Christie’s $1.1 billion night on Monday represented an extraordinary reversal from a year ago, when the big three New York houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips—cumulatively sold that much during the entire May auction season.
Driving the demand yesterday evening were trophies long held by leading collectors like S.I. Newhouse and Agnes Gund. Works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi, Mark Rothko, and Joan Miró all reached new auction highs.
Christie’s also pulled in some serious money. Its fees totaled $170.8 million, hopefully a big enough pile to pay out consignors and backers, and still have plenty left over. While the house didn’t pop Champagne to celebrate the wins, its executives seemed visibly relieved.
Below, is a deep dive into the figures behind the headlines.
S.I. Newhouse Sale
Jackson Pollock, Number 7A (1948). Courtesy of Christie’s Images, Ltd.
Total Sales After Fees: $630.8 million
Total Sales of Equivalent Auction Last Year: $272 million at “Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works”
Hammer Total: $540.5 million
Top Seller: Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A (1948), which sold for $181.2 million with fees ($157 million hammer).
Lots on Offer: 16
Lots Sold: 16
Lots Bought In: 0
Sell-through Rate: 100 percent
Lots Withdrawn: 0
Presale Low Estimate: $462 million
Hammer Total vs. Presale Low Estimate: +$78.5 million
Lots With House Guarantees: 16 (every lot)
Lots With Third-Party Guarantees: 16 (Christie’s financed all or part of each guarantee through third parties)
Total Low Estimate of Guaranteed Lots: $462 million (100 percent of total presale low estimate)
Lasting Memory: The bidding war for the Pollock lasted seven minutes and drew six competitors. Two of the staunchest ones—Christie’s global president, Alex Rotter, and Hauser & Wirth co-founder Iwan Wirth (spotted by the eagle-eyed Josh Baer)—staged an exhilarating Ping-Pong match. Rapid-fire bids flew back and forth in $1 million increments, with no hesitation on either side, starting at $103 million, until a new contestant suddenly entered the fray, at $154 million. A collective gasp rippled through the room. But Rotter’s client prevailed—and seemed to have been ready to go above the final $155 million bid. The rumor mill is on fire about the identity of the buyer.
Quote of the Night: “The Pollock painting presents an historic opportunity,” Wirth said of Number 7. “Masterpieces of this quality appear in the market only once or twice in a decade, if that. This work and the others in the sale are representative of the rigor and passion of dedicated connoisseur collectors—the kinds of visionaries who are increasingly rare now. Si Newhouse’s eye was legendary, and while I only met him at the end of his life, his was a collection I admired all my professional years as the gold standard. I see our job now as cultivating, nurturing, supporting that absolute pinnacle level of knowledge and dedication among a new generation.“
Parting Shot: There were strong results, but seven of the 16 works hammered below their low estimates, revealing price resistance, even when the highest quality of art is available. The under-performers were by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Piet Mondrian, with just the third-party guarantor bidding. Even one of the group’s stars, Danaïde by Constantin Brancusi, failed to reach the estimated $100 million mark, hammering at $93 million.
20th-Century Evening Sale
Mark Rothko, No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe). Courtesy of Christie’s.
Total Sales After Fees: $490.3 million
Total Sales of Equivalent Sale Last Year: $217 million
Hammer Total: $409 million
Top Seller: Agnes Gund’s Mark Rothko, No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), 1964, sold for $98.4 million with fees ($85 million hammer).
Lots on Offer: 49
Lots Sold: 46
Lots Bought In: 2 (one of them, a Joseph Cornell box, estimated at $3 million to $5 million, was guaranteed by the house)
Sell-through Rate: 95.8 percent
Lots Withdrawn: 1 (Amedeo Modigliani’s Almaïsa had no guarantee or irrevocable bid)
Total Low Estimate of Withdrawn Lots: $30 million
Sell-through Rate, Accounting for Withdrawn Lots : 93.7 percent
Original Presale Low Estimate: $391 million
Actual Presale Low Estimate, Adjusted for Withdrawn Lots: $361 million
Hammer Total vs. Actual Presale Low Estimate: +$48 million
Lots Guaranteed: 30
Lots With House Guarantees: 30
Lots With Third-Party Guarantees: 29 (Christie’s financed all or part of all but one of its guarantees through third parties)
Total Low Estimate of Guaranteed Lots: $303.75 million (77.7 percent of total presale low estimate)
Total Low Estimate of Lots with House Guarantee: $3 million (0.8 percent of total presale low estimate)
Total Low Estimate of Third-Party Guaranteed Lots: $300.75 million (76.9 percent of total presale low estimate)
Lasting Memory: A six-minute bidding war for Alice Neel’s Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia), estimated at $1.2 million to $1.8 million. The work hammered at $4.6 million, $5.7 million after fees, setting a new auction record for the revered painter. Widely exhibited, the painting was last seen in New York during Neel’s retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021–22. At Christie’s, it was part of “Figure & Form: The Diane and David Goldsmith Collection.”
Parting Shot: Christie’s made a lot of money last night. And while it had to pay off third-party backers for their secured bids, the strategy worked thanks to several key lots surpassing their estimates, including the top Rothko and the Neel portrait. A Claude Monet landscape hammered at $16.5 million ($19.6 million with fees), doubling its high estimate of $8 million. An ink drawing by Henri Matisse hammered at $3.9 million ($4.8 million with fees), more than three times its $1.2 million low estimate.
Next Sale Up: Today, Tuesday, May 19, Phillips modern and contemporary evening sale starts at 5 p.m. Sotheby’s modern evening auction begins at 7 p.m.
