Christie’s has unveiled a group of 17 works to go on offer in the firm’s upcoming contemporary day sale on July 10 to benefit amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. They will be included in a dedicated section titled From the Studio, featuring pieces new to the market donated by primary-market pillars like Eddie Martinez, Dana Schutz, Raymond Pettibon, Rashid Johnson, Kenny Scharf, Leelee Kimmel, Michael Kagan, and Erik Parker; previously announced for the same sale were works by Cecily Brown, Urs Fischer, and George Condo.

Among the offerings is Martinez’s Untitled (Sleeper for amfAR), carrying an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000. The Brooklyn-based artist, much in demand among global collectors in recent auction seasons, completed the work while in quarantine. Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, also made in the last several months, will go on offer in the sale at an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.

While charity auctions are a long-held practice in the secondary market, this sale marks a new era for auction house leaders—forcing business strategies that target new ways to source valuable consignments and mitigate risk for clients, while feeding demand. Global auctions across top houses this week have shown that buying remains active.

For this sale, Christie’s tapped Tribeca dealer Michael Nevin, the founder of Journal Gallery, to help source emerging talent that has been in demand in the contemporary middle market. “Almost every artist contributing to the From the Studio benefit produced the work donated while in quarantine—a time of great reflection,” said Nevin in a statement. “As a result, these artworks possess a unique significance, and reference a transformative time in history.”

The houses’s partnership with a leading philanthropic organization such as amfAR brings a valuable branding moment for the firm as live programming remains halted. It also provides conservatively valued works fresh to the market to vying buyers, while eliminating risk on the consignor side.

Additionally, François-Henri Pinault—CEO of Christie’s holding company, Kering—has stepped in with an offer to bolster the sale, donating a private event and exhibition tour at the Paris museum Bourse de Commerce to competing bidders, to take place in January 2021.

Paris auction house Artcurial closed its modern and contemporary art sale on Wednesday, bringing in $10.2 million across 25 lots, with a 76 percent sell-through rate. Leading the sale, which was directed by auctioneer Francis Briest, was a monumental black steel sculpture from 1963 by Alexander Calder, which sold for $5.6 million. The work nearly doubled its estimate to establish a new record price for a Calder sculpture of this scale.

After protracted telephone bidding, the work placed with a European collector. The 11½-foot-tall metal structure was initially installed at La Colle-sur-Loup, a village in Southern France. In recent months, demand among international collectors for large-scale outdoor sculpture has come to light, with blue-chip dealers offering high-value works via virtual salesrooms during Art Basel and Frieze, and big numbers achieved for standing works by foremost names like Louise Bourgeoise across top auctions.

Alexander Calder, Sans titre, 1963. Courtesy Artcurial.

Works on paper by American artists Ed Ruscha and Jean-Michel Basquiat failed to find buyers, but postwar abstract masters performed well in the modest offerings. Alongside the record set in the auction, a black 1981 painting by French centenarian Pierre Soulages featuring the artist’s heavy impasto technique sold for €877,000 ($990,000), hammering at the low end of its estimate, €800,000 to €1,200,000.

Elsewhere in the sale, a 1986 lavender ground abstract landscape by French-Chinese master Zao Wou-Ki came to auction for the first time, selling for €777,800 ($878,000). With rising global acclaim, Zao Wou-Ki’s market in Paris is expanding. A neutral triptych by Spanish abstract painter Antoni Tàpies placed within estimate at €294,200 ($332,000). The work last came to auction in a Christie’s Paris sale in May 2012.

Phillips wrapped the HKD 72,600,000 ($9.4 million) 20th century and contemporary art and design day sale in Hong Kong on Thursday after a successful HKD 199,495,000 ($26 million) evening auction the day prior. Jonathan Crockett, Phillips chairman of Asia, directed the sale of 39 lots, which saw a 94 percent sell-through rate.

The sale’s top lot was Chinese painter Liu Ye‘s single-figure nude Girl! (2004), which sold for HKD 7.8 million ($1.01 million), well in excess of its presale high value. Liu’s work set a new record in Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale, ringing in the second-highest sum ever reached for a work sold in an Asian auction.

The sale marked the Asian auction debut for French-born, Los Angeles–based painter Claire Tabouret, with her 2015 painting Les déguisements (Disguises) scoring its high estimate of HKD 750,000 ($96,200) five times over to establish a new HKD 3.5 million ($451,500) record for the artist. The result far surpassed her previous record price of $81,250, which was achieved earlier this year. The work comes to a new audience abroad following the figurative painter’s February exhibition at Night Gallery in Los Angeles.

Japanese artist and global auction staple Yoshitomo Nara’s Wheels Go Round (1994) hammered at the high end of its estimate, selling for HKD 3.8 million ($483,750). Chinese artist Chu Teh-Chun’s No.111 (2011) made HKD 2.4 million ($307,000).

With emerging names competing for big sales alongside blue-chip ones, the sale extended Phillips’s reach as a global leader in the contemporary middle market. The auction established six new artist records for contemporary names alongside Tabouret’s, among them Maria Taniguchi, Cleon Peterson, and Ruben Pang. An untitled Taniguchi from 2016 went for HKD 437,500 ($56,400), blowing away its high estimate of HKD 260,000 ($33,300).

This auction’s total sales were up 31 percent from the 2019 spring season equivalent, which brought in $7.2 million. Thursday’s sale also shows a steady increase from the $6.6 million brought in by a similar Phillips Hong Kong auction held in fall 2018, the house’s first contemporary day sale staged in the city.

Chinese painter Firenze Lai, an auction newcomer, was represented here by a grayscale ink on paper figurative work, The Army (2014), which sold for HKD $237,500 ($30,644), nearly four times its high HKD 60,000 ($7,700) estimate. Another piece by Lai, Folding Arms (2012) performed similarly, selling for HKD 200,000 ($25,800) against a high estimate of HKD 80,000 ($10,300).

Vying bidders also drove up numbers for in-demand primary-market darlings like Genieve Figgis, Daniel Arsham, and Nicolas Party. Figgis’s 2014 painting Ladies Picnic collected two and a half times its high estimate of HKD 400,000 ($51,300), finding a buyer at HKD 1.03 million ($132,300)—which is still only a third of the Irish artist’s record of HKD 2,375,000 (more than $300,000), realized at a Phillips Hong Kong sale in November 2019.