In reverse order of Sotheby’s double-bill on Thursday evening, which featured Italian and then contemporary art, Christie’s opened its marathon auction with Post-War and Contemporary art — and, in workmanlike fashion, tallied £35,562,500/$55,015,188. The Italian fireworks would come later.
The result veered to the low-end of the £30.7–42.6/$41.6–57.8 million pre-sale expectations. Even so, only eight of the 54 lots offered went unsold for a decent 15 percent buy-in rate. Eight works sold for over a million pounds and twelve sold for over a million dollars. Seven artist records were set. The result paled in comparison to last October’s £40.3/$64.3 million sale, which saw 11 percent unsold by lot, yet came razor close to matching Sotheby’s £36.3/$56.2 million result on Thursday evening. (All prices reported here include the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium calculated at 25 percent up to and including £50,000; 20 percent on those over £50,000 and up to £1 million; and 12 percent for anything above that.)
The evening started off with a bang, as Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s stunning figurative painting, “Knave” from 2011 — featuring an over life-size woman with downcast eyes — sold to a telephone bidder for a record and whopping £446,500/$690,736 (est. £60–80,000). London dealer Hugh Gibson was the underbidder.
Jonas Wood’s panoramic view, “Untitled (M.V. Landscape)” from 2008 — depicting the quaint New England town of Martha’s Vineyard, and huge at 120 3/8 by 156 1/8 inches — went to another anonymous telephone for a record £542,500/$839,248 (est. £250-350,000). It was included in the Saatchi Gallery’s “Abstract America New Painting and Sculpture” exhibition from 2009 to 2010.
Another hotly sought after figurative work was Adrian Ghenie’s slapstick interpretation of 1940’s humor à la the Three Stooges, “Pie Fight Interior” from 2012, which depicts a figure in profile whose face is seemingly covered in gooey whipped cream. It brought £446,500/$690,736 (est. £220-280,000).
The figure painting cavalcade reached a crescendo of sorts with Peter Doig’s impressive, museum-traveled cover lot, “Cabin Essence” from 1993–4, the largest of nine examples from his storied Concrete Cabin series. It sold to an anonymous bidder via telephone — manned by Xin Li, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Asia — for the top lot price of £9,602,500/$14,855,068 (unpublished estimate in the region of £9 million). Bidding opened at £6 million and quickly escalated at £500,000 increments to £8 million, when interest slowed down to £200,000 jumps and then £100,000, ending at its £8.5 million hammer price. The painting represents a through-the-forest view of Le Corbusier’s then-abandoned Modernist masterpiece from 1957, the Unite d’Habitation at Briey-en-Foret in Northern France.
The result didn’t come close to the Doig record at auction, set by “Swamped” from 1990 with $25,925,000 at Christie’s New York last May. On the bright side, part of the proceeds will benefit the seller’s designated charity, The World Justice Project. The relative lackluster appeal of the Doig seemed to indicate that, at the moment, buyers in this category are for the most part a picky lot, especially in the seven figure range.
On a more intimate scale, Lucian Freud’s 14 1/4- by 13 5/8-inch bare-chested portrait, “Tired Boy” from 1943 in conté crayon on paper, sold to another telephone bidder for £542,500/$839,248 (est. £500-700,000). Another British entry, Howard Hodgkin’s beautiful Venetian landscape “Rain at II Palazzo” from 1993-98 in oil on board, sold for £362,500/$560,7 (est. £350–550,000). It last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 2012 for £361,250. Perhaps the Hodgkin needed more time with the previous owner to appreciate.
After being partially quarantined from most evening auctions for a period of time, following the dramatic collapse of his market in 2008, the gigantic oeuvre of Damien Hirst flutters back to the salesroom, as evidenced by “Solar-Euphoria” from 2006, a luscious and densely patterned 72-inch diameter composition of captured butterflies on household gloss paint on canvas. It bought in £420,000 (est. £450-650,000), most likely a chandelier bid.
American Pop Art was barely in evidence, apart from Andy Warhol’s lushly colored “Flowers” painting from 1964 that made £1,846,500/$2,856,536 (est. £1.5–2 million). The 24 square inch painting has been in the same collection since 1972 when it was acquired at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. A slightly smaller, 22- by 22-inch Flowers from 1964/65 sold at Sotheby’s 24 hours earlier for £1,055,000/$1,633,140.
Though lesser known by a long shot, Gerald Laing’s time capsule British Pop Art, Ben-Day Dot composition “Commemoration” from 1965, depicting a sleeping beauty in a bikini, made a rousing and record £1,202,500/$1,860,268 (est. £450–650,000).
German works were scattered throughout the sale, led in part by Gerhard Richter’s apartment scaled, 36 1/4–by–32 3/8–inch “Abstraktes Bild” from 1992, in cascading, squeegee-applied blues, greens, and reds. It brought £2,658,500/$4,112,700 (est. £1.8–2.5 million). Richter’s fellow countryman and onetime close friend Sigmar Polke had three works on offer, including “Untitled” from 2004, in acrylic on fabric, dominated by the appropriated visage of Alfred Hitchcock spread across the leopard-dotted fabric. It fetched £662,500/$1,024,888 (est. £600–800,000).
