Results: Christie's London Contemporary Art Evening Sale

On Tuesday evening Christie's London held its evening contemporary art sale.  It followed the successful sale of Sotheby's from Monday night.

Christie's offered 75 lots in the sale with 63 selling, for a sell through rate of 84%.  The sale totaled $169.9 million including buyers premiums, and sold 87% by value.  The end sale results were right in the meaty area of the total pre sale estimates, which ranged from $134.9 million to $196.3 million.

The top selling lot again was by Francis Bacon (see image), which sold for $19.7 million including buyers premium (the pre sale estimate was listed as by request).

Trade reports, like those from the Sotheby's sale Monday evening have been positive while indicating strong showroom turnout as well as active bidding for quality art. The contemporary art market continues to show strength at the top end.

The NY Times reports on the sale

It was another buoyant night for postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s auction here on Tuesday night, and it was, in many ways, an echo of Sotheby’s sale the evening before. Both salesrooms were overflowing with collectors, predominately from America and Asia, bidding briskly for classic paintings. Even the two artists who brought the top prices were the same — Francis Bacon and Peter Doig.

Bacon’s magic seems endless. While nothing has approached the $142.4 million price paid for “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (1969) at the gavel-busting auction at Christie’s last fall, the house did manage to sell a smaller, single canvas, “Study for Head of Lucian Freud” (1967), from the estate of the writer Roald Dahl to an anonymous bidder for $19.6 million. It was expected to bring around $20 million.

On Monday night, a triptych by Bacon, “Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (on Light Ground)” from 1964, sold for $45.4 million, exceeding its $33.6 million high estimate.

It’s also been a strong week for Mr. Doig, whose prices are stronger than they’ve ever been. At Christie’s, Larry Gagosian, the superdealer, snapped up “Gasthof,’’ a dreamlike scene that is one of the artist’s rare self-portraits, painted in 2002-2004 and set in an expressive verdant landscape with a blue night sky, for nearly $17 million. The price was more than twice its high $8.3 million estimate. At Sotheby’s on Monday night another work by the Scottish-born Mr. Doig, “Country-Rock (Wing Mirror),” a 1999 bright yellow canvas of a tunnel in Canada where the artist grew up, brought $14.4 million.

There was active bidding from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Middle East, according to officials at the auction house. Christie’s sale totaled nearly $169.9 million, against an estimate of $135 million to $196.2 million. Of the 75 works on offer, 12 failed to sell. Sotheby’s auction, by comparison, totaled $158.5 million, above its high estimate of $152.6 million, but that sale was smaller. Of the 59 works, eight failed to sell. (Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)

On Tuesday, one of the top prices was paid for a Warhol self-portrait from 1986, a bright red canvas with the artist’s gaunt face and fright wig in yellow. Dimitri Mavrommatis, the Greek financier, bought it for $10.8 million, less than its $11 million to $16 million estimate. Before the auction, dealers said it was being sold by Jose Mugrabi, the New York dealer, on behalf of an anonymous seller.

Source: The NY Times