Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
The $690 million that Christie’s took on Monday night during its 20th/21st century sale in New York was a staggering figure, but it still came up short of the $731.5 million pre-sale high estimate. That may have curbed any high-fives and backslapping meant to salute an art-market resurgence after two rickety years, but Sotheby’s double-header on Tuesday evening gave people reason to believe that the top end is truly on the up.
Sotheby’s trove of works from the late cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, together with its “The Now & Contemporary” sale, brought in a combined $706 million, leaving the $680.7 million pre-sale high estimate in the dust. It was enough to lead Helena Newman, the house’s Europe chairman, to declare after the sale that Sotheby’s “made history” at the Breuer. (All quoted prices include fees unless stated otherwise.)
Christie’s combined Monday total on 79 lots was a 42 percent increase over its equivalent sale last November, which brought in $486 million on 72 lots. Sotheby’s result last night—from 68 lots—was a massive 279 percent rise against May, when it sold the same number of lots for $186.1 million. (Sotheby’s double-header sale last November, covering the Sydell Miller collection and a modern art sale, generated $309 million across 56 lots.)
A handful of record sales propped up Sotheby’s eye-watering $706 million total. The house sold Lauder’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) by Gustav Klimt for $236.4 million. It was the highest price for any work of modern art sold at auction, and the second-highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction, period (still eclipsed by the $450.3 million paid for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017). By the end of the night, three Klimt works had swelled the coffers by $400 million.
That old auction-house maxim—“Good works always sell well at auction”—repeated by specialists before and after the sale, proved its worth. It might be contagious: art-world commentator and onetime ARTnews contributor Jeff Magid also used it. “My bold prediction for the state of the art market after this auction week—I think great art will sell really well at auction,” he told his Instagram followers on Monday.
One person who wasn’t getting too carried away, though, was the Fine Art Group founder Phillip Hoffman, who told ARTnews, “While there’s certainly more interest, I wouldn’t say that the market is rushing back. There’s still a distinct lack of buying activity at the young contemporary galleries. The lower to mid-market remains a tough place to be.”
Still, Hoffman noted that there were no lots sold above $20 million in May, a price category that has been alive and well this week. Iconic works will sell, increasingly at record numbers. “While the market is not back to the highs of three or so years ago, there’s a lot of money around. I’ve always said to my clients, this is the time to buy, and if you’ve got iconic works like Lauder did, there is no bad time to sell,” he said.
The Klimt sold after a 20-minute battle between six phone bidders. Patti Wong, former international chairperson for the house, who is now part of New Perspectives Art Partners with Hoffman, was in the room bidding until the Klimt hit $200 million. Sotheby’s beleaguered owner, the billionaire Patrick Drahi, was grinning from ear to ear at the back of the auction room when the gavel came down.
The Lauder portion of the evening totaled $527.5 million, while “The Now & Contemporary” sale took in $178.5 million. A Jean-Michel Basquiat painting was the latter’s top lot, bringing in $48.3 million, and Vincent van Gogh’sThe Sower(1888) set a new auction high for a pen-and-ink work by the artist at $11.2 million. However, Maurizio Cattelan’s notorious golden toilet—America (2016)—was one disappointment of the night. Though it went for $12.1 million, its melt value, it attracted only a single bid and failed to live up to the hype after being installed in a bathroom in Sotheby’s new headquarters at the Breuer Building. Sotheby’s said it was acquired by a “famous American brand.”
Christie’s sales on Monday night were characterized by deep bidding. Mark Rothko’s 1958 No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) sold for $62.2 million after 20 bids, Henri Matisse’s 1937 Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) sold for $32.3 million after nearly 30 bids, and Le songe du Roi David (1966) by Marc Chagall went for $26.5 million after 32 bids.
“This felt like what an auction should feel like,” Alex Rotter, Christie’s global president, told ARTnews after the sale. “I feel the tide rising. The collections added a lot of depth.”
Jussi Pylkkänen, former global president of Christie’s and founder of the London-based advisory Art Pylkkänen, told ARTnews that this week’s results signal that “the top of the art market is back on track, with works of quality over $10 million generating great competition.”
He continued, “The evening sales here in New York continue the trend of a flight to quality which began in London and Paris last month. The market has clearly turned a corner, but in doing so it has shifted. Contemporary art continues to struggle as the focus of collectors moves firmly back to the great classic modernists who have performed so well here in New York: Klimt, Matisse, Rothko, Agnes Martin, Diebenkorn, Chagall, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, and Basquiat. The fact that Cattelan’s much-vaunted America received only one bid is a graphic and memorable illustration of this market development. The days of heavy speculation in contemporary art seem numbered.”
Art market economist Clare McAndrew, who compiles the Art Basel UBS reports, echoed Hoffman’s sentiment and told ARTnews Wednesday that “the right supply will always generate strong sales on the secondary market.”
“Collectors will always be willing to pay amazing sums for high-quality, scarce works by artists with a solid historical footprint who present relatively low risk,” she said. “On the demand side, there are more billionaires in 2025 controlling more wealth than ever before, so there is no shortage of discretionary purchasing power.”
Amanda Lo Iacono—the former deputy CEO at Phillips and the founder of CounterA, a platform that manages compliance, payments, and logistics for artworks—was also on the same page. She told ARTnews after Tuesday’s sale: “Committed buyers haven’t left the market.”
She warned, however, that it’s important to look at the wider market when assessing its health. “The structural pressures on the market haven’t shifted, and the top of the market is not a proxy for the broader ecosystem,” she said. “Evening sales tell us how the top of the market feels—not how the market functions. You get a clearer read of that in the day sales, which are showing stronger sell-through rates than we’ve seen over the past year. The appetite is intact, and with the right adjustments the market has room to build on this momentum.”