Martin Kippenberger’s loudly grandiose “Bekannt durch Film Funk, Fernsehen und Polizeinotrufsaulen (A celebrity in film, radio, television and police call boxes),” made up of 21 identically-scaled panels in oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas from 1981, went to a brave buyer for £2,434,500/$3,766,172 (est. £1.8–2.5 million). The characters range from Prince Rainier of Monaco to Yasir Arafat. This cycle of paintings truly launched his career when exhibited at Stuttgart’s Max Hetzler Gallery in 1981, when the consignor acquired it. Kippenberger’s close friend and collaborative colleague Albert Oehlen shot skyward tonight with his oscillating abstraction “Untitled” from 1989, comprised of oil, resin, and metallic enamel paint on canvas. It hit a record £1,142,500/$1,767,448. The seller acquired it directly from the artist the year it was painted.
The rough and tumble American painter Joe Bradley also hit auction pay dirt with with “Untitled” in oil and oil stick on canvas, which might be mistaken for an Ab-Ex period work though it was painted in 2011. It attracted three bidders and fetched £986,500/$1,526,116, selling to London dealer Michaela de Pury (est. £500–700,000). Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend how some works go ballistic in the salesroom, and the Bradley is a stellar example.
After a rough night at Sotheby’s with a buy-in on Thursday, Christopher Wool’s prospects brightened with “Untitled” from 1986, a densely patterned, 72 1/8–by-48-inch all-over abstract composition in alkyd on aluminum, which squeaked by at a below-estimate £422,500/$653,608 (est. £500–700,000). It last sold at auction at Christie’s New York in November 1998 for $18,400 (yes, eighteen thousand four hundred dollars).
After a five-minute recess and slight reshuffling of seats in the sardine-packed salesroom, the Italian Sale commenced and the atmosphere turned into a buying-frenzied theatre. The sale delivered a whopping £43,166,500/$66,778,576, almost doubling the low-end of the £23.6–35.1/$36.5–54.3 million pre-sale estimate. Only six of the 59 lots offered failed to find buyers for a jaw-dropping 10 percent buy-in rate by lot. Fourteen lots sold for over a million pounds and 20 made over a million dollars. Five artist records were set. It blasted past last October’s £27.6/$43.9 million tally that carried with it a 12 percent unsold by lot rate, and also beat Sotheby’s Italian sale on Thursday evening that realized £40.4/$62.5 million.
Like Sotheby’s Italian sale on Thursday, Christie’s also had twelve works by Italian market leader Lucio Fontana, including the thrice-slashed Ferrari-red canvas, “Concetto Spaziale Attese” from 1963-64, which brought £2,098,500/$3,246,380 (est. £1.7–2.5 million). It last sold at Christie’s London in June 2011 for £1,105,250. Another Fontana — from the seemingly endless series “Concetto Spaziale Attese,” but an early version from 1959 — sold to New York dealer Andrew Fabricant of Richard Gray Gallery for £1,454,500/$2,250,112 (est. £250–350,000). Eleven of the dozen Fontanas offered tallied £13.2/$20.4 million.
It’s unclear whether this Italian art boom is simply a case of a rather neglected Post-War slice of the market coming to maturity or a temporarily manic ‘Tulip’ speculative boom that is unlikely to last. As if on automatic pilot mode, auctioneer and Christie’s Global President Jussi Pylkkanen announced with great hubris at the outset of any number of the Italian lots, “I have ten telephone bidders.” He wasn't kidding.
Repeating the action at Sotheby’s on Thursday evening, works by Alberto Burri, the subject of a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, continued to sizzle — as evidenced by the spectacular “Rosso Plastica M1” from 1961, which fetched the sale’s top lot at £3,442,250/$5,325,548 (est. £2–3 million). It was aptly described decades ago by James Johnson Sweeney, the museum great and early Burri champion, who wrote, “out of a wound, beauty pours forth,” referring to Burri’s wartime experience as a battlefield surgeon that later transmogrified into painting.
Another super-charged result touched on the Arte Povera Movement, though nothing poverty stricken here, as Luciano Fabro's copper-banded hanging piece, "Italia deli emigrante (Italy of the Emigrants)" from 1981 — which was installed as a kind of ragged chandelier in Christie's antiquated salesroom — fetched a record £2,714,500/$4,285,964 (est. £600–800,000).
Moments after the marathon Italian sale ended to sustained applause in the salesroom, Milan dealer Nicolo Cardi of Cardi Gallery headed to the exit. “It’s an amazing night for the Italians. I bid on around nineteen lots and managed to get two,” he said, referring to an Enrico Castellani from 1970 that went for £422,500/$653,608 and another Ferrari red Lucio Fontana from 1964 that sold for £1,538,500/$2,380,000.
Anywhere you turned, observers appeared to be in a kind of religious frenzy for the Post-War Italians. “Burri is the name now, thanks to the Guggenheim,” said Luigi Mazzoleni, of the eponymous Mayfair gallery that is currently staging a Burri exhibition. “There’s still a lot of margin to grow for Burri and Post-War Italian Art.”
The next big test of the market takes place in New York next month, but the Italians won’t have a bespoke night or two of their own.
