On Friday, Christie’s staged its ONE sale, a global relay style auction and the first of its kind in the houses’ history. The four-hour long sale achieved a total result of $420 million with 78 lots offered across Christie’s global headquarters in Hong Kong, New York, Paris, and London—led by principal auctioneers across the four regions, Elaine Kwok, Cécile Verdier, Jussi Pylkkänen and Adrien Meyer. The global event closes the first set of milestones of the new virtual auction era. The auction hammered at $362 million, above its pre-sale low estimate of $337 million, realizing a total sell-through rate of 94 percent.

No longer a traditional evening sale, the hybrid auction kicked off with the first session late in the evening at 9:15 p.m. HKT at Christie’s Hong Kong headquarters, and in the morning for New York at 9:15 a.m. EST. Jussi Pyllkkänen opened the livestream with an address to the global audience introducing his colleagues.

As the sale opened, Christie's LIVE, the firm's transactional platform had already reach its maximum capacity for view-only attendees, but resulted in no delays for bidders. In a post-sale press conference, Christie's CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, confirmed the sale's virtual unique visitors swelled to over 20,000.

"I think the technical ease with which we were able to bid with one another, without a time lag as if we were literally in the same room was sublime," Pylkkanen said in a statement following the sale. "I think this will have a dramatic effect on our reach."

In New York, the last leg of the auction, seven works on offer in the sale came with a third-party guarantee. Across the four sessions, the top-grossing lots came last in the Rockefeller Center segment, directed by Adrien Meyer, Christie's Chairman of Global Private Sales.

In a press conference following the sale, Christie's representatives addressed whether or not the global ONE auction format would be deployed again. Alex Rotter, Christie's Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, noted the results showed promise for the future. "It shows that the market is ready for new formats of selling, and new formats for thinking about collecting art," Rotter said.

Kwok, director of Christie's Chairmans Office in Asia, opened the sale to a full room of masked participants observing social distancing and other local health guidelines in the Hong Kong session. The four-location sale proved to be ambitious. The opening lot, a work by Chinese-American artist Martin Wong, revealed the four miked auctioneers fielding incoming bids would be forced to speak over one another. Though the excess noise was benignly disorienting, the production proved to be a reach for even the most experienced auctioneer.

This report on the Sotheby's Contemporary Evening sale in Hong Kong sale for July 2020 by Angelica Villa 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 Friday, Christie’s staged its marquee Hong Kong auction combining the modern and contemporary categories. The sale came just before the global "ONE" auction which also kicked off in the region’s headquarters.

The Christie's auction drew a fully packed room, with masked staff bidding by telephone without having to observe social distancing recommendations. The successful auction achieved a total result of HKD 607.2 million ($78.3 million) from 45 lots, with an overall sell-through rate of 96 percent. One lot was withdrawn before the auction began.

Leading the sale was Chinese-French painter Sanyu’s red and white floral still life, painted in the 1940s–50s, which came to auction with an estimate of HKD 60 million to HKD 80 million ($7.8 million–$10.4 million). After a protracted bidding battle, the work sold for HKD 191.6 million ($24.7 million) with buyer’s premium tripling its low estimate and setting a new record for a Sanyu still life. Sanyu's last nude painting, Nu (1965), holds the Chinese master’s current record price of HKD 198 million ($25.24 million), achieved at Sotheby's last year.

This report on the Sotheby's Contemporary Evening sale in Hong Kong sale for July 2020 by Angelica Villa 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.) 

After Sotheby's successful Hong Kong modern evening auction on Wednesday, the contemporary evening sale on Thursday brought in HKD 595 million ($76.8 million) across 39 lots, with only three lots failing to find buyers, leading to a 94 percent sell-through rate.

Overall, Hong Kong demonstrated solid demand for high-value art, the previous day's sale maintaining totals near 2019 levels, and today's sale followed suit. David Hockney’s 30 Sunflowers from 1996—one of two of his large-scale floral paintings—sold for $14.8 million, exceeding its estimate of HKD 80 million ($10.3 million) and making it the second most expensive work by a Western artist to sell at an auction in Asia.  Prior to its sale in a Phillips New York contemporary auction in May 2011 for $2.5 million, the painting had had only one owner. The sale's international exhibition tour, scheduled for Los Angeles, Jakarta, Hong Kong, and Taipei, was interrupted in February by global closures sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This report on the Phillips's Contemporary Day sale for July 2020 by Angelica Villa 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.) 

Last week, before achieving several record results in its evening sales, Phillips hosted its 20th-century and contemporary art day sale, bringing in $10.2 million across 140 lots on offer, seeing an 84 percent sell-through rate overall.

Auctioned in a remote-bidding format during a live-streamed sale, the leading lot across the day sale’s morning and afternoon sessions was Julian Schnabel’s Lazarus, Second Painting for Aldo Moro from 1979, which went for $435,000, at more than four times the low estimate of $100,000. Damien Hirst’s 2010 Beautiful, Flaming Lips Day, Form of a Shell Painting sold at its low estimate for $399,000, and Mary Corse’s untiled painting from 2006 realized a selling price of $250,000 with buyer’s premium, landing within its estimate of $220,000 to $280,000.

Among the top ten sellers of the day sale auctions that far surpassed their pre-sale estimates was Ghanian-born figurative painter Amoako Boafo’s 2018 portrait After the nail color, which bested it’s low estimate of $50,000 by eight times, selling for a total of $225,000. Nicole Eisenman,’s figurative painting Hunnenschlacht from 2001 acquired by the seller from Leo Koenig also surpassed its low estimate of $120,000, achieving a price of $212,500.