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.)

On Tuesday, Christie’s set artist records for new-to-market works during its final old masters evening sale of the year.  Live-streamed from its London headquarters, the sale brought in £18.7 million on the hammer or £22.8 million with buyer's fees ($30.9 million) across 38 lots. That total landed solidly within the pre-sale estimate range of £14 million-£21 million. Led by Christie's global president Jussi Pylkknänen, the evening sale saw a sell-through rate of 86 percent. That was equivalent to last year's sale, which had a slightly higher total of £24.2 million made across 44 lots. Three lots were withdrawn before the sale, including Milanese painter Bernadino Luini's anticipated canvas, The Nativity, with the Journey to Egypt, estimated at £3 million-£5 million.

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, London, Somerset, Los Angeles, New York, St. Moritz, Hong Kong):

• Sold George Condo’s oil painting Distanced Figures (2020) for $2.2 million, John Chamberlain’s painted-and-stainless-steel sculpture SUPERSTARMARTINI (1999) for $1 million, Rashid Johnson’s oil on linen Anxious Red Painting July 8th 2020 for 675,000, Avery Singer’s Soda Gun (2020) for $425,000, and Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture Sphinx (2020) for $400,000. Buyers also purchased works by Lorna Simpson, Mary Heilmann and Nicolas Party for prices between $300,000–$350,000.

The analysis of the December 8 Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale at Sotheby's 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.)

On Tuesday, Sotheby’s capped the year with a final hybrid live-streamed evening auction titled “Impressionist, Modern & Contemporary Art | An Evening Sale” at its New York headquarters that generated $63.3 million with buyers fees, across 23 lots sold, realizing a 92 percent sell-through rate. The sale hammered at $52.9 million, in the middle of the pre-sale estimate range of $40.1 million-$58.6 million. That the sale managed to perform so well was likely because five lots by Paul Delvaux, Marc Chagall, Milton Avery, Paul Cézanne and Edvard Munch were withdrawn before the sale began. Had those works been included, the stakes would have been higher. Only two of the remaining 25 lots failed to find buyers.

The total was a modest sum compared to Sotheby's $283.9 million evening sale on October 28th; Tuesday night's hour-long auction occupied a tame energy, missing the usual cameos from top specialists like Amy Cappellazzo and Brooke Lampley, whose animated bidding and wry expressions typically add a suggestion of a backstory to the saleroom drama. The year-end finale auction captured an overall trend in the industry: to keep up with demand, smaller evening sales are staged more frequently throughout each season. What remains to be seen is whether these sales will accelerate as the pandemic eases. If they do, will the traditional "marquee" week become a thing of the past?

Fifteen of the sold lots were backed with guarantees or irrevocable bids, their collective low estimate sum of $33 million represented 82 percent of the sale’s pre-estimated total. Only a few months ago, guarantees seemed like a vestige of a different era as eager sellers eschewed down-side protection in favor of upside rewards. But the pandemic has watched the art market go from an appetite for works perceived to be a bargain to a picky market focused on a few favored artists.

For the second time, Sotheby’s shot a pre-show video hosted by writer and public radio host Kurt Andersen. This time, the program’s specialist interviews served to promote items from the luxury and auxiliary sales including vintage watches, books and manuscripts sales and Ansel Adams photographs from the upcoming David Arrington collection sale in mid-December.

The analysis of the December 7 Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sales at Phillips 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.)

Phillips was aiming to see the year out on a high note this evening with a sale of 35 lots of 20^th century and contemporary art that carried a $110 million-$160 million estimate. So far this year, no evening sale of modern and contemporary art at any of Phillips's international branches has made than $50 million (the joint New York Hong Kong sale last week). The highest in New York was $41 million in July. But tonight they surpassed that and hit their estimate with a $134.6 million total– also the highest total for a Phillips contemporary art sale in New York and a 25% increase on the equivalent sale last winter.

This time, they were really gunning for it. 4 works were estimated to bring over $10 million each and 14 lots were guaranteed (13 by third parties) with a combined low estimate of $89.6 million or 81.5% of the total– a high percentage even for Phillips. As chairman, Ed Dolman, has said in the past: “We need to make guarantees to get the works in for sale.”

The top of the list was David Hockney’s 7 foot-by-5-foot 1980 painting Nichols Canyon, a view close to his home in California. Consigned by an anonymous ‘Distinguished American Collector’, this was, in fact Seattle-based real-estate developer Richard Hedreen— the American collector currently better known for buying a Frans Hals from Sotheby’s in a private sale in 2011 for $11.75 million, only to be told that scientific tests suggested that it was a forgery. Sotheby’s reimbursed Hedreen but is still fighting a high-profile legal case with one of the sellers who asserts it is genuine.