MIXED RESULTS FOR CHRISTIE’S CONTEMPORARY EVENING SALE

A contemporary art evening sale dominated by American buyers brought Christie’s $113.6 million, well below the house’s low estimate of $227 million, Carol Vogel reports for the New York Times. Of the seventy-five lots offered last night, nearly one-third failed to sell, including a 1964 self-portrait by Francis Bacon that was estimated at $40 million. The sale had its high points, including Joseph Cornell’s Pharmacy, 1943, which once belonged to “Teeny” Duchamp. Four bidders fought for the work, and in the end it brought a record price for the artist at $3.7 million (all results include buyer’s premium), well above its high estimate of $2 million. Another record was set when art dealer Philippe Ségalot bought Yayoi Kusama’s No. 2 for $5.7 million, well above its $3.5 million high estimate.

Other results were mixed or disappointing. The sale featured two paintings by Gerhard Richter; one, an abstract 1989 canvas went for $14.8 million, well above its estimate, while a 1986 abstract went unsold. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Boxer), 1982—on commission from Metallica’s Lars Ulrich—went within its estimate for $13.5 million. Meanwhile, a Takashi Murkami “Mr. Dob” sculpture from 1999, put up by Adam Lindemann, went to Ségalot for $3.4 million, below its low estimate of $5 million. “The auction house may not have done well,” said art adviser Allan Schwartzman after the sale, “but some collectors did.”