Results: Sotheby's Contemporary Sale

The mid season contemporary art sale at Sotheby's New York this past week shows room for optimism in the market place.  While not a huge success, the results were generally positive.  Connect this to some of the more recent sales (such as the successful NY Asian sales), although a smaller in scope, the underlying fundamentals appear to be headed in the right direction.

The sale totaled $5.54 million.  313 lots were offered and 235 sold for a 75.1% sell through rate. The top lot was an Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Can estimated to sell between $250,000.00 and $350,000.00 and sold for $374,500.00 including buyers premium.  The top 10 purchasers revealed purchasers from the US (6), Asian (2) and European trade (1) with one just listed as private.

Judith Roth, Head of the Fine Arts Department at Sotheby's stated

“We were delighted with the results of today’s sale. Our total sold price fell squarely between our low and high estimate and 75% of the lots sold. We saw strong, competitive bidding from many parts of the world on all types of works, from classic Warhols to pieces by younger artists, such as Ruud Van Empel, Jim Campbell and Karen Kilimnik, whose Katherine Ross, The Legacy, Lot 1 of the sale, made $53,125 off an estimate of $12,000/18,000. The cover lot,Warhol’s Tomato Soup Can, was a rare iconographic work in black and white from the 1980s which sparked a prolonged bidding war and achieved the highest price of the sale. Another Warhol, a gold leaf drawing that was a gift to Laura Eastman, the niece of the great American collector and museum benefactor Henry Walters, achieved the second highest price in the sale. The third highest price in the sale scored a record for the artist, Ruud Van Empel. Strong prices were achieved for four lots by Conrad Marca Relli, who is currently the subject of a show at Knoedler Galleries. All four lots sold and three comfortably exceeded their high estimate. All three lots by Victor Vasarely also exceeded their high estimates, and works by European artists Philippe Hiquily, Antonio Saura, Maria Jarema and Manolo Millares all fared extremely well, the latter artist was represented by a watercolor and gouache from 1962, which doubled its high estimate of $15,000/25,000 to reach $50,000.”