Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sales Rake in $186.1 Million
Angelica Villa for ARTNews and Harrison Jacobs for ARTNews
8 min read
Sotheby’s three-part evening sale on Thursday in New York generated a total of $186.1 million on 68 lots, coming towards the high end of its $141 million to $204.9 million estimate. The result, while higher than a similar sale in November, was still a notable 18 percent drop from the equivalent sale last May, which generated $227.9 million.
That solid, if unspectacular, top result reflected the broader trend across this week’s marquee sales: strong demand for blue-chip works, and more cautious interest in younger and mid-career artists. Across two focused offerings and a broader contemporary sale, buyers bid aggressively for works with strong provenance or institutional appeal, but were more cautious elsewhere. (All quoted prices include buyer’s fees unless otherwise noted.)
Sotheby’s started the night with a focused 12-lot sale of works from the collection of influential gallerist Barbara Gladstone, who died last year. All 12 works, which hit the block without guarantees, sold, with eight of the lots exceeding their high estimates. The Gladstone sale totalled $18.5 million, just above the $17.2 million high estimate.
Two Richard Prince paintings carried the sale’s weight financially, bringing in $7.5 million with fees, constituting around 40 percent of the first sale’s total. Prince’s 2002–2003 painting Man Crazy Nurse, however, sold for a shade under $4 million—well below the $12.1 million record for a “Nurse” series work, set at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2021.
The Gladstone sale was followed by a 15-work, all-guaranteed sale from renowned dealer Daniella Luxembourg, with a strong focus on postwar Italian artists, particularly those linked to Arte Povera. That sale provided the most fireworks, with sales moving swiftly and at high levels.
The opening lot of the Luxembourg sale, the Lucio Fontana sculpture Concetto spaziale (1962-1963), sold for $764,000 to a bidder in the room, over six times its $180,000 high estimate, with five bidders pursuing the work. Two lots later, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s 1969 mirror painting Maria Nuda, an image of a reclining brunette girl, provided one of the most competitive moments of the evening. After a five-minute bidding war between eight bidders, the work sold for $2.7 million, more than double its $1.5 million high estimate.
“That deserves a round of applause, doesn’t it?” auctioneer and Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, Oliver Barker, said, leaning over the rostrum, as the crowd clapped.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Maria Nuda (1969).
Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio, a 1963 oil and glitter painting by Lucio Fontana, was the highest seller in this group, achieving $14.5 million, squarely in the middle of its $12 million to $18 million estimate.
For Italian art dealer Mattia De Luca, who runs an eponymous gallery in Rome, the Luxembourg sale represented a unique opportunity to acquire truly rare works from artists like Fontana and Pistoletto.
“The Luxembourg sale really proved that top quality works will withstand these tough times in the art market,” De Luca told ARTnews. “When the quality is high, and the works are priced well with the estimate—which I think they were—they do well.”
Other notable results from the Italian session included Alberto Burri’s 1976 painting, which sold for $3.1 million with no published estimate, and Claes Oldenburg’s 1969 soft sculpture, which exceeded its $1.5 million high estimate with a final price of $1.94 million. A rare 1959 bandage-based piece by Salvatore Scarpitta sold for $1.08 million, below its high estimate of $1.2 million. Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 light piece sold for $190,000, above its $150,000 high estimate. A sculpture by Pino Pascali, estimated at $400,000 to $600,000, also drew strong interest and sold for $1.64 million, nearly triple the high estimate. Two Alexander Calder mobiles also exceeded estimates. Armada (1946), estimated at $5 million, sold for $5.4 million, while the 1948 work The Beetle brought in $4.2 million against a $4 million high estimate.
After the sale, Lucius Elliot, the house’s head of contemporary marquee sales, indicated that provenance was a key contributor to the success of the Gladstone and Luxembourg lots.
“At a time like this, and generally, people look at provenance as a signal of quality,” Elliot told ARTnews. “There is something to be said for the halo effect created by a collection, and the reassurance to know that you’re buying from someone who had such a long time and such a discerning eye to choose what it was they wanted to buy over all those years.”
The top price of the evening came during the Now sale for a 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat oil stick on paper work that had been held in the same collection for 30 years. Estimated at $10 million and backed with a guarantee, the piece hammered at $13.7 million—more than 30 percent above its low estimate, landing at $16.4 million with fees.
