Sotheby’s Scales New Heights With Contemporary Sale

Last night’s sale of Contemporary art at Sotheby’s opened with a feeding frenzy, as buyers jumped for works made within the past 10 years by the likes of Neo Rauch, Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, and Andreas Gursky. All of these artists saw auction records set, and the house earned a total of $128.8 million, its biggest ever sale of Contemporary art.Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sinking Sun” (1964) and Willem de Kooning’s “Untitled XVI”(1975) each sold for $15.7 million, the highest price of the night. Both were bought by L&M Arts for clients.One of the gallery’s co-owners, Dominique Levy, picked up the Lichtenstein for substantially less than the $20 million Sotheby’s auctioneer and worldwide head of contemporary art, Tobias Meyer, had said it might bring. “It completely symbolizes American culture in the 1960s,” Ms. Levy said of the picture.Her colleague, Robert Mnuchin, prevailed over dealer Larry Gagosian and a phone bidder to win the de Kooning. The price was $5.7 million more than the 1977 de Kooning Mr. Mnuchin picked up last season at Christie’s for his client Steven Cohen. Mr. Mnuchin made sure he would be the winner on this picture by jumping ahead on the price he was willing to pay,throwing out numbers $100,000 or more higher than the next bidding increment. “It’s a market for passionate collectors, which is who we are working for,” Ms. Levy said.But she lost an epic battle with a phone bidder for Robert Ryman’s “Untitled” (1962). Ms. Levy traded bids with the eventual buyer from around $3.5 million as the final price crept up to $9.6 million, four times higher than the artist’s previous auction record.The Ryman bidding even made Mr.Gagosian,a frequent buyer at auction, blink and curse softly as the price passed $7.1 million.“It completely transcended the market,” Mr. Meyer said.A second, less substantial Ryman, “Meridian” (1971), sold to New York dealer Matthew Marks for $2 million.L&M Arts also picked up Christopher Wool’s “Untitled (P80) Helter Skelter” (1988) for $1.4 million, an artist’s record; Jeff Koons’s “New Hoover Convertibles” (1981-87) for $5.3 million; and Agnes Martin’s “Untitled No.VIII” (1984) for $1.8 million.There was still room, however, for smaller buyers to join the bidding party. Dianne Vanderlip, a curator for the Denver Art Museum, picked up three key postwar works: Clyfford Still’s “Untitled (Fear)” (1945) for $1.1 million, an artist’s record for a work on paper; Mark Di Suvero’s “Bojangles” (1966-67) for $968,000, an artist’s record; and Dan Flavin’s “Monument for V. Tatlin” (1969-70) for $688,000. Ms. Vanderlip said she purchased all three works for one friend, whom she declined to identify. “I was incredibly lucky because these are just fabulous classic works,” Ms.Vanderlip said.Of the 66 lots on offer,95% were sold. Eleven records were set for a broad swath of artists, from young-ish figurative painters to older minimalists and conceptualists. Buyers were stimulated to go higher than ever for Ms. Yuskavage’s painting “Honeymoon” (1998), which sold for $1 million, as well as for works by 1960s pioneers Ryman, John Chamberlain, and Blinky Palermo.“It was phenomenal,” said Miami collector Don Rubbell, who did not bid on anything this evening. “It was not a great sale like the Scull sale [at Sotheby’s in 1986], but this was the broadest market I’ve ever seen.”The heady buying came the day after Christie’s pulled in $143 million, its second highest total ever for a sale of Postwar and Contemporary art. But there were some casualties last night, most notably Andy Warhol’s “$” (1981), which had a stiff presale estimate based on an aberrant high price of $4.5 million at Christie’s London in February.STAR LOTS OF LAST NIGHT’S SALERoy Lichtenstein, Sinking Sun (1964)Presale estimate: Undisclosed Sold for: $15.7 million Lichtenstein’s market took a huge leap when Christie’s sold “In the Car” for $16.2 million last season. Tobias Meyer said he expected this sunset, which suggests the last frame of a comic strip or the waning of an empire, to sell for $20 million, but the house never affixed an official estimate to the work.Willem de Kooning, Untitled XVI (1975)Presale estimate:$6.5 million to $8.5 million Sold for: $15.7 million De Kooning’s fluid works from the 1970s hit a new high last season, when one sold for $10 million at Christie’s. This one is busier, which means more colors per square inch.Robert Ryman, Untitled (1962)Presale estimate: $4 million to $6 million Sold for: $9.6 million Major Rymans don’t come up for auction often. This textured field of raised white impasto brushstrokes set a new record for the artist at auction.Alexander Calder, Flying Dragon (1975)Presale estimate: $6 million to $8 million Sold for: $5.6 million A sculpture announcing that space at home is not a problem, “Flying Dragon” is 30 feet high and nearly twice as long. That amount of sheet metal alone is surely worth a few hundred thousand.Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Red, Brown, New Hoover Deluxe Shampoo Polishers Yellow, Brown Doubledecker (1981-87)Presale estimate: $2.5 million to $3.5 million Sold for: $5.3 million Putting vacuum cleaners in a Plexiglas case is almost as funny as putting a urinal upside-down in an art exhibition. This update of Duchamp is also a postminimalist, post-feminist joke. Mr. Koons has said the vacuum cleaners possess a kind of hermaphroditic anatomy, with orifices and phallic projections.Jean Dubuffet, Trinite-Champs-Elysees (1961)Presale estimate: $3 million to $4 million Sold for: $5.2 million Dubuffet has been taking a drubbing at auction recently, but this is one of his “happy” 1961 paintings of Paris, full of color and incident.Mark Rothko, White, Orange, Yellow (1953)Presale estimate: $2 million to $3 million Sold for: $4.2 million This small Rothko practically emanates light. The yolky yellow and white squares against an orange background feel like the record of a rare good mood for the artist.Roy Lichtenstein, Purist Painting With Pitcher, Glass, Classical Column (1975)Presale estimate: $3.5 million to $4.5 million Sold for: $3.4 million Several of Lichtenstein’s late-career mocking riffs on other painters sold well last year at Sotheby’s. This work is a ringer for a still life by Amedee Ozenfant, a member of the “purist” circle that also included Leger and Corbusier.Willem De Kooning, Garden in Delft (1987)Presale estimate: $2.5 million to $3.5 million Sold for: $2.8 million This late de Kooning was painted when the artist was already suffering the effects of Alzheimers. It is nevertheless full of swooping, complex lines that look like nothing so much as a bunch of tulips.Jackson Pollock, The White Angel (1946)Presale estimate: $2.5 million to $3.5 million Sold for: $2.1 million From the collection of Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Zissu, a New York-area doctor, this early Pollock shows the artist working through Surrealist, Cubist, and totemic influences, even as he is drawn to more abstract forms.Final prices include the auction house’s commission, which is 20% of the first $200,000 of sale price, plus 12% of the remaining price.)

Sotheby’s Scales New Heights With Contemporary Sale

Sotheby’s Scales New Heights With Contemporary Sale

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