Results: Christie's London Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction

The other night Christie's London held its Post War and Contemporary art evening sale.  The sale totaled $127.73 million including buyers premiums, and offered 72 lots.  Of the 72 lots offered 65 sold for an impressive 90% sell through rate. The $127.73 million was a record for Christie's London Feb Post War and Contemporary sale.  The Christie's sale appears to have beat the Sotehby's sale which totaled $116.36 million, but failed to sell nearly 20% of its lots.

 The sale also sold 96% by value. The pre sale estimate range was $95.7 million to $132.2 million, so the sale total including buyers premiums was just under the high estimate. 27 lots sold for over $1 million while 5 new artist records at auction were set.

The top selling lot was by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) 1983 which sold for $14.06 million to a European private collector. The pre sale estimate was $10.85 million to $13.95 million (see image).

Bloomberg reported on the sale

Collectors are buying art as an alternative investment to real estate, stocks and other markets, Kohn said. Christie’s sale raised 81.7 million pounds with fees, a record for an auction of contemporary works held by the company in February.

The Basquiat, a text-packed acrylic, oilstick and paper collage work from 1983, sold to the Paris-based collector John Sayegh-Belchatowski, seated in the room, against opposition from at least two telephone bidders.

“This was the kind of Basquiat people want,” said the Cologne-based dealer Alex Lachmann. “It was an iconic work -- big, attractive and had loads of words.”

The Basquiat had been the subject of a recently resolved legal dispute between an owner, the English aristocrat, Edward Spencer-Churchill and dealers. Previously withdrawn from a Christie’s auction in New York in May 2012, it had been re- offered here, without a third-party guarantee, with an estimate of 7 million pounds to 9 million pounds.

Painting’s Beauty

“The dispute doesn’t detract from the beauty of the painting,” Sayegh-Belchatowski said after the auction.
Doig’s densely-textured 1991 landscape “The Architect’s Home in the Ravine,” showing a house glimpsed through a screen of winter trees, was making its third appearance at auction, having been bought for 314,650 pounds in 2002 by the U.K. collector Charles Saatchi. He sold it in 2007, when it fetched $3.6 million with fees.

Source: Christie's and Bloomberg