Christie’s $690M Double-Header Art Sales Event

Christie’s fall marquee auctions kicked off Monday night with a combined $690 million in sales with fees, exceeding the pre-sale low estimate of $534.7 million but falling slightly short of the $731.5 million high estimate. The auctions, held in a packed house, featured bidding wars on at least a dozen lots.

The evening began with the sale of works from the robert and Patricia Ross Weiss collection, comprising 18 lots spanning 20th-century movements like Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, and including pieces by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Mark Rothko. This was just a portion of the weiss material Christie’s will auction this week, with over 60 additional lots to be sold in subsequent sales.

Following the Weiss sale, a 62-lot 20th-century sale included further works by Matisse and Picasso, as well as pieces by Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Marc Chagall, and Alberto Giacometti.

The $690 million total represents a 41 percent increase over the $489 million generated in May’s equivalent sale, which included a 20th-century sale and an auction of works from the Len and Louise Riggio collection. In November 2023, a similar double-header sale brought in $486 million on 72 lots.

Christie’s reported a sell-through rate of 97 percent by value and 96 percent by lot for Monday’s auctions. the Max Ernst chess sculpture Le roi jouant avec la reine (1944/61) for $20.2 million on a $18 million high estimate. (For reference, another edition of that work sold for $24.4 million at christie’s Paul Allen sale in 2022.)

He also came away the victor on the most intense auction battle of the evening, for Marc Chagall’s le songe du Roi David (1966), from the collection of the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art. After sparring with Rotter, senior London-based specialist Michelle McMullan, and Cyanne Chutkow, deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art, DeLuca won the work for $26.5 million with fees on a $12 million high estimate.

“There was a lot of money waiting on the sidelines [before tonight]. More a lack of confidence than a lack of capital. Tonight I felt confidence has returned to art,” DeLuca told ARTnews after the sale. deluca confirmed that the Ernst and the Chagall were purchased for clients. Of the Matisse, he said, “Can’t win them all!”

Rotter, for his part, seemed invigorated by monday’s activity. “This felt like what an auction should feel like,” he told ARTnews after the sale. “I feel the tide rising.The collections added a lot of depth.Some of the prices really came down and that resulted in engagement from collectors.”

While the bidding activity was no doubt encouraging, and made for a lively sale, 38 lots hammered squarely in their pre-sale range, often seeing spirited bidding right up until the low estimate threshold was reached. After that, the bidding petered out.

The final lot of the Weis sale, Mark Rothko’s striking No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), from 1958, was a typical example. After bathing the audience in a red-orange light mimicking the painting, Meyer started the bidding at $34 million. Rotter, vice-chairman katharine Arnold, and a Connecticut-based online bidder quickly pushed the bidding to the work’s $50 million estimate.Rotter’s buyer dropped out, and Meyer coaxed along the online bidder for a few more bids before Arnold sealed the deal at a hammer price of $53.5 million. While that was good for $62.2 million with fees, making the work the top one of the evening, the frenzy just moments earlier seemed to portend a more explosive result.

there were also more than a handful of works hammering below estimate—21 in total, not including the works that failed to sell. Many of those works were by some of the most esteemed artists on offer, including Monet’s falaise des Petites-Dalles and Nymphéas (1881), Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis (ca. 1908), Edgar Degas’s la Coiffure (La Toilette), ca. 1892–95,J.M.W. Turner’s Ehrenbreitstein,or The Bright Stone of Honor and the Tomb of Marceau,from Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’,and Picasso’s Le Baigneur and La Lecture (Marie-Thérèse),from 1957 and 1932,respectively.

Evan Beard, president of secondary market gallery Level & Co., told ARTnews that the mixed results lie more with the estimates than the works themselves. “A healthy, rational market,” he said.“estimates that got pushed underperformed, and the great things flew. But it’s not 2021, when everything flew.” He described the environment as now being “more selective.”

The sale concluded with Picasso’s Mère et enfant (1965) hammering for $100,000 over its low estimate at $4.1 million after half a dozen bids. With fees, the work came to $5 million, garnering a hearty round of cheers and claps, after a two-and-a-half hour sale that sustained bidding energy throughout.

Before the sale began,Christie’s chairman and former CEO Guillaume Cerutti noted to ARTnews that the first sale of the week sets the tone.If that’s the case, consider Monday a tentative step in the right direction—the crowd was there and bidders were diving into the water. But, as Beard put it, this isn’t 2021 anymore.

“For the first time in a while we have the quality we didn’t have for a while,” Cerutti said.“There have been good vibes all week.”