Having lost millions of dollars on guarantees last November, closely held Christie’s cut back on risky incentives to sellers. Tuesday’s evening sale had 10 guaranteed lots, down from 50 at the similar auction in May 2015. Eight had been financed by third parties. One of the lots guaranteed by Christie’s, a small photo-realist Gerhard Richter painting estimated at $7 million to $10 million, failed to sell.
“Within the context of May 2016 it was a strong sale,” said Guy Jennings, managing director of the Fine Art Fund Group in London. “It’s not 2014 or 2015. It’s silly to pretend otherwise. The world has changed.”
Asian buyers accounted for about 20 percent of the sales total, said Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s president and the evening’s auctioneer.
‘Opportunity’ Realized
“It’s someone who’s been buying for a long time and realized there was an opportunity,” said Gorvy, declining to elaborate.
Other Asian buyers, bidding in the salesroom, won a piece by Yves Klein that sold for $3.3 million and a painting by Roy Lichtenstein that went for $8.7 million.
Bidding was muted on the majority of lots estimated at more than $10 million.
Mark Rothko’s 1957 painting “No. 17” fetched $32.6 million, going to the single bidder. The 7.6-foot-tall canvas showing two greenish rectangles surrounded by a field of blue was estimated at $30 million to $40 million.
Clyfford Still’s abstract painting “PH-234" also had one bidder -- a telephone client of Laura Paulson, Christie’s chairman of postwar and contemporary art for the Americas -- that sold for $28.2 million.
Thin Air