The top selling lot was by Francis Bacon, “Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer,” (see image) selling for $45.4 million including buyers premium against a pre sale estimate range of $25.7 million to $34.3 million. Overall the sale was considered strong, and outperformed last years sale by 23%. The top end of the contemporary art market continues to do well. It will be interesting to see how the financial returns score once calculated by Mei Moses. Tomorrow I will post the results of the Christie's sale.
Bloomberg reported on the sale
Source: BloombergSotheby’s (BID) sold 93.1 million pounds ($159.3 million) of contemporary art in London yesterday as wealthy buyers around the globe chased trophy works by postwar and contemporary artists.
The tally exceeded the high estimate of 89.7 million pounds and represented a 23 percent increase from a year ago, when the publicly traded auctioneer sold 75.8 million pounds of art. Of the 59 lots offered during the 90-minute event, eight failed to sell. Asian bidding was brisk, with Sotheby’s representatives from China and Japan winning or underbidding pieces by Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol.
Art prices are on an upward trajectory, boosted by low interest rates and a limited supply of blue-chip material seen as holding its value. The Artnet C50 Index, which combines performance data from 50 top postwar and contemporary artists, advanced 434 percent from the start of 2003 through last year, beating asset classes including gold, fine wine and stocks.
“The market feels extremely robust,” said Lock Kresler, who is overseeing European operations for Dominique Levy gallery after leading Christie’s private sales department in London for three years. “The last three, four seasons continue to go up and up and up.”
The top lot was Bacon’s 1964 portrait of his lover, “Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer,” which fetched 26.7 million pounds. Bidding started at 12.5 million pounds and drew at least five hopefuls after going beyond the high estimate of 20 million pounds, including a client of Sotheby’s Asia Chairman Patti Wong. The winner was an undisclosed European client of Helena Newman, Sotheby’s co-head of Impressionist and modern art worldwide.
Dreamy Landscape
The work spent 40 years in the same collection and never appeared at auction before, Sotheby’s said. Bacon (1909-1992) was crowned the most expensive artist at auction in November, when his triptych of Lucian Freud fetched $142.4 million at Christie’s in New York.
Peter Doig’s 1999 dreamlike landscape “Country-Rock (wing-mirror)” fetched 8.5 million pounds. The result set a new auction record for the Scottish artist despite falling short of the 9 million-pound presale estimate. Prices include buyer’s commission; estimates do not.
The work depicts a rainbow that was painted over an underpass by the Don Valley Parkway near Toronto in 1972 when Doig was growing up there, according to Sotheby’s.
Neon Marilyn
Sotheby’s guaranteed the seller, who acquired the work during Doig’s exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise gallery in New York in 1999, an undisclosed minimum price. It drew tepid bidding and went to a telephone client of Isabelle Paagman, a senior specialist in the contemporary art department in London.
Paagman also won Warhol’s “Nine Multicoloured Marilyns (Reversal Series),” depicting Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe’s face outlined with neon colors and set against black background as if it were a photographic negative. It went for 4.6 million pounds and was underbid by Evelyn Lin, head of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong.
Dominique Levy’s Kresler won several lots for the gallery and its clients, including a unique 1990 sculpture by Louise Bourgeois that fetched 830,500 pounds, and Alexander Calder’s 1953 sculpture for 1 million pounds. Both works exceeded their top estimates.
“There were about three works we bid on and were not successful,” Kresler said. “And in some cases we didn’t even get a chance to raise a paddle.”
‘Fake Rothko’
Bidding was furious for pieces by established and emerging artists.
Rothko’s 1949 painting “No. 10” surged to 2.5 million pounds from the 400,000-pound opening bid. At least six buyers competed for the work that went to a telephone client of Wong.
The price was more than three times the work’s high presale estimate of 800,000 pounds. The anonymous seller purchased the piece for $1.7 million at auction in 2005.
“The Fake Rothko,” a large 2010 square canvas by Adrian Ghenie fetched 1.4 million pounds, four times its high estimate, to set an auction record for the Romanian artist born in 1977. The underbidder was a client of Wei-Ting Huang, Sotheby’s London-based private client liaison for Asia.
Ostrowski’s Abstract
It took one minute for David Ostrowski’ 2011 abstract painting “F (Dann Lieber Nein)” to go from the opening bid of 25,000 pounds to the final price of 122,500 pounds. The 33-year-old German artist was making his evening sale debut at a major auction house. In the past year, his works have been selling out at gallery shows and fairs, with prices at about 25,000 euros ($34,000).
The auction started with 11 lots of the Sender Collection, consigned by former hedge-fund manager Adam Sender; 10 sold, tallying 4.4 million pounds.
The group included two pieces by Damien Hirst, who remains the most expensive living British artist at auction despite a 91 percent decline in annual sales volume from his peak year of 2008 to 2013, according to Artprice.com.
Hirst’s butterfly canvas “Kingdom of Heaven” fetched 1.1 million pounds, surpassing the high estimate of 800,000 pounds. His 1992 medicine cabinet “Untitled Aaaaaaa” sold for 290,500 pounds, slightly above the high estimate.
“It’s great to see Damien’s market very robust,” auctioneer Oliver Barker said during the sale, before moving to the next lot.
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