Art Market Monitor

Last week, ahead of its upcoming London 20th century art evening sales, Sotheby’s saw its New York mid-season “Contemporary Curated” auction achieve a hammer total of $19.3 million ($24.3 million with buyer’s premium). The result was just above the $18.1 million pre-sale low estimate, realizing an 87 percent sell-through rate across 110 lots.

The sale offered a mix of works by emerging and mid-career blue-chip artists, and its total was below the equivalent March 2020 sale, which made $31.8 million across 209 lots. It was also below the $36.8 million achieved across 265 lots in the spring 2019 edition.

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On Tuesday, amid the crypto art craze that has taken hold of the market, Sotheby’s announced it will collaborate with the anonymous digital artist Pak for a sale this April.

The auction house’s CEO Charles Stewart said in an interview with CNBC that the sale will include both individual works of art as well as “open edition” NFTs, where multiple buyers can purchase minted tokens for the same work.

The announcement continues the NFTmayhem spurred by Christie’s sale of a work by cult digital artist Beeple last week for $69.3 million. “Obviously [NFTs have] come in a major way into our collective consciousness over the last couple of months,” said Stewart, “Partly that’s linked to the rise of crypto values.”

Sotheby’s said it chose Pak, who makes monochromatic designs featuring moving geometric forms, because of the artist’s established presence in the NFT realm. Pak has been working in the digital art sphere for over two decades, and it is unclear whether they are an individual artist or group of digital engineers. In September, the artist released a collection of five digital art works titled “Terminus” on the platform MakersPlace, and in December, they put an untitled collection of works up for sale on Nifty Gateway, a popular online marketplace that peddles NFTs.

“In the art world there’s been a pivot to digital in almost everything except the art, and now we’re getting there with the art as well,” said Stewart. Referring to a generation of younger collectors who feel less inclined to own physical works of art, Stewart said a main component of crypto art collecting is the notion of “borderless ownership.” He added, “Beyond the fact that you’ve got a new audience and new aesthetic, this really has the potential to bypass a lot of the traditional gate keepers and vetting processes of the traditional art world.”

A selection of early works by Yayoi Kusama that have remained in private hands for six decades will be offered at Bonhams during a postwar and contemporary art sale this spring. Ahead of the sale, the works will be exhibited publicly for the first time ever, in Hong Kong from April 7–22. They will then be shown in New York before being auctioned on May 12.

The sale comprises three paintings and eight works on paper that Japanese surgeon Teruo Hirose, who died in November 2019 at the age of 93. They were acquired directly from Kusama as gifts during her early career in exchange for medical care. The collection of works is expected to fetch a price of $8.8 million–$14 million.

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Christie’s closely watched sale of digital artist Beeple’s The First 5,000 Days has resulted in an unprecedented $69.3 million sale.

Following Christie’s announcement of their plans to auction off their first NFT (non-fungible token) by Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann) in an online sale two weeks ago, attention around the crypto art market surged to staggering heights virtually overnight.

The sale has drawn widespread attention among audiences both in and beyond the art world for its novelty. Over the course of the 10-day online sale, 33 bidders competed for Beeple’s digital work comprising 5,000 images that the artist, a graphic designer based in North Carolina, made over 13 years. The auction drew an unforeseeable level of bidding that moved the hammer price up to the millions, despite bidding beginning at $100 with no estimate assigned to the work.

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A floral still life painting by Chinese-French modernist Sanyu from the 1950s will be offered at Christie’s in a modern and contemporary art auction in Hong Kong on May 24. Titled Potted Chrysanthemums, the work will be on public display in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bejing, and Taipei ahead of the sale.

The painting, which depicts a set of pink chrysanthemums stemming from blue branches, one of Sanyu’s signature motifs, is estimated to sell for HKD 78 million–HKD 120 million ($11 million–$15 million). According to Christie’s statement on the sale, it is one of the few late-period still lifes by Sanyu remaining in private hands.

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