A Royal Flush, Albeit for Klimt not Cattelan, at the New York Auctions

News Believe It or Not! Ripley’s Now Owns Maurizio Cattelan’s Golden Toilet Misong Kim

This week saw Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips attempt and perhaps succeed at reversing the market downturn at their stateside sale rooms.

Record results may make international headlines but this week these sales were not outliers. The majority of works hammered comfortably within or above estimate after competitive bidding. Eight lots went unsold out of 224 lots across Monday to Wednesday, marking a 96 percent sell through rate for the New York evening auctions, as Sotheby’s closes out the week tonight with its Surrealism sales.

Here are the highlights.

Christie’s Starts off Strong

Christie’s launched the week on Monday with 18 standout pieces from the much anticipated Weis collection, which in total includes more than 80 works by the likes of Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko, and Piet Mondrian to be sold throughout the week. The evening culminated in a bidding war for Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958) between global president Alexander Rotter and a Connecticut online bidder. Ultimately, London department head Katharine Arnold secured the work for an unnamed phone bidder, reaching $62.1 million with fees (all figures USD).

Arnold also made the top bid later that night on behalf of an absent bidder on David Hockney’s Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), which sold for $44.3 million with fees, a star of the 20th century sale.

Additional highlights included seven-figure records for paintings by Argentine Surrealist Leonor Fini and American modernist Beauford Delaney ahead of Wednesday’s 21st century sale, which also saw records significantly over estimate for Olga de Amaral, Firelei Báez, and Joan Brown.

Sotheby’s Baptises the Breuer

Sotheby’s new address at the Breuer Building, a Brutalist icon that opened in 1966 as the Whitney Museum of American Art, was an undeniable draw, as auctioneers highlighted Whitney exhibitions of their consignments and revelled in the history of the house’s new home.

But the highlight of the evening was a work more suited to the nearby Neue Galerie, with its focus on early 20th-century German and Austrian art and design: Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–1916). Auctioneer Oliver Barker oversaw a dramatic 20-minute bidding war, eliciting ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the packed saleroom, and even cheers as bidding surpassed $200 million. Barker ultimately sold the work for $236.4 million with fees, the highest price for an artwork in Sotheby’s history, and nearly missing the winner’s paddle number amid the excitement.

Additional artist records were set for Cecily Brown, Noah Davis, Antonio Obá, and Yu Nishimura. Works by the latter two, as well as the Klimt and a $48.3 million Jean-Michel Basquiat, went to Asian buyers.

Maurizio Cattelan’s golden toilet America (2016) sold to a single bidder, later revealed to be Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, for its weight in gold plus fees at $12.1 million, despite auctioneer Phyllis Kao’s attempts to attract more interest with an arsenal of bathroom puns.

Phillips Sees a Boost

Wednesday saw principal auctioneer Henry Highley take the rostrum for Phillips’ evening sale of modern and contemporary art, along with a couple of lots from the Mesozoic period. Top prices included $16 million for Francis Bacon’s Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer (1967), and $14.3 million for Untitled (1957–1958) by Joan Mitchell, both inclusive of fees.

The evening realised $67.3 million in total, a 24 percent increase from the equivalent sale last November.

In a statement, chairman Robert Manley declared, ‘The results of tonight’s sale are a testament to the fact that the modern and contemporary art market is alive and well.’ The market may be ending the year on a positive note, but only time will tell. —[O]

Main image: Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–1916) (detail). Courtesy Sotheby’s.