The week of the New York art auctions each May is usually a pretty splendid affair. At Rockefeller Center, the racks of florals that dot Rock Plaza outside of Christie’s are in full bloom, welcoming into the lobby the world’s richest art collectors and their proxies, ready to spend freely on work by the world’s most in-demand contemporary artists.
The mood was a bit different this past Wednesday, and not just because of the soaking rain. During the previous two nights, sales at Christie’s and its uptown rival, Sotheby’s, teetered on the verge of disaster for the entire run, each punctuated by enormously disappointing strikeouts. On Monday, Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, put on the block by Belgian collectors who bought it nearly 60 years ago, was expected to sell for $30 million—a not outrageous number. A similar example sold for $20.4 million in 2014 at Sotheby’s, and Warhol comps reside in the Art Institute of Chicago and The Met. Instead, the work was withdrawn, with the announcement coming moments before the opening gavel rap.
The bigger whiff came Tuesday night at Sotheby’s, where the son of the late Manhattan real estate tycoon Sheldon Solow had consigned one of the family’s masterpieces, a haunting sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, the only version of his iconic Grande tête mince works cast and then painted. This was a discretionary consignment—that is, put on the market by choice, and not because of death, debt, or divorce—with the idea that the proceeds would benefit the Soloviev Foundation’s favorite causes: Henry Street Settlement, Citymeals-on-Wheels, and the Southampton Animal Shelter. Quite a lot of proceeds, so we thought. The auction house and consignor agreed to a $70 million reserve, setting the Giacometti up to win the week as its priciest work—though, in opting out of accepting a guarantee bid in favor of a cut of the buyer’s premium, the Foundation took an enormous risk.
After auctioneer Oliver Barker opened the bidding at $56 million and chandelier-bid the price to $64 million, it stalled, fatally, forcing Barker to slam the gavel, saying, “It’s a pass.” The room gasped. Even the auction house, which can always spin a mediocre sale into a passable one, couldn’t fully bite its tongue.
“From the moment we announced, we saw interest from the world’s greatest collectors, both private and institutional, but Giacometti’s message has always been that fate rests on the edge of a knife-blade,” said Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art, Americas. “Despite the interest and even offers, it simply wasn’t its moment.”
Christie’s, then, had a tall order Wednesday evening: avoiding the auctions suffering their lowest revenues in nearly a decade, thus setting a gloomy tone for the art market heading into Art Basel in Switzerland next month.
There was ample opportunity to do just that. The meat and potatoes of the auction consisted of a number of in-demand works from the collection of Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian, who, a source says, are leaving London for good and shacking up permanently in Monaco due to new non-dom tax policy—thanks, Keir Starmer! So the couple decided to sell the art on the walls along with their Prouvé-stuffed house. There was also a Basquiat triptych owned by Peter Brant that was estimated to sell for a low estimate of $20 million, which back in 2017 was for sale at Art Basel in Switzerland for $30 million—no takers then.
So there was some trepidation as the keepers of the cultural flame arrived at Christie’s on Wednesday evening. Less than half an hour before the sale, the dealer Brett Gorvy was finishing up at Lodi, the Italian trattoria that’s the de facto canteen for auction folk and their ilk. After arriving at the sale room, Guillaume Cerutti, the former house CEO—and current director of house owner François Pinault’s vast art collection—was milling around, surrounded by collectors such as Patrick Seguin and Adam Lindemann, and dealers such as Per Skarstedt and Jeffrey Deitch. David Nahmad, the patriarch of the Picasso-stockpiling Nahmad family, was in the second row, and David Zwirner arrived right before the opening gavel. Like nothing else, the seating chart at Rock Center never changes. Zwirner was seated directly in front of the team from Gagosian, which included the former Sotheby’s rainmaker Brooke Lampley, who decamped to the gallery last year.
While the $20 million Basquiat was set to be the biggest lot of the night, it paled compared to the prices paid for the artist’s primo work in years past. The work that insiders hoped would inspire some real fireworks, slotted right in the middle of the sale, was a painting with the potential to make Marlene Dumas the most expensive female living artist, ahead of Jenny Saville. It’s called Miss January, and it’s a 10-foot nude based on a centerfold from the pages of Playboy. It was expected to sell for as much as $18 million.
