The art market’s surprising recovery continued yesterday (19 November) at Rockefeller Centre in New York, with Christie’s 21st-century evening sale hauling in $99.5m, or $123.5m with fees. The result eclipsed last November’s equivalent sale that realised $106.5m with fees.
Last night’s tally before fees fell midway between pre-sale expectations (calculated without fees) of $87m to $127m. Three artist records were set, for Firelei Báez, Joan Brown and Olga de Amaral.
Out of the 45 lots offered, just one—a Cecily Brown abstract—failed to sell, making for a buy-in rate of 2%. A big chunk of that success was due to the 33 lots backed by financial guarantees with 24 third-party and nine house guarantees. No lots were withdrawn prior to the sale.
The evening got off to a peppy start with 19 lots from the storied holdings of the Chicago collectors Gale Neeson and the late Stefan Edlis, ranging from Andy Warhol’s silhouetted Skull (1976) in acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, which sold for $1.5m ($1.9m with fees), to Richard Prince’s gun toting painted bronze mannequin, Untitled (Cowboy) (2011-13) that sold to a telephone bidder for $2.7 m ($3.3m with fees).
In 2015 the couple donated 44 works to the Art Institute of Chicago valued at around $400m, making it the largest gift in the museum’s history.
Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #13” (1978)
Back in the salesroom, Cindy Sherman’s black and white Untitled Film Still #13” from 1978, featuring the artist posed as a headband wearing librarian stacking books, triggered a bidding war and made $1.8m ($2.2m with fees) and Ed Ruscha’s ice blue hued and mural scaled How Do You Do? from his Mountain Paintings series brought $5.5m ($6.7m with fees). The Sherman last appeared at auction in May 2000 when it sold for $150,000 hammer.
More Warhols were in store as “Oxidation Painting (Diptych)“ from 1978, an abstraction made from the artist’s male friends urinating on linen mixed with copper paint and better known as his “Piss Paintings” went for $1.35m ($1.7m) with fees and the yellow hued The Last Supper from 1986, literally replicating Leonardo’s Milan masterpiece, sold to Paris dealer Frederic Larroque for $6.6m ($8.1m with fees). It was the deeply religious artist’s final series and he died a month after attending its opening in Milan.
“It’s a stunning painting,” said Larroque as he exited the salesroom, “and my client loves Warhol”. The Oxidation Painting last sold at auction at Sotheby’s London in February 2011 for £400,000 hammer.
The collection, fully backed by house and third party financial guarantees included five playful, patinated bronze and glass design works by Diego Giacometti, the younger brother of Alberto, including Promenade des amis’ Console (around 1977) that sold to Max Weaver of London’s Ward Moretti Gallery for $3.2m ($3.9m with fees). Another Giacometti console from Edlis/Neeson, Berceau’ Low table, Modele aux Renards, from around 1974, made $3.6m ($4.5m with fees), blasting past its $1.5m to $2.5m estimate.
John Currin’s Lake Place (2012)
The collectors embraced controversial subject matter as evident in John Currin’s risqué Lake Place painting from 2012, featuring two men and two women engaged in a kind of flirtatious gamesmanship that might raise eyebrows post-#MeToo. It went to a telephone bidder manned by Alex Rotter, the global president of Christie’s, for $1m ($1.2m with fees), well below its low estimate of $2.5m. The confidential total reserve set for the collection apparently saved it from the buy-in bin.
In total, the Edlis/Neeson trove realised $40.3m ($49.2m with fees), well past its $30m low-end estimate.
The sale then moved onto the various owners portion, starring Amy Sherald, who famously pulled out of an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington last July amid concerns of censorship over her painting of a transgender woman poised as the Statue of Liberty. A Clear Unspoken Granted Magic (2017), a portrait of a young woman in a patterned dress and scarf, went for $3.3 million ($4.1m with fees), eclipsing its $2m to $3m estimate.
Women artists made more market waves as Elizabeth Peyton’s portrait of Kurt Cobain from 1995 capturing the Nirvana front man with her unmistakable style a year after he died by suicide, realised $2.3 m ($2.8m with fees). Cecily Brown’s huge triptych It’s Not Yesterday Anymore from 2022, a vigorously blurry and brilliant chromatic abstraction, was bought in at a chandelier bid for $3m, well shy of its $4m to $6m estimate and the sole casualty of the evening.
Further success for portraiture came by way of Kerry James Marshall’s dreadlock coiffed Portrait of John Punch (Angry Black Man 1646), from 2007, an imaginary rendering of what was once believed to be the first enslaved person in the English colonies. It sold for $5.8m $7.1m with fees. And Marlene Dumas’s De acteur (Portrait of Romana Vrede) (2019), capturing the intense pose of the famed Dutch film actress, made $2.5m ($3.1m with fees).
Dumas’s Liaisons series of nine large paintings recently entered the permanent collection of the Louvre and are displayed in the museum’s Porte des Lions Atrium, making her the first contemporary female artist to enter the collection.
Politics and social issues were embedded in a number of the offerings, including Glenn Ligon’s conceptual neon work Double America 2 (2014), bearing two identical 12-ft wide rows of capital lettering of the word “America”, except the bottom row is upside down. It sold for $2.5m ($3.1m with fees) and hails from an edition of three plus two artist proofs.
Noah Davis’s Snail Pace (2010)
The evening’s top lot was Christopher Wool’s mightily scaled, split word painting “Untitled (RIOT)” from 1990, executed in navy blue enamel on aluminum, which hit $16.7m ($19.8m with fees). It was also backed by a third-party guarantee; this was its first appearance at auction.
Three works from the collection of the late Las Vegas casino doyenne Elaine Wynn entered the fray, with Pueblo H (2011) by Olga de Amaral, the 93 year-old Colombian textile artist, hitting a record $2.5m ($3.1m with fees).
The two other records was set by Firelei Báez’s intricate and large-scaled Untitled (Colonization in America, Visual History Wall Map, Prepared by Civic Education Service) (2021) that fetched $875,000 ($1.1m with fees). And Joan Brown’s quirky figurative painting, After the Alcatraz Swim #2 from 1975 that realised $470,000 ($596,900 with fees).
In a category of his own, the late Los Angeles figurative artist Noah Davis’s Snail Pace (2010) depicting the small figure of a black man riding the back of a giant snail encased in its nautilus shell and reprised in canvas and gold leaf, styled after Jeremias Ritter’s 17th-century wunderkammer objet “Snail with Nautilus Shell”. Davis’s snail journeyed to $1.1m ($1.3m with fees), leaving a trail of painterly slime in it wake.
New York’s marquee sales week finishes tonight with Sotheby’s Modern art evening sale.
