The most valuable lot of the week is a record-breaking Magritte with a third-party guarantee, but the most talked-about is a conceptual still life by Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian (2019) will make its auction debut at Sotheby's next week.
New York auction houses anticipate bringing in between $1.2bn and $1.6bn during the marquee autumn sales next week, falling short of the estimates for the November sales last year as the art market remains soft. But specialists say “one-in-a-lifetime” works by artists who are household names will be milestones even in a challenging market.
At both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the leading sales are single-owner collections, which have served as anchors for big-ticket evening sales for years. While neither landed a blowout collection like that of Emily Fisher Landau (which fetched $406.4m with fees last year) or Paul Allen (a record $1.5bn in one night in 2022), the single-owner collections are dependable for auction houses.
Christie’s secured the estate of late New York interior designer Mica Ertegun, whose collection of art, design and jewellery is expected to sell for between $140m and $166m. An evening sale of 19 blue-chip lots from Ertegun’s collection will take place on Tuesday (19 November), led by René Magritte’s L'empire des lumières (1954). Estimated to sell for more than $95m, it is the most valuable lot announced by any of the New York auction houses this month. The lot is guaranteed and will break the artist’s record at auction.
The last of Ed Ruscha’s large-scale canvases from the 1960s still in private hands is also being offered by Christie's during its 20th Century evening sale on Tuesday (19 November). Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) was a highlight from Ruscha’s travelling retrospective, which made stops at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2023-24. The gas station painting is reportedly being consigned by Texas oil billionaire Sid Bass. Christie’s estimates it will sell for around $50m, which would break Ruscha's auction record of $46m, which the auction house set in 2019.
Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) by Ed Ruscha
Courtesy Christie's
Another possible record-breaker at Christie’s is an untitled sketch by Jean-Michel Basquiat, part of the 21st century evening sale on Thursday (21 November). Executed in 1982—considered by most to be the artist’s peak year in terms of artistic output—the drawing has been given an estimate of $20m to $30m. Selling within that range would far exceed Basquiat’s previous record for a work on paper at auction of $15m, set in 2020. (The drawing up for sale at Christie’s this month is about 63 in by 44 in, more than four times the size of the current record sketch, specialists noted.)
Will rare lots trump market jitters?
Christie’s eight sales are cumulatively expected to bring in between $582.7m and $796m. In the buyer’s market of the past two years or so, auction houses say clients are being more discerning. But the nature of auction bidding creates a sense of urgency that can supersede some of that fencesitting, specialists say.
“It’s hard not to buy something that’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Imogen Kerr, a Christie’s vice president, senior specialist and co-head of the 20th century evening sale. “If we’re presenting works that are of the highest quality and the greatest historical importance, then you either move it or you lose it.”
-Art Newspaper Nov 2024
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