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The white-glove sale saw all 35 works sell, with just two lots withdrawn before the start of the sale.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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$103 M. Picasso Stuns in Christie’s $481 M. 20th Century Art Sale as New Format Triumphs

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Pablo Picasso, Femme assise près d'une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse), 1932.
Pablo Picasso,Femme assise près d'une fenêtre (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.)
Christie’s follow-up to its new 21st century art sale, which brought in $211 million on Tuesday, was a slightly weightier 20th century art auction with 50 lots and a pre-sale estimate in excess of $345 million. Covering works made between 1880 and 1980, the auction made a grand total of $481.1 million, with just one lot unsold. (Prices for sold works include buyer’s premium; estimates do not.) This week’s marquee sales were bound to be a close call between Christies’s and Sotheby’s. Before they were held, the former’s two sales were expected to bring in $490 million, while the latter’s three-auction marathon the previous evening was estimated at $436 million. But last night’s auction made Christies’s new formula look like a winner. Nine works carried estimates higher than $10 million, so the sale was seen as a test of confidence at the high end of the market.

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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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$93 M. Basquiat Leads Christie’s 21st C. Evening Sale, $17 M. Cryptopunks Among Trending Talent

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, In This Case From, 1983.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, In This Case, 1983.
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.)
On Tuesday evening Christie’s launched its new 21st-century sale category (1980s to now) with a 39-lot sale estimated to fetch more than $145 million. Timed an hour later than normal, it ate into America’s dining schedules and Europe’s deep sleep time. And to say that it was all about Asia would be an exaggeration, as barely 7 or 8 lots attracted bidding from Hong Kong. Still, after two hours of remote bidding and eleven record prices, the sale totaled a very healthy $210.5 million, realizing a 95 percent sell-through rate (sold prices include the buyers’ premium; estimates do not). There was no precise precedent for comparison, as previous contemporary art sales included postwar work, henceforth to be included in their 20th-century sales (starting in the 1880s). Christie’s did experiment splitting 20th century and 21st century in the late 1990s, leaving Impressionists to merge with 19th century, but it didn’t work. Now, a quarter of a century on, there is far more contemporary art to choose from. Christie’s last evening contemporary art sale in New York before the pandemic in November 2019 scored $325 million with 54 lots including postwar art; the equivalent sale in May 2019 was $441 million. The drop was to be expected after shifting the postwar material.

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