From a Broadway Producer’s Picasso to a Record-Smashing Ruscha, Here’s Your Guide to the Top Works in the $1 Billion Fall Auction Season

The biggest auctions of the year
are looking a bit quieter than usual. 

As auction houses prepare for a
marathon run of sales in New York next week, their lineups lack the
firepower from prestigious estates and private collections that
drove high totals in years’ past. This time around, evening sales
at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips are expected to bring in as
much as 39 percent less than last year.

In November 2018, combined
pre-sale estimates ranged from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion;
this year, that range has dropped, from $911.3 million to $1.3
billion. The week also boasts one fewer sale than last year, when
the blockbuster collection of the late travel magnate Barney
Ebsworth had its own dedicated evening auction that raked in just
under $318 million at Christie’s. 

The drop is particularly
concentrated at the top; trophy lots are in short supply. While the
November 2018 season offered 22 lots estimated at or above $20
million each, this season only boats five (three at Sotheby’s and
two at Christie’s, all but one of which are in the contemporary
evening sales). 

During a walkthrough of
Christie’s offerings, a contemporary specialist characterized the
consignment-getting process this season as being on a
“picture-by-picture” basis, compared with previous seasons where
collections and estates were won outright. And the head of
Christie’s Impressionist evening sale Jessica Fertig may have been
alluding to just that while also managing expectations when she
described the upcoming auction as “a sale of gems—small works at
approachable price points.” 

Another sign that the auction
houses may be mining new territory to bolster the bottom line is
the addition of artists who have never appeared in evening sales
before, including well established but undervalued names such as
African American artists Charles White and Alma Thomas to
Christie’s evening sale. Thomas’s work—which was previously owned by
disgraced comedian Bill Cosby—is poised to shatter her existing
$740,000 auction record if it makes its $2.2 million low
estimate.

“There’s a fresh conversation this season and it’s going to be
exciting to see the effect it has on the market when it comes time
for everyone to raise their paddles,” said Jean-Paul Engelen,
Phillips’s co-head of 20th century and contemporary art.

This season also marks the first
time Sotheby’s is operating as a private company since being
acquired by French-Israeli telecom
magnate Patrick Drahi. The $3.7 billion deal was finalized in
recent months and there have already been major management
changes—though auction experts say it’s too soon to tell how
the new ownership structure will impact dealmaking. While the
auction house will now be less beholden to shareholders in its
efforts to secure top lots, “no one wants to be the first person to
lose money under Drahi,” one expert told us.

Experts were almost universally cautious about making too many
pronouncements about the lack of high-priced works this
season. “We are well within the typical band for these
marquee New York sales,” said August Uribe, Sotheby’s head of
Impressionist and Modern art in New York. “It’s important to
remember that our perennial challenge is sourcing great works
rather than selling them—when we are able to bring great pictures
to market, the demand is absolutely there.”

Onlookers agree. “Auction
expectations have been skewed by a few blockbuster sales over the
past several seasons,” attorney and art law specialist Thomas
Danziger told Artnet News. “The best thing that could happen to the
auction houses in any given sale season is that a few big
collectors are felled, but that just didn’t happen this
year.”

Monday, November 11

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening
Sale 

Presale estimate: $148.3
million to $219.2 million

Presale estimate last year: In excess of $304.7 million

Star lot: Pablo
Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil (Françoise) (1949),
estimated at $12 million to $18 million

What to
know: The picture is an homage to Picasso’s lover and
companion Françoise Gilot, described in the catalogue as “a baroque
fantasia of twisting, circling, enveloping, organic forms.” The
consignor’s family acquired it at Sotheby’s in May 2000 for $3.3
million, according to the Artnet Price Database, giving this lot
the chance to make a 445 percent return if it hits its high
estimate. Among other highlights in the sale is a later Picasso
“mousquetaire” painting, Buste d’homme (1968), from the
collection of the late Broadway producer Terry Allen Kramer, which
carries an estimate
of $9 million to $12 million. The work was last offered at
auction in 1993 by the reclusive collector Stanley Seeger, when it
sold for $596,500. Other Impressionist classics on the block
include works by René Magritte, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani,
and Claude Monet.

Tuesday, November 12

Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening
Sale

Presale estimate: $186.8
million to $265.8 million

Presale estimate last year: $283.9 million to $393.4 million

Star lot:
Claude Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge (1903), estimated
at $20 million to $30 million

What to
know: This painting has been in the collection
of Holocaust survivor Andrea Klepetar-Fallek since 1977, when it
was purchased from Galerie Beyeler in Basel. Klepetar-Fallek and
her fourth husband, Fred Fallek, had a tradition of gifting
artworks to one another on their birthdays, and this was considered
the jewel of their collection. Although it is not one of Monet’s
most coveted series—that distinction goes to his Japanese bridges,
his paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, and the “Water
Lilies”—Sotheby’s vice chairman Brooke Lampley says the picture “is
perhaps the greatest Charing Cross Bridge painting by
Monet ever to come to the market.” Like many of his best-loved
series, it combines natural phenomena (like fog over the Thames)
with evidence of industrial transformation (smoke emanating from a
train engine). “These pictures were radical contemporary art when
they were first exhibited in 1904,” Lampley says.

