Sotheby’s kicked off this month’s marquee New York auctions with two sales on Monday evening, one devoted to established contemporary artists, the other to emerging ones. Together, the two auctions brought in $267.3 million, for a total squarely within its presale estimate of $241.8 million to $350.4 million.
These were the first two big auctions to take place during the annual May New York sales, with others to follow at Christie’s and Phillips. All these sales are happening against the backdrop of concerns of a weakening market and fewer estates coming to the block than in previous years. Based simply on estimates alone, the sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips are down by around 18 percent compared to those held at this time in 2023.
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Going into the sale, Sotheby’s at least had a leg up on Christie’s, whose website was still down on Monday, reportedly following a cyberattack. But the action at Sotheby’s this evening was relatively sluggish, doing little to dispel fears of a market slowdown.
Monday evening’s most expensive lot was Francis Bacon’s 1966 painting Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, the first of 10 full-scale portraits by Bacon depicting his lover George Dyer. The work on offer had been in the same collection for 54 years, having sold to its consignor in 1970, just four years after Bacon finished it. It came to auction with a $50 million high estimate, a number that seemed poised to put the painting among the most expensive ones by Bacon ever sold publicly.
Unfortunately for Sotheby’s, it was a big flop, failing even to meet its low estimate; it ended up selling for $27.7 million. (All figures reported here include premium, unless noted otherwise.) Murmurs abounded; many seemed awed by this hyped work’s implosion on the block.
Highs and Lows in “Now” Sale
The evening started out with more modest sums in the Sotheby’s 18-lot “The Now” sale, devoted to the ultra-contemporary category, referring to emerging artists and ones just gaining momentum at auction.
Eighteen lots were due to be offered, but one, a Cecily Brown painting, was withdrawn before the sale’s start. Sixteen of the lots sold, most of them performing respectably, and about half selling above their estimates with premium.
Kerry James Marshall’s 2005 painting Vignette #6 achieved the top price in the sale in its first time at auction. The consignor had acquired the piece at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2005.
Expectations for this painting ran high, since another from Marshall’s “Vignette” series had sold in 2019 for $18.5 million at Sotheby’s, to become his second-most-expensive painting at auction. This painting, which came to auction with a guarantee, didn’t perform quite so well, hammering at $6.5 million, $500,000 below its $7 million low estimate. With premium, however, that sum rose to $7.48 million.
The other major disappointment was Jeffrey Gibson’s evening sale debut, which came following the inauguration of the artist’s US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last month. That should’ve provided ballast for his market—Simone Leigh’s 2022 pavilion certainly did for hers that year—but when Gibson’s 2014 sculpture Always After Now came up for sale at Sotheby’s, it failed to garner a single bid. It was the only work that went unsold in tonight’s “Now” sale.
The big story of the evening was a 2019 Justin Caguiat painting called The saint is never busy. This young New York–based painter’s abstractions had only ever appeared at auction twice in the past, and Sotheby’s clearly thought this one would do well, awarding it the primo Lot 1 slot. The house’s expectations were not wrong: a six-minute bidding war pushed the painting far beyond its $300,000 estimate, more than tripling that sum to sell for $1.09 million, a new record for Caguiat.
The other big record in this sale was that for Lucy Bull, whose abstractions have already done well at auction. Her 2020 painting 16:10 quickly zoomed past its $700,000 high estimate—which was, admittedly, a conservative number, given that her work had already sold for $1.76 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong this past October. It seemed at times as though auctioneer Phyllis Kao could barely keep up. “Everybody gets a turn,” she said, smiling as the painting surpassed the $1 million mark. It sold for $1.81 million, more than doubling its estimate to set a new benchmark for the 34-year-old artist.
A Low-Risk Contemporary Sale Sees Many Disappointments
Even though the “Now” sale generated some momentum, the contemporary sale couldn’t quite sustain the excitement of the evening’s first hour.
