A shimmering landscape by Gustav Klimt fetched $53.2 million at Sotheby’s on May 16, leading a three-hour nightly bidding marathon that kept turning with last-minute withdrawals, additional irrevocable bids and considerably reduced reserves.
In the end, the maneuver paid off: Sotheby’s total for two consecutive sales reached $427 million, right in the middle of the pre-sale target. (Final prices include fees, contrary to estimates. Note that Sotheby’s charges 26% on top of the hammer price of up to $1 million.)
While Sotheby’s touted the overall results as its third-highest tally for a single evening, that result was not always evident in the auction room. Sometimes painfully protracted, proceedings were led by Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker, who fought for every bid, no matter how big or how long it took to get it.
“He wasn’t able to direct the piece like he normally does,” said art dealer Ray Waterhouse. “He allowed people to take time off. It was slow.
The auction room often seemed stubbornly silent, with many after lots sold on a single bid to Sotheby’s employees, presumably representing the third-party backers.
Cecily Brown, Free games for May (2015). Estimated between $3 and $5 million, it sold for $6.7 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
“People are a little more restrained,” said Philip Hoffman, founder and CEO of the Fine Art Group. “There’s still a lot of money, but they won’t go crazy.”
The evening began with a small dedicated sale of 15 lots from the collection of Mo Ostin, a powerful musical director who died last year. Longtime Warner Bros. chief executive Ostin was tasked with bringing a list of names “from a dream world music hall of fame” to his company’s labels, read the New York Times obituary. “It includes pivotal 1950s singers like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr.; 1960s and 1970s innovators like Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead; and 80s and 90s game changers like Madonna, REM and Green Day.
Along the way, Ostin has collected an enviable treasure trove of art, which is on offer at Sotheby’s in evening and daytime sales.
“Mo’s love of art came second only to his love of music,” his friend, actor (and art enthusiast) Steve Martin once said.
Gustave Klimt, Insel im Attersee (c. 1901–2). With an unpublished estimate, it sold for $53.2 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Tonight, the first batch generated $123.7 million, sitting in the middle of the pre-sale estimate range of $103.3 million to $155.3 million; only one work, a work on paper by Willem de Kooning, did not sell. The star of the group was an emblematic painting by René Magritte, The Empire of Lights, which depicts a dark street with an illuminated house on a bright blue sky background. The 1951 painting was estimated between $35 million and $55 million and attracted four bidders, starting at $24 million and moving in increments of $500,000.
The result came in well short of the auction record of $79.4 million for the Belgian surrealist painter, reached just a year ago for a later, larger version of the The Empire of Lights. (There are 17 paintings in the series; Ostin bought his, numbered “III,” in 1979, according to Sotheby’s.)
Another Magritte, The Domain of Arnheim (1949), grossed $18.9 million against an estimate of $15–25 million. Taking its title from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the canvas depicts a mountain range with an eagle-shaped peak, seen through a broken window.
A highlight was Free games for May, a painting by Cecily Brown, which is currently enjoying a mid-career retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The first batch of the evening, it attracted a flurry of bids, which propelled it past the high estimate of $5 million to the final price of $6.71 million, just short of that. Brown’s auction record of $6.77 million. The previous night, Christie’s sold a larger brown canvas for $6.7 million.
Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30 (1907). Estimated between $3 and $5 million, it sold for $9.1 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Not all of the performances were as star-studded as Ostin’s music roster. Works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell and Arshile Gorky fell below their low estimates. 1962 by Cy Twombly Untitled the painting was the most dramatic example, with Barker releasing it on an offer of $10 million, against a low estimate of $14 million.
The Modern Evening Auction, which followed the Ostin Collection, included 48 lots. The total reached $303.1 million, compared to the pre-sale target of $272.1 million at $378.7 million (adjusted midway through the sale, as additional lots were pulled of the range, presumably to avoid being publicly unsold). In total, 83% of the lots have been sold, according to Sotheby’s.
One highlight was a dark 1907 bedroom by Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Estimated between 3 and 5 million dollars, Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30, opened at $1 million and eventually grossed $9.1 million, a new auction record for the Danish painter. It was acquired by an American museum, according to Sotheby’s.
The monumental stone trio by Isamu Noguchi, Family (1956-1957), which sold for $12.3 million, surpassing the high estimate of $8 million and setting a new high for the Japanese-American artist. It included a 16ft ‘father’, 12ft ‘mother’ and 6ft ‘child’ statue, and was commissioned by famed modernist architect Gordon Bunshaft in 1956. Sotheby’s Mexico representative Lulu Creel, won the award on behalf of a client.
Isamu Noguchi, Family (1956–57). Estimated between $6 and $8 million, it sold for an artist record $12.3 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Prior to the sale, Sotheby’s had guaranteed 14 lots and sold 10 to third-party investors (other irrevocable offers were added later). One of the main of these lots was the Klimt, which would end up going to a private Japanese collection after a seven-minute battle between Brooke Lampley, global head of sales for global fine art, and the president of Sotheby’s in Japan, Yasuaki Ishizaka.
The six lots withdrawn included works by Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Gauguin. Eight others did not sell, including two of the four works consigned by the heirs of legendary French dealer Ambroise Vollard after the resolution of a restitution case earlier this year.
The most precious of them, a still life by Gauguin, Still life with Chinese peonies and mandolin (1885), had resided at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris from 1986 to the present. Estimated between 10 and 15 million dollars, it attracted a single bidder, Wendi Lin, president of Sotheby’s for Asia, sold for 10.4 million dollars. Asian collectors were active throughout the sale, according to the auction house, buying a third of the lots by value.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of a Man in March (around 1620). With an estimate of $20–30 million, it sold for $26.2 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Surprisingly – and indicative of the cheeky category shift practiced by both houses – the modern auction included a 400-year-old painting, Portrait of a Man in March (circa 1620), by Peter Paul Rubens. It was one of the four lots guaranteed by Sotheby’s without being backed by an irrevocable auction. Estimated between 20 and 30 million dollars, it reached 26.2 million dollars, the fourth highest price for the Dutch master.
A more typical participant, Edward Hopper’s landscape, Cobb’s Barns, South Truro (1930-1933), was consigned to the Whitney Museum of American Art to support future acquisitions. Unfortunately, it only attracted one bidder, despite gracing the walls of the White House’s Oval Office under President Barack Obama. It sold for $7.2 million, falling short of the low estimate of $8 million. It wasn’t a good night for Georgia O’Keeffe either; whose two paintings failed to sell. One of them, Lake George Barn (1929), was guaranteed by Sotheby’s (and estimated between 4 and 6 million dollars).
“It may not seem like such a good sale, but for me the estimates were just too high,” said Andy Terner, a private art dealer. “It’s really competitive, especially this year. I think there is a certain reluctance to sell in an uncertain market. Auction houses are almost forced to be aggressive with estimates. But the market speaks for itself on auction night.
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