Other highlights include a
Gustave Caillebotte painting, Richard Gallo et son chien
Dick, au petit-gennevilliers (1884), which has never come to
auction before and is estimated to sell for $18 million to $25
million. (It carries a third-party guarantee and is therefore
certain to sell.) Paul Signac’s vibrant seascape La Corne d’or
(Constantinople) (1907) is estimated at $14 million to $18
million and also backed with an irrevocable bid.

Wednesday, November 13

Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Evening
Sale

Presale estimate: $270.3
million to $397.8 million

Presale estimate last year: In excess of $327.1 million

Star Lot: Ed Ruscha’s
Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964), estimated at $30 million
to $40 million

What to know:
The Ruscha—which some have identified as the best consignment of
the season—is poised to set a new auction record for the artist as
soon as it hits its low estimate. The current record of $30.4
million was set five years ago at Christie’s for Smash
(1963). This time around, the house is giving the Ruscha the full
star treatment, creating a bespoke room for display as it did last
season for Jeff Koons’s
shiny Rabbit. This one is complete with benches,
curved walls, and a continuous loop of music from the era when the
painting was created. Collectors Joan and Jack Quinn acquired the
work directly from Ruscha in the early 1970s—a fact that will only
add to its luster for eager bidders. 

David Hockney is also front and
center at Christie’s again after his record-setting sale
last year, with Sur la Terrasse (1971), a sun-drenched
picture of his former lover and muse Peter Schlesinger standing on
a terrace with his back turned to the viewer and gazing over the
Marrakesh cityscape. The portrait marked the decline of the
relationship and Hockney cast himself as a kind of sad, invisible
voyeur. With an estimate of $25 million to $45 million, this
painting is expected to bring in less than half last year’s
Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
(1974), which fetched $90.3 million.  

Thursday, November 14

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening
Sale

Presale estimate:  $213.7 million to $300.3 million

Presale estimate last year: $278.4 million to $375.9 million

Star lot:
Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XXII (1977), estimated
at $25 million to $35 million

What to know:
This rare de Kooning is being offered by art dealer Robert
Mnuchin, father of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, on behalf
of an undisclosed seller. Although the estimate range lags behind
the current de Kooning record, $66.3 million set three
years ago for a painting from 1977, it would place it
among the artist’s top five auction records, according to
the Artnet Price Database. It also
comes with an irrevocable bid from a third party, ensuring that the
painting will sell. The consignor acquired it from
Mitchell-Innes and Nash gallery in 2003, back when it was one of
roughly 100 de Kooning paintings that the gallery priced between
$500,000 and $3 million while representing the artist’s estate for
a few years after his death.

Meanwhile, Mark Rothko’s
Blue Over Red (1953) is one of five lots expected to bring
in more than $20 million this season. It carries an estimate of $25
million to $35 million and last appeared at auction at Christie’s
in 2005, when it sold for $5.6 million. Other top lots include work
by Clyfford Still, a stripe painting by Brice Marden, a Piero
Manzoni “Achrome,” and a 2014 painting by Kerry James
Marshall.

Thursday, November 14

Phillips 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening
Sale

Presale estimate: In
excess of $92.2 million

Presale estimate last year: $100 million to $142 million

Star lot: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s The Ring,
estimated at $10 million to $15 million

What to know:
The painting depicts a boxer standing in the ring with his
fists raised and clutching a spear. The similarity of the figure to
a Basquiat self-portrait from that year has led some experts to
believe that the artist was depicting himself in the ring. And
although 1982, not 1981, is the most desirable year for Basquiat,
Phillips notes that the work was painted at a time when the artist
“found unprecedented levels of critical and commercial success: by
the end of 1981, Basquiat stood victorious.”

Another highlight is a
later Joan Miró painting, Paysan catalan inquiet par le
passage d’un vol d’oiseaux (1952), that has not been
shown in over six decades and was last seen in 1953 as a highlight
of a major postwar survey at Galerie Maeght in Paris and Pierre
Matisse Gallery in New York. While Phillips is usually the
destination for newer, younger contemporary fare, it has been
edging into Modern territory in recent years—and appears to be
continuing in that direction. 

The post From a Broadway Producer’s Picasso to a
Record-Smashing Ruscha, Here’s Your Guide to the Top Works in the
$1 Billion Fall Auction Season appeared first on artnet
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