Multiple Roy Lichtenstein works also performed strongly. Bonsai Tree (1993) more than doubled its low estimate of $1.5 million, selling for $4.2 million. Two other Lichtenstein paintings from 1988 and 1996 sold for $5.5 million and $4.9 million respectively, both solidly within their estimate ranges.
Jean Michel Basquiat, Untitled (1981).
But it was more valuable works by Ed Ruscha and Gerard Richter that appeared to be stabilizing points in the night even as they met expectations. The former’s 1989 text piece That was then this is now hammered at its low estimate of $7 million, going for $8 million with fees, while a 1990 abstract painting by Richter reached $6.9 million, just below its high estimate of $7 million, after a prolonged round of bidding.
Andy Warhol’s 1964 work Flowers sold for $4.1 million, or more than double its $1.5 million high estimate. The bidding for that work started fast and furious with bidders in the room and on the phone, but then stalled out at around $3.1 million, where it hammered.
Meanwhile another postwar figure proved to be one that collectors were betting on as her prices have climbed in recent years: Lee Krasner’s abstract canvas August Petals brought $5.2 million, in the middle of its $4 million to $6 million estimate. (The price ultimately was far below the current record for a Krasner painting at auction, which is $11.6 million.)
In the contemporary portion of the evening, newer artists delivered a more mixed showing. Danielle McKinney’s 2023 figurative painting Stand Still surged to a hammer price of $220,000, more than five times its $40,000 estimate—following competitive bidding between multiple Sotheby’s specialists on the phone. With fees, the total came just shy of $280,000. Similarly, Across the Place (2023) by Japanese painter Yu Nishimura, who recently joined the roster at David Zwirner gallery, jumped to a $320,000 hammer price, or $406,000 with fees. That was well above Nishimura’s previous auction record of $296,000, set at Christie’s New York in February, and more than six times the $50,000 low estimate. An untitled work by German artist Ernst Yohji Jäger sold for $190,500, more than doubled the artist’s previous record of $73,000, set last May at Christie’s New York.
Art advisor Andrea Hazen, an executive member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, was anticipating the McKinney result.
“People love Danielle McKinney. Her primary market prices are close to the estimate so I fully expected the work at Sotheby’s to far exceed that,” Hazen told ARTnews.
Rashid Johnson’s Two Standing Broken Men (2018), made of ceramic tile and oyster shells, also exceeded expectations, selling for $1.8 million, above its $1.2 million high estimate. Iraqi painter Mohammed Samedi’s 2023 interior scene fared similarly, climbing from a $300,000 low estimate to a $450,000 hammer price, or $571,000 with fees.
In other moments, artists both young and old performed equally poorly, making it difficult to pin-point any defining trend. 41-year-old Kenyan painter Michael Armitage’s 2015 painting, estimated at $2 million to $3 million, sold for $2.4 million. A 1989 text piece by Barbara Kruger’s hammered for $620,000—just slightly above its $600,000 low estimate—though its $787,400 total with fees was closer to the work’s high estimate of $800,000. Frank Stella’s Adelante, a “Running V” painting from 1964 deaccessioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gained a few bids before hammering for $6.5 million, or $7 million with fees. That was a far cry from its $10 million low estimate.
“There were a couple of Stellas on the market this season and the performance for all of them was relatively consistent,” Sotheby’s Elliot said of the result. “Ultimately, these are very sophisticated, very cerebral paintings, and this one was also a very large painting.”
The final lot, a tempera painting by Jacob Lawrence from 1958, failed to sell, providing a rather awkward round of applause to close the evening.
23 of the 41 lots in the Now sale came with guarantees. Two paintings, one by Urs Fischer and the other by Cecily Brown, went unsold.
But, to Elliot, the night had more positive trends to note than negative. He pointed to the overall depth of bidding both in the room and on the phone, and the fact that two-thirds of the sale’s registrants were American.
“I think we’ll find that a lot of the bidders and buyers were American too,” he said .”That’s particularly interesting with the Luxembourg sale, where the work was overwhelmingly European. It’s a testament to the fact that the market, which had softened, is on the way back up.”
