If the $7.6 million paid for a four-foot-tall set of smiling wooden bears has anything to do with it, the price point for the mid-season sales at the major auction houses might be about to go up.
Last Thursday, Christie’s sold Jeff Koons’s 1988 sculpture Winter Bears (1988) with a pre-sale estimate of $3.8 million–$5 million, the highest valued work ever to appear in a mid-season sale. That price point is more often seen in the major marquee evening sales. Koons made the piece for his famous “Banality” exhibition in 1988 (it was fabricated with historical Rococo techniques); the one that just sold at Christie’s, from the collection of Barbara Jakobson, is number 1 of an edition of 3 plus one artist proof. Edition 2 is in the Tate’s collection, and number 3 and the AP are in private collections (the latter sold at Christie’s in 2011 for $4.7 million).
In general, these biannual sales have been inching up. The total this time around at Christie’s was $34 million, for 229 lots (3 lots were withdrawn, and 42, or around 8 percent, failed to sell). At the corresponding sale in September, Christie’s saw the highest total in the sale’s history: $35 million, for 293 lots. In 2022–23, the same sales were totaling $15 million to $17 million. “More people are looking to our midseason venue as the place to acquire serious art,” Christie’s specialist Rachel Ng told ARTnews.
While Christie’s is making large totals but also dealing in high volume, Sotheby’s has taken a different tack. Last March, after a 101-lot “Contemporary Curated” sale, Sotheby’s specialist Haleigh Stoddard told ARTnews that a “low volume, high-value ratio… [is] something that we are very interested in exploring further for our mid-season sales,” and the house followed through. In September, the “Contemporary Curated” sale went up—but not that far, to 132 lots (for a total of $32.7 million). That’s still a far cry from the 276 lots in the March 2024 sale. Last week, the house held the first of its “Contemporary Curated” in its new digs, the Breuer building on Madison Avenue, bringing in $19.4 million for 119 lots (7 of the artworks were withdrawn, and 21 failed to sell, for a sell-through rate of 81 percent).
Last week’s “Contemporary Curated” was led by Alma Thomas’s 1970 painting Snoopy Sees Sunrise on Earth. Off the market for 48 years, it made $3.8 million, the second highest price achieved by Thomas’s work at auction. The second highest result was for Helen Frankenthaler’s 1966 painting Mauve Hill, for $998,400. And two artists made new records at Sotheby’s: Miyoko Ito’s 1977 painting Nagisa sold for $640,000, double its high estimate, and Pat Passlof’s 1973–74 painting Fanfare made $537,600.
At both houses, there were pieces that soared well past their estimates. At Sotheby’s, Gerhard Richter’s unique painted-on photograph Untitled (5.2.89) went for $409,600, eight times its high estimate. At Christie’s, a painting by Mary Abbott soared past its $30,000–$50,000 estimate to make $209,000.
It’s worth noting that both Sotheby’s and Christie’s also saw some dramatically low prices for works that were sold without reserve. At Christie’s, a Doug Aitken lightbox piece from 2011 (number one from an edition of four plus two artist’s proofs) was estimated at $25,000–$35,000; it sold for just $889. At Sotheby’s, the lowest price was a lesson in the complexity of value. On the day of the sale, critic Greg Allenwrote in praise of Rachel Harrison’s 2008 work Mustard and Ketchup which, he pointed out, just went on view in public for the first time in Sotheby’s preview (her gallery, Greene Naftali, sold the piece between exhibitions). The artwork bore a pre-sale estimate of $20,000–$30,000. The final price was just $1,152.
(And here’s a sneaky trick: there are still prints available from this series by Angela Heisch that you can buy for $2,495 where a portion of your money goes to charity … or you can buy one on the secondary market, as someone just did at Christie’s, for just $127.)
In the final of the mid-season auctions, Phillips on Saturday made $8.5 million on its 149-lot “Modern and Contemporary Art” sale (3 were withdrawn, 15 failed to sell; the sale was sold 91 percent by lot, and 94 percent by value). The top lot was Andy Warhol’s Molly, a ink drawing with gold and silver leaf that he made in 1956. It sold for $412,800 against an estimate of $100,000–$150,000. (Speaking of Warhol, a painting that sold for $65,000 in Christie’s sale was one that the artist once traded to a chiropractor in exchange for a massage.)
More dramatically in Phillips sale, Alice Baber’s 1972 painting Ladder over and under, sold for $387,000, more than six times its estimate, achieving her second highest price at auction. And a surprise in Phillips sale was an unusually early date for a sale titled “Modern and Contemporary Art”: an 1878 painting, La Dormeuse, by Sarah Bernhardt, from the holdings of Texas collector Carolyn Farb. Estimated at $5,000–$7,000, it sold for a whopping $135,450.
