, and Burge quickly quipped: "In these tough times, I’ll take it."

When appropriate, the auctioneer also showed some steel, deftly handling Gagosian’s implication he was taking chandelier bids for Richard Prince’s Untitled (Upstate), 2007 (est. $1-1.5 million). "Are you going to sell it?" the silver-haired superdealer challenged, to which Burge shot back, "If you bid, you’ll find out." Gagosian complied with a winning offer of $1,082,500, making the raggedy-looking bronze picnic table and basketball hoop one of 30 works to fetch more than $1 million that night.

The million-dollar mark proved a higher hurdle at the Phillips de Pury & Company session that closed out the week. Only one lot, Philip Guston’s Anxiety, 1975 (est. $1-1.5 million), cleared the barrier, bringing $1,082,500 from a private collector in the room. And of the top 10 lots, just 7 fetched more than $400,000. Among these were Sherrie Levine’s Fountain (Buddha), 1996, a brilliant homage to Duchamp’s readymade urinal (est. $150-200,000), which a telephone bidder bought for $446,500, and Dan Flavin’s fluorescent Untitled ("Monument" for V. Tatlin) 22, 1964 (est. $400-600,000), which the New York dealer Meredith Palmer snagged for $458,500. "I think there are some very good buys now, but I feel the [price] level is still not corrected fully," she says.