Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Phillips-Poly Sale in Hong Kong Nets $63.8 M., With Records for Salman Toor, Loie Hollowell

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Phillips Hong Kong Evening sale

On Tuesday night, Phillips held a modern and contemporary art sale in Hong Kong that brought in a hammer total of HKD 405 million ($52.2 million), or HKD 492 with premium ($63.8 million). Staged in collaboration with the Chinese auction house Poly, it well exceeded its pre-sale low estimate of HKD 284 million ($36.6 million), which is calculated without the buyer’s premium.

The white-glove sale saw all 35 works sell, with just two lots withdrawn before the start of the sale. The strong result is 30 percent higher than the one generated by the first Phillips-Poly sale in December and double the $25.7 million made across 22 lots in last year’s equivalent Hong Kong sale in July.

Seven of the lots in this sale were guaranteed. Together, these lots had a collected low estimate of HKD 115 million ($14.8 million). Altogether, these works hammered above expectations at HKD 132 million ($18.15 million), accounting for 35 percent of the sale’s total.

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Sales Report: Art Basel Hong Kong May 2021

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Hauser and Wirth
Hauser & Wirth installation Art Basel Hong Kong, May 2021.
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
The report is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

Hauser & Wirth (Zurich, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Somerset, St. Moritz) sold George Condo’s paintings Blues in A flat (2021) for $1.75 million and Haunted By Demons for $800,000; Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Broken Crowd (2021) for $595,000 to the Long Museum, Shanghai; Paul McCarthy’s WS, White Snow Flower Girl #2 (2016) for $575,000; Jenny Holzer’s oil on linen painting TOP SECRET SLASH (2021) for $350,000; Gary Simmons’s canvas Hangfire (2019) for $175,000; Pipilotti Rist’s video on monitor Wasserschatz (Schwarzlicht) <Water Treasure (Black Light)>, 2019, for $160,000; Matthew Day Jackson’s panel Vase with Flowers (2018) for $100,000; Rita Ackerman oil on canvas Orange Clarity (2018) for $95,000; Keith Tyson’s oil on aluminum work Bedside Flowers (2016) for $65,000.

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Early Kusama Works Fetch $15.2 M. at Auction, Nearly Doubling Expectations

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Yayoi Kusama, Hudson River, 1960.
Yayoi Kusama, Mississipi River, 1960.

A group of 11 early works by Yayoi Kusama from the late 1950s and early ’60s that have been in private hands for six decades sold on Wednesday for a collective $15.2 million—almost double the pre-sale expectation of $8.8 million—at Bonhams during a postwar and contemporary art sale in New York.

The trove consists of three paintings and eight works on paper that Kusama gifted to the late Japanese cardiovascular surgeon Teruo Hirose in exchange for medical care. Bidders from China, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States competed to buy the works, according to a Bonhams spokesperson.

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A Season of Optimism: Strong Demand in March-April Cross-Category Sales

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Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse)
Pablo Picasso, Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse), 1932.
Christie’s.
The report is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

Following a period of experimentation with new sale formats and technological upgrades, the top auction houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips—have now found their footing in a post-pandemic era. In an attempt to make up for the lost revenue of the first months of the pandemic and the constrained Summer sales, the houses staged a series of smaller cross-category sales from October to December 2020. Still, during those smaller sales the portion held in New York and London lagged behind buying volume in Hong Kong by a noticeable margin, a shift in the usual dynamic that plays out across global sale centers.

In response, the three houses invested even deeper in creating thematic cross-category auctions combining trophy lots from old masters to the ultra-contemporary. The London- and Paris-based sales staged between March and April this year saw fewer ultra-high value works (+$40 million.) This despite evidence that demand for top tier works has remained undiminished throughout the pandemic. Even at a lower price point, the top lots of the London and Paris evening auctions were works made by art historical giants like Jean Michael Basquiat, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh.

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Sales Report: Frieze New York May 2021

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Casey Kelbaugh
The report is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

Hauser and Wirth sold a Louise Bourgeois work in the range of $1 million, a work by Ed Clark for $650,000, a George Condo painting for $800,000, a Rashid Johnson work for $750,000, a work by Simone Leigh at $300,000, Gary Simmons at $200,000, and a Günther Förg at $560,000.

James Cohen sold a number of mixed media canvases by Trenton Doyle Hancock for prices ranging between $38,000-$60,000.

David Zwirner sold out their booth of new Dana Schutz paintings at prices ranging $700,000-$900,000, and sculptures for $160,000-$250,000.

Kasmin sold numerous works priced from $8,000–$350,000 by artists including Cynthia Daignault, Liam Everett, Jan-Ole Schiemann, Elliott Puckette, Tina Barney, Walton Ford, JB Blunk, and Matvey Levenstein.

Lehmann Maupin sold out of works by Dominic Chambers for prices ranging from $35,000 to $40,000 and work by Hernan Bas for between $350,000 and $400,000. Goodman Gallery sold a William Kentridge drawing at $700,000 and two quilt tapestries by Hank Willis Thomas at $120,000 and $84,000.

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