Even discounting the underwhelming Bacon sale, other star lots also failed to deliver. A Richard Diebenkorn abstraction from his “Ocean Park” series, initially pegged to sell for as much as $25 million, failed to find a buyer altogether. The consignor, according to Artnet News, was Lorenzo Fertitta, who bought it at Christie’s New York in 2018 for $23.9 million, at the time an auction record for the artist. On Monday, auctioneer Oliver Barker had to fish for bids even to bring it above its $14.8 million low estimate.
A 1964 Lucio Fontana “Concetto Spaziale” painting from the Rachofsky Collection threatened to topple the artist’s record altogether; with a $30 million high estimate, it didn’t even hammer at its $20 million low (though it met that sum with premium). The hammer price, $19.7 million, rose to just under $23 million—a respectable figure, since it still makes the painting one of Fontana’s most expensive works, but one lower than the house had hoped for.
A shaped canvas by Frank Stella, Ifafa I (1964), appeared on the block shortly after another big Stella sale. This past November, a Stella from the collection of the late Chara Schreyer, Honduras Lottery Co. (1962), sold for $18.7 million—at the time, Stella’s second-highest price at auction. Artnet News’s Katya Kazakina reported that Ifafa I came to the block from none other than dealer Irving Blum, whose Ferus Gallery showed Stella during the ’60s, just as he had achieved renown. The painting hit the block with a $14 million low estimate and hammered right at that amount. Not even the artist’s death earlier this month did much to raise interest.
This was a low-risk sale, with 25 of the 35 lots coming to auction with guarantees, meaning that many of the works had been presold. But even by that measure, this sale left something to be desired.
There were some successes. A collaborative 1984 painting by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat set a new record for the duo’s series, $19.4 million, squarely within the work’s $15 million–$20 million estimate. On the Nota Bene podcast earlier this week, art adviser Lock Kresler, a director at Helly Nahmad gallery in London, said this one is considered to be among the best in the series; the highest price paid for a painting in the series at auction is $11.4 million, achieved in 2014. The consignor bought this one at Sotheby’s in 2010 for just $2.7 million.
Four guaranteed Joan Mitchell paintings headed to auction at Sotheby’s on Monday, with three of them selling above estimate. The priciest of them, her abstraction Noon (ca. 1969), sold for $22.6 million. The consignor bought the painting just eight years ago, at Christie’s for less than half that.
Faith Ringgold, who died this past April, saw a new record when Dinner at Gertrude Stein’s: The French Collection Part II, #10 (1991), a quilted painting from the artist’s prized “French Collection” series, came up for sale as the auction’s first lot. It came from the collection of Stanley and Mikki Weithorn, who lent it to a recent Ringgold retrospective. The painting was given a $700,000–$1 million estimate—double the artist’s $461,000 auction record, set at Swann Auction Galleries in 2015. Clearly, Sotheby’s expected Dinner at Gertrude Stein’s to reset the artist’s record, and it did, selling for $1.57 million.
The flurry of bids for Ringgold’s painting made this work a rarity in this sale, where the buying activity seemed depressed. By the time an Alice Neel portrait of poet and photographer Gerard Malanga came up for sale, Barker was doing his best to stoke any energy at all. “It’s like extracting teeth, my goodness,” he said before the work sold for a within-estimate $2.24 million. That remark might have been said at many different points tonight.
Still, the evening ended on a positive note when Yayoi Kusama’s 1958 painting The Pacific Ocean sold for $4.66 million, triple its high estimate. The work came to sale after its owner, curator Alice Denney, died last year at 101; seven minutes of bidding preceded that sale. “We’re going to have to forever put Kusama for the last lot!” Barker yelped. By that point, however, a good number of attendees had left for the evening, missing this rare moment of excitement.
After three hours, anyone who stayed until the end of the sale was probably hungry. But instead of the usual assortment of cheese, crackers, and charcuterie offered to guests, there were only empty champagne glasses.
When ARTnews asked a Sotheby’s staffer about the change, they simply replied, “the market has changed.”