LONDON—After its Essl Collection sale on Monday kicked off the Frieze-week frenzy, Christie’s returned on Thursday night with its main event of the week.
Peter Doig’s first tropical painting led a carefully edited postwar and contemporary auction. The house tried to catch the prevailing mood favoring young artists—like the many being exhibited at this week’s fairs—and the German masters now on view in many of the British capital’s biggest galleries.
Still, the top lot was Doig’s “The Heart of Old San Juan,” dating from 1999, showing an emerald-green basketball court by the sea. The tranquil painting attracted some interest in the salesroom and sold for £4.56 million (about $7.26 million). It had been estimated at £4 million to £6 million. The work marked a shift away from Doig’s images of snowy Canada.
The Christie’s sale coincided with major exhibitions of German art in London—Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy of Art and Sigmar Polke at Tate Modern. Gallery openings this week included Marian Goodman’s first London space, showing Gerhard Richter works. The auction included these artists as well as other German painters.
Richter, now 82, was much in demand at Christie’s in King Street; his blurred rainforest landscape, “Waldstuck (Chile),” sold for £4.45 million. “Fiktion (Garten),” or “Fiction (Garden),” made £2.21 million, while one of Richter’s “Abstraktes Bild” works made £1.87 million and another abstract was knocked down at £1.2 million. Only one of the artist’s six works on offer failed to sell, against a $1.5 million estimate. Another Richter, “Netz,” failed to sell on Oct. 13 in the Essl Collection sale.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Love Dub for A” made £4.34 million and was bought by an American buyer, with an estimate of £4 million to £6 million. The cartoon-like piece from 1987 is a billboard-sized tribute to Basquiat’s friend and mentor Andy Warhol, who had died unexpectedly in February of that year. The two had a close and competitive relationship.
Prices for Basquiat, who created 800 paintings before dying himself at the age of 27 in 1988, continue to hold strong. His “Infantry” made £2.43 million.
Tracey Emin’s “Mad Tracey From Margate Everybody’s Been There” sold for £722,500. This applique blanket, with personal symbols, was estimated at £700,000 to £1 million following the sale of “My Bed” at Christie’s last July. The blanket was made in 1997, the year she appeared in the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Juan Muñoz’s “Conversation Piece I” went under the hammer for £2.32 million. The artist (1953-2001) had created four bronze figures with similar forms that appear to be in conversation with each other. Christie’s said that it was acquired by a European private buyer.
A trademark seascape by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, this one titled “Aegean Sea, Pilion,” sold for a mid-estimate £242,500. The artist has become more in demand after one of his minimalist images in the series, showing Lake Constance, was used as the cover image of the “No Line on the Horizon” album by Irish rock band U2 in 2009.
The post-war and contemporary sale raised a total of £40.34 million including buyer’s premiums, with 41 of 46 lots sold. Collectors were prepared to pay £4 million or more for top works and were selective about some others, dealers said.
Francis Outred, International Director and Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Christie’s Europe, said it was “one of the most packed auction rooms I have ever witnessed.”
The evening continued with a £27.58 million Italian sale, with the highlight being a metal column by Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) that set an artist’s record of £2.43 million. The buyer was American.
Christie’s totaled the night’s events at some £67.9 million—or £114.7 million for the week including Essl, a record for October evening auctions.
Christie’s said the £46.9 million sale of 43 works from the Essl Collection on Monday was London’s most valuable auction ever of a private post-war and contemporary art collection. This was followed by the VIP day of the Frieze Art Fair, where works by Pablo Picasso, Polke and Damien Hirst were among the early sales. Frieze was boosted by higher demand, dealers said, as well as the Frieze Masters event and satellite fairs.
A large-scale Christopher Wool painting fetched the top price at the inaugural auction by Phillips at its new London headquarters building in Berkeley Square on Wednesday, and events wind down with sales at Sotheby’s and Bonhams on Friday night.