In 1997, Dumas was in her studio in Amsterdam preparing for a show at Galerie Paul Andriesse that would open in January the next year. Two years earlier, she achieved her first taste of fame by showing at the Netherlands pavilion of the Venice Biennale—a series of large nudes she called her Magdalenas. But she wanted to push things further, make them raunchier, and sought out new source material. “Pin-ups, porno stars, fashion models, and beauty contestants,” as Dumas put it.
And eventually, she found a muse.
“She started out as, or rather her source was, an airbrushed, ultra smooth-skinned, high-gloss centerfold photograph for the January number of a Dutch Playboy magazine (date unknown, but I suspect it was the late ’70s),” Dumas wrote in a book published alongside a show at the Rubell Museum that included Miss January. “A young, super healthy-looking blonde that combined eroticism with winter sports. Naked, but for her zipper open, short ski jacket and socks—one foot without and one still with a bright-pink, woolen sock on. Not quite a female Santa Claus as Christmas was just over and the December issue had just passed. But her legs, they went on forever.”
The work made a splash as soon as it debuted in Amsterdam, showing in quick succession in museum shows in Rotterdam, Kassel, and Antwerp. In 2000, Andriesse sold the work to Don and Mera Rubell, the American collectors who were in the process of convincing Art Basel to plant its American art-fair flag in Miami Beach, near where the Rubells moved in 1992. Over the next two decades, the work was chosen for various traveling shows that featured work from the couple’s vast holdings, and was on view in the Rubell Museum as recently as last December.
The Rubells hold one of the world’s most impressive troves of contemporary art, which they’ve assembled over the course of more than six decades. Remarkably—because no one does this—they almost never sell works at auction. We found evidence that they consigned a Damien Hirst spot painting at Christie’s in London in 2007, but it didn’t sell and was returned to the Rubells. The massive scale of Miss January, and its place in the oeuvre of one of the most celebrated living painters, has made the work a target since just a few years after they purchased it.
“We were recently offered $3 million for our Marlene Dumas painting Miss January, and, yes, we had a family conference about it,” Mera told The New York Times in 2006. “But really there wasn’t much of a discussion.”
When Christie’s announced the consignment last month, it thanked the Rubells for their business and noted that the family was selling the work for one very specific reason.
“The Rubell family is parting with its prized Marlene Dumas painting Miss January in order to continue the family’s mission of collecting and championing emerging artists,” the house said in a press release.
On Wednesday night, auctioneer Yu-Ge Wang chugged along through the first few lots. Some flew. Others sold at guarantee. The opening lot, a fabulous Elizabeth Peyton painting of the rock gods Jarvis Cocker and Liam Gallagher pressing cigarette butts together to light up, hammered above the high estimate, at $1.3 million, or $1.62 million with fees. Bidding in the room pushed a sensuous Cecily Brown painting from 1999, Bedtime Story, close to its high estimate, hammering at $5.1 million, with the final tally coming to $6.2 million with fees.
The sale wound up being a bit of a workhorse, effective but rarely thrilling, with only three lots through the evening garnering enough excitement to get the bidding past their high estimates. At least a few attendees made furtive glances at their phones, not to get on the horn with a client hell-bent on bidding, but checking the score of the Knicks game. There was very little energy in the room when the Basquiat sold to its guarantor for $20 million, or $23.4 million with fees, well below the asking price at Basel so many years ago. And there was even less energy when works by late icons Ellsworth Kelly and Felix Gonzalez-Torres came up: There were no bids at all, and they passed.
Still, a few lots found real bidding. A gigantic sculpture by Simone Leigh—made in 2020 and since shown in her solo survey that traveled to the ICA Boston and the Hirshhorn—sparked a bidding war between deputy chairman Maria Los and senior specialist Nick Cinque, with the work going to Los’s client at a hammer of $4.7 million, or $5.7 million with fees, well above the artist’s record. A small painting by Danielle McKinney went well above its high estimate, as did a painting by Emma McIntyre, who was scooped up in 2023 by David Zwirner and is co-repped by tastemaking Los Angeles gallery Chateau Shatto. Estimated to sell for a high estimate of $70,000, it sold for $201,600 with fees.
Then came the Dumas, with bidding opening at $9 million.
She chandeliered until Sara Friedlander came in at $10 million, and the bids went back and forth until Friedlander placed the $11.5 million bid that was presumably coming from the guarantor, as it was just under the low estimate. A few slots down the rostrum, Christie’s global president Alex Rotter had his hands cupped over the phone in his hands, speaking to a mystery client on the other end of the line.
