It was a defining moment for the depressed art market when a lush portrait of a woman by Gustav Klimt became the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction and set a record for the Austrian painter on Tuesday evening. The sale rocketed past its $150 million estimate after more than 19 minutes of bidding to achieve $236.4 million, with fees, at Sotheby’s in New York.
Less than an hour later, a gold toilet by the conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan — a functional sculpture — sold for $12.1 million in the jammed salesroom of the new Sotheby’s headquarters on Madison Avenue, the former home of the Whitney Museum designed by Marcel Breuer.
It was somewhat anticlimactic: The toilet sold on a single bid for the equivalent price of gold, plus auction house fees. A spokeswoman for Sotheby’s declined to say who the buyer was, beyond stating that the sculpture was purchased by “a famous American brand.”
“The bidding on the Cattelan may not have been as expected, but the work still generated tremendous excitement,” said Thomas Danziger, a lawyer who represents top art collectors. “The last time I saw this many people line up for a toilet was at a Knicks game.”
One of the strangest pairings in recent memory, the two sales — one art historical, the other art spectacle — provided signs of life in a market that contracted as much as 12 percent last year, according to the latest survey of global collecting by Art Basel and UBS.
All told, the evening’s sales generated $706 million, more than double last year’s equivalent auctions at Sotheby’s and the highest total ever achieved at the auction house in a single night.
The painting of Elisabeth Lederer, the daughter of the artist’s prominent patrons, came from the estate of the cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder, who died in June. Painted between 1914 and 1916, the image of a rosy-cheeked 20-year-old wearing an imperial Chinese dragon robe had hung for close to 40 years in Lauder’s Fifth Avenue apartment and is believed to be one of only two full-length portraits by Klimt still in private hands.
The portrait was expected to generate about $150 million — the highest estimate of all 1,450 works on offer during a closely watched marathon week — but it soared past that. Six bidders competed for the prize.
Sotheby’s declined to identify the buyer.
Patrick Drahi, Sotheby’s owner, watched as the number rose, whispering to an adviser. The company’s chief executive, Charles F. Stewart, bit his lip at $170 million. When the painting surpassed the $200 million mark, the audience clapped. The two men clasped arms and laughed.
Two security guards outside the salesroom also laughed. “I could use that,” one said.
The most expensive artwork sold at auction remains Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which shattered auction highs in 2017, selling for $450.3 million, with fees, at Christie’s.
The Klimt portrait represented almost 45 percent of the value of the Lauder works sold in the evening sale, which brought in a total of $527.5 million with fees.
“Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” also overtook Klimt’s previous auction high of $108 million, set in 2023. (Lauder’s brother, Ronald, paid $135 million in a private sale in 2006 for “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” known as “Woman in Gold,” or about $217.5 million today, when adjusting for inflation.)
Tuesday’s evening sales of modern and contemporary art came with high stakes for Sotheby’s, which had agreed to pay Lauder’s estate a minimum for all 54 works from the collection to win the consignment, including two landscapes by Klimt, leader of the influential Vienna Secession movement. His painting of a blooming meadow sold for $86 million with fees, on an estimate of $80 million, and his forest slope scene sold for $68.3 million, on an estimate of $70 million. (About half the Lauder collection was sold Tuesday night, and the additional works will be auctioned Wednesday morning.)
Sotheby’s executives worked furiously to outsource their risk, confirming some third-party offers, known as irrevocable bids, as recently as Tuesday morning. And by the evening, the Breuer Building, which the company bought for $100 million, was crammed, despite a renovation that was supposed to open this architectural landmark for auction viewers. Some guests were asked to sit in an overflow room. Still, there was a depth of bidding on a number of the lots, including two Matisse bronzes, which sold for $16.7 million each with fees after dogged competition.
Over the weekend, a line of curious visitors stretched around the block waiting to take selfies with the gold toilet, owned (but never used) by Steven Cohen, the billionaire financier who also owns the New York Mets baseball team. The work was Sotheby’s’ answer to the $6.2 million banana that the auction house sold last year by the same artist. Cattelan created the toilet sculpture in 2016 from 100 kilograms of 18-karat gold, with a plumbing hookup and a shiny flushometer.
