There was hardly a more auspicious start to London’s summer auction week than this, which kicked off tonight (June 25) with Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale and will conclude on Thursday (June 28) with Phillips’ equivalent auction. Christie’s decision to refrain from holding a June evening art sale in London this year underlines the season’s waning relevance in the global auction calendar, as summer has increasingly been overshadowed by London’s biggest sales held in March and October , as well as the huge number of spring auctions held in New York in May.
These are also the first night sales since news broke of impending layoffs at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which come at a time of crisis for the top of the market. All to play for, then, but not much to play for.
Across 52 lots, the night attracted a total of £71.8m (£83.6m with fees), against a pre-sale estimate range of £76.4m to £108.1m Pounds Sterling (calculated without fees). Last year’s equivalent sale fetched £190.3m (with fees), although almost half of this total came from the record £85.3m sale of Gustav Klimt’s 1917 portrait. Lady with a fan (lady with fan). Tonight’s results also fell short of Sotheby’s London night sale in March, which made £99.7m (with fees). No artist record was achieved this time.
Three lots were withdrawn, all by women artists: one by Loie Hollowell, Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Tamara de Lepicka, the last of which had an estimate of £6m-£8m, the third most expensive in the sale. About half of tonight’s lots carried a financial guarantee from Sotheby’s, and about 30% were backed by irrevocable third-party offers, a sign of the market’s enduring uncertainty. (For comparison, 33% of Sotheby’s equivalent sale lots in 2022 were guaranteed.)
Jean-Michel Basquiat Portrait of the artist as an abandoned young man (1982)
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The clearest market forecast could come from the highest lot of the night, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s triptych Portrait of the artist as an abandoned young man (1982)—one of only two papers that had an eight-figure estimate. It last hit the block in May 2022, at a Christie’s sale in New York, where it was offered at an unprecedented $30 million (about £23.6 million) and was withdrawn before the sale began. Offered tonight with a target range of £15m to £20m, this less aggressive estimate, adjusted for a more successful buying group, helped the painting find a new home. It went for £15m (£16m with commissions) after less than a minute of bidding, to a telephone buyer with Grégoire Billaut, Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art.
The sale began with Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, taking the podium to oversee the offering of 16 works from the collection of the late financial executive Ralph I. Goldenberg, whose treasure trove of elegant minimalism and understated abstract expressionism received a warm welcome. The First Out the Door, Alexander Calder’s 1955 sculpture black animal it quickly surpassed its £200,000 estimate to earn it £290,000 (£348,000 with fees).
Immediately afterwards, a scarce 2001 composition by Agnes Martin fetched £620,000 (£744,000 with commissions) against its estimate of £600,000. The same bidder who won the Martin picked up an almost equally low-key (£1.2m-£1.8m) Cy Twombly for £2m (£2.5m with commissions). Most of the other works in the Goldenberg collection matched or exceeded their high estimates, with household names such as Lucio Fontana and Alberto Giacometti bringing strong bidding and attractive prices.
Agnes Martin’s No title (2001)
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
However, not all lots in the Goldenberg collection were fired. 1965 by Robert Ryman Unfinished Painting, a blank white canvas to be included in his forthcoming catalog raisonné, approved against an estimated range of £1.5m to £2m; another 1965 Ryman work hammered well below its low estimate of £700,000, at £450,000 (£540,000 with fees), presumably to its third guarantor.
“We will learn a lesson from this,” said Sotheby’s vice president of contemporary art, Michael Macaulay, after the sale concluded. “However, I don’t think this will represent a radical readjustment of the Ryman market.”
Second half slide
Once Sotheby’s head of Impressionists and Moderns, Helena Newman, took over for the second sleeve, the sale hit rockier ground.
by PicassoGuitar on a red carpet (1922), which took the night’s second-highest target range of £10-15m, hammered for just £9.4m (10.7m with fees). After this, a host of lots hammered well below their low estimates, including a Mark Grotjahn canvas for £440,0000 (about £668,000 with fees) against a low expectation of £800,000 and Gustave Caillebotte’s cliff landscape from 1884 The Pink Villa, Trouville for £550,000 (£660,000 with fees) against a low estimate of £1.2 million. Works approved at this stage include a horse sculpture by Degas and Chris Ofili’s painting from 1997-98. trump.
August Strindberg Solitary fly cap (1892-93)
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Even some artists who are not often seen at auction, due to their relative scarcity on the open market, failed to stir up much excitement. A “very rare” painting by August Strindberg, Solitary fly cap (1892-93), which had not sold at auction for 24 years, settled for a final bid lower than its estimate of £2.5m, making £2.9m with commissions. Similarly, that of Vilhelm Hammershøi Landscape, view from Lejre (1905) made a single bid in the room, making a prize of £660,000.
Despite the decline in year-on-year sales totals, Newman and Macaulay are adamant that London’s June auction season is here to stay. “We are tremendously excited about the sale, which achieved a 93% direct sell rate,” they say. “Tonight fell with the March sale, but the market is evolving. Tonight was a thoroughly valuable exercise and shows that London can have three auction seasons a year.”
Additionally, Newman says, “We want to be present while an international collector base is in London for the ‘season’.” Indeed, there’s no denying the enduring pull of the global jet set that descended on London in June, for a month of museum galas and high-profile social events, including Ascot and Wimbledon.
“Not to mention Taylor Swift,” Macaulay adds jokingly, referring to the megawatt musician’s “Eras” tour taking place in London this week. Perhaps the auction houses can take a leaf out of Swift’s ability to captivate audiences with a spectacle: her tour. It has made more than $1 billion in sales Judging by the dwindling crowd in the salesroom tonight, producing similar sparks will take more than a competitively priced Basquiat.
