Colin Gleadell runs some numbers on the May Contemporary sales in New York. The total estimates for all three houses are between $807m and $1.1bn spread across nearly 1300 works. If the high end of the estimate range is achieved average prices would approach $1m. But those numbers are deceptive:
- 16 works estimated at $10 million or more, many of them carrying guarantees that ensure that they will sell.
- 1.5% of lots account for 42 per cent of the total value of the sales.
- 25 Basquiat works for auction that week with a combined $56.3 million estimate
But more than half of that Basquiat total should come from one single work.
Art Sales: They’ll Take Manhattan (Telegraph)