“Alex, are you coming in here?” Wang asked.
After a few seconds of muffled chatter from Rotter, he tossed out an arm in defeat—there would be no more bidding.
“Are we all done then?” Wang asked, before banging the gavel, indicating the work had sold for $13.6 million with fees.
It was, like much of the night, just a tad anticlimactic. But everyone was rooting for the sale, hoping that artist records still mean something, even in the midst of a slumping market. After all, Marlene Dumas is now the world’s most expensive living female artist, a major feat for someone so thrilling and boundary-pushing. And it happened with an uncompromising painting, Miss January. And it contributed to the sales not quite hitting a feared nadir. This is what qualifies as a good thing at the moment, right?
After a few seconds of pause in the auction house, with the crowd seemingly unsure what response was warranted, the sale room erupted in applause.
THE RUNDOWN
…On Wednesday, Page Six broke the news that BookHampton, the venerable bookseller on Main Street in East Hampton, has been purchased by none other than Larry Gagosian. “I have lived in Amagansett for 35 years and always loved the fact that Main Street in East Hampton had a wonderful independent bookstore,” Gagosian told the Post. “BookHampton is an important part of the community, and I felt it was crucial that it was preserved.” Indeed, former owner Carolyn Brody started telling friends she planned to sell last fall, and the future of the store was uncertain until Gagosian swooped in.
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…The Dia Beacon Spring Benefit went down on Saturday, and if you want to know exactly what it’s like to have lunch with 600 of the most important people in the art world, well, read my profile of Steve McQueen in our most recent Hollywood Issue. That story goes long on the phenomenon that is the Dia Beacon Spring Benefit. One fun new twist from last Saturday: The lunch has long been co-chaired by Bottega Veneta, and its new creative director, Louise Trotter, used the occasion to step out in an official capacity for the first time. Those at the Bottega table included playwright Jeremy O. Harris, Past Lives director Celine Song, musician Jack Antonoff, and Oscar-winner Julianne Moore.
…It’s been nearly four years since art-collecting Citadel founder Ken Griffin outbid the crypto-collective known as ConstitutionDAO to buy a first edition copy of the US Constitution, placing the winning $43.2 million bid at Sotheby’s. Where has the time gone! Now, Griffin is planning to loan his copy to the National Constitution Center in Philly, along with a cool $15 million donation.
…We wrote about all the art fairs last edition, sure, but TEFAF opened late and stuck around longer, not closing until Tuesday. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention some of the biggest transactions that went down in New York last week. Among the items selling into the seven figures at TEFAF were Bridget Riley’s Reverse, which sold for more than $7 million at the Ben Foster booth; a Ruth Asawa work that sold at the Zwirner booth for $2.8 million; Milton Avery’s Morning Dunes, which sold at the Karma booth for $2 million; and a Warhol that sold at the Stellan Holm booth for about $1 million.
…Lots going on in Manhattan this week. On Saturday, Loïc Gouzer, the founder of the one-lot, invite-only auction endeavor Fair Warning, hosted a backgammon tournament at the private club Coco’s, which also serves as the auction company’s HQ. Vanity Fair came on board as a co-host, which was fun. And all that came before Fair Warning’s bigger event, the auction of Picasso’s Tête d’homme à la pipe, estimated to sell for between $6 million and $8 million. Bidding via the Fair Warning app opened at 5 p.m. Thursday, with former Christie’s president Jussi Pylkkänen on the rostrum at Coco’s for those bidding in person. After a few minutes of bidding, the Picasso ended up selling for $7.8 million with fees, a very healthy figure for a work on paper.
…Elsewhere around town, Miuccia Prada asked artist Goshka Macuga to reprise the collaboration with Mrs. Prada’s Miu Miu brand that took Paris by storm last October—and this time, they did it in New York. A private preview went down at the gigantic Terminal Warehouse on 11th Avenue last Friday, and then the show was open to the public on Saturday and Sunday. Very much not open to the public was the cocktail dînatoire (their term!) at the Chelsea Hotel Friday following the opening, where a smattering of fashion and Hollywood folk were joined by art world bigwigs like Jeffrey Deitch and artist Allison Katz. Also, in gala-land, the Rose Art Museum gala honored artist Hugh Hayden on Monday, while the MoMA PS1 bash honored collector Emily Wei Rales and artist Kara Walker on Wednesday. There will be more galas to come.
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