Results: Sotheby's NY Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Sotheby's NY Contemporary Art evening sale had some mixed results.  While some of the sales where high along with some artist auction records being set, there were also some big misses.

The sale offered 64 lots with 53 selling for a 82.8% sell through rate.  The sale totaled $293.59 million including buyers premiums, against a pre sale range of $283.95 million to $382.9 million. The sale sold 82.4% by value.  All of the sales figures are just OK, and pretty much fall within what was expected, although given the pre sale estimate, the sale was nearly $90 million off from the high mark.

The top selling lot was Onement VI by Barnett Newman (from Paul Allen's collection) and sold for $43.85 million against a pre sale estimate of $30/$40 million (see image). This was an auction record for the artist.  From the top 11 sales, 6 sold over the high estimate, 2 sold under the low estimate, two between the estimates and one had the estimate by request.

Two big misses were a Francis Bacon portrait estimated at $30 million to $40 million and a sculpture of four vacuum cleaners by Jeff Koons at $10 million to $15 million.  Both failed to sell.

Sotheby's reported on the sale

NEW YORK, 14 May 2013: Tonight at Sotheby’s the Contemporary Art Evening sale totaled $293,587,000, and was 82.8% sold-by-lot. There were exceptional prices for works from every decade from the 1940s through today with records set for Barnett Newman and Gerhard Richter, among others. The price achieved for Richter’s masterwork also established a new benchmark for any living artist at auction. The global nature of today’s art market was yet again underlined with collectors from 35 countries registering to bid in the sale, 20% of whom were new to either Sotheby’s or the category.

Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, said: “This evening we are very pleased to have achieved three landmark prices for masterpieces by key post-war artists. Barnett Newman’s Onement VI established a world record for the artist at auction and doubled the world record price achieved just one year ago. Gerhard Richter’s Domplatz, Mailand set a record for a living artist at a price which was a triumph for a photo-painting by the artist, and Yves Klein’s exquisite sculpture set a medium record for the artist.”

Alexander Rotter, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department in New York, noted: “Tonight we offered important works spanning 70 years, and witnessed strong demand across that impressive range – from early works by Pollock and Calder from the 1940s to works by Currin and Colen made just last year. We are delighted with the results achieved for the works sold to benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new building project, which nearly doubled the high estimate to realize a total of $11.8 million, with 17 more works to be offered tomorrow.”