Demand to see the luxurious loo — placed in a special gallery designed to look like a restroom — was so high that one guard watching the toilet said that finding time to take a bathroom break elsewhere was a struggle.
The sculpture, titled “America,” was created based on a toilet from inside the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art. Only two editions were made, although the artist has reserved the right to make more versions.
“‘America’ is a short circuit between the most ordinary object and the most symbolic material of power and desire,” Cattelan said in a statement before the auction. “One hundred kilos of gold used in the most shameless and the most democratic way possible.”
One version had a scandalous adventure through the art world that ended in destruction: That toilet was first displayed at the Guggenheim Museum, where thousands of visitors were able to use the “participatory sculpture.” While on a long-term loan in 2019 to the Blenheim Palace in England, thieves stole the toilet, which authorities believe was broken apart and melted down. Two men were found guilty by a jury this year; another person was acquitted of the crime.
Some market experts said that “America” was one of the artist’s weaker sculptures.
“The problem for me is that Cattelan uses simple materials and doesn’t achieve an important point,” Todd Levin, an art adviser and former auction executive, said. “It’s a punchline.”
The portrait and the toilet came during the second night of auction week. On Monday, Christie’s sold $690 million worth of artworks at its 20th-century sales, including a $62 million painting by Mark Rothko with vibrant stripes of orange and red. The night of sales represented a 42 percent increase from its equivalent last November.
Less flashy than the Klimt portrait but an industry favorite, Vincent van Gogh’s tender 1888 drawing, “The Sower in a Wheat Field at Sunset,” sold from Lauder’s collection for $11.2 million, a record for a pen-and-ink drawing by the artist. There were other notable sales, including a Cecily Brown painting that set a new auction record for the artist at $9.8 million, including fees. (The work sold for $968,000 in 2006, or $1.6 million after inflation.)
Not every high-profile work drew demand. A 2008 untitled Kerry James Marshall painting of a couple facing the ocean, which was estimated between $10 million and $15 million, failed to attract a single bid. A 1973 Barkley L. Hendricks painting with a high estimate of $12 million, featuring a woman with an Afro sitting by a Coke machine, also failed to sell.
Experts agreed that Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” was the deserved star of the evening. “It’s uniquely special,” said Jane Kallir, founder of the Kallir Research Institute, which supports research on Austrian art. “I can think of other portraits where the palette isn’t as pleasing, or the sitter isn’t as pretty, or as youthful.”
The Klimt portrait narrowly survived World War II. The Nazis looted the works owned by the Lederer family, and much of the collection went up in flames at the end of the war. The portrait avoided the blaze.
For Klimt, who often depicted women with a gauzy, indirect gaze, Lederer’s confident pose represented a departure. “She’s looking directly at you, she’s not passive,” Emily Braun, curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, said.
The close relationship between Klimt and his young subject also had an impact beyond art history: It helped save Lederer’s life. To avoid persecution during the war, she claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918. Elisabeth’s mother, Serena, signed an affidavit to support the ruse. (Klimt’s portrait of Serena is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just blocks from Lauder’s apartment.)
Inaugurating the Breuer Building’s new chapter with Lauder’s collection was “pure poetry,” according to Lisa Dennison, a Sotheby’s executive. Lauder was a longtime trustee of the Whitney, to which he donated millions in money and art.
Market players hope that this week’s auctions will change the tune of the art market. During the downturn, many collectors opted to hold back their most valuable treasures, and houses consolidated their businesses with layoffs and buyouts. Sotheby’s sold a stake of its business to ADQ, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. More bad news from the art industry came on the day before the sale: A storied gallery, Sperone Westwater, called it quits after nearly 50 years.
But the nuances of the art market took a back seat to its marquee sales on Tuesday evening, where many spectators were just trying to come up with their best puns.
“Lauder makes a splash,” Danziger, the lawyer, joked, “and Breuer makes an even bigger splash.”
Tim F. Schneider contributed reporting.
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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