Sotheby’s Paris sale of Contemporary art made €13.8m (or $16.5m) according to ArtInfo.com:
Sotheby’s priciest lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1984 Joy, a relatively lighthearted — but huge, at more than 7 by 5 feet — work from the often dread-filled painter. The winning bidder paid €1.5 million ($1.8 million), well above the piece’s €700–900,000 ($840,000–1.1 million) estimate.
The second-place finisher was a comparatively somber work, a 1960 white and black abstraction titled Hiver (“Winter”) by the Portuguese-French painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. The auction’s cover lot, it sold for €1.1 million ($1.3 million), beating its €800,000 ($960,000) high estimate. Two other works by Viera da Silva also found buyers: a nine-inch-by-nine-inch aquamarine canvas made €55,000 ($66,000), and a smaller abstraction in more somber blues fetched €61,000 ($73,000).
Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki’s 13 Fevrier 1992 (1992) was a breakout performer, more than tripling its €300,000 ($360,000) high estimate as it sold for €960,000 ($1.2 million). However, Pierre Soulages’ similarly date-titled work Peinture 159 x 202 cm, 17 Septembre 1963 (1963) failed to perform, making €349,000 ($419,000) with its premium — just failing to reach its €350,000 ($420,000) low estimate, despite a recent critically lauded retrospective at the Centre Pompidou.
Bolstered by Basquiat, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sale Takes $16.5 Million in Paris (ArtInfo.com)
