Owners of big-ticket paintings and sculptures regard these biannual sales as the moment to maximize prices. For Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, this is also the moment to maximize revenues. Headline-setting prices can create a wider perception that this opaque and unequal market is booming, even if demand slows for other less-publicized businesses in the art world.
This time around, the three houses’ various evening and day auctions will include more than 2,000 lots estimated to raise at least $1.6 billion. The equivalent series last May grossed more than $2.8 billion, including post-sale fees.
Though next week’s auctions don’t contain an obvious $100 million masterpiece, dozens of works by trophy names such as Jeff Koons, Francis Bacon, Paul Cézanne and Jean-Michel Basquiat have emerged from American estates.
Soaring if volatile stock values have given both executors and collectors the confidence not only to release contemporary pieces for sale but also to take the risk of offering more of them without guaranteed minimum prices — which reward the auction houses with a share of the profit if the bidding exceeds the minimum. (If owners turn down the guarantee, they take all the hammer price if it sells — but get nothing if it doesn’t.) The numbers of big-ticket lots with guarantees are down at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan has created expectations that America’s 1% is flush with cash to spend on art. And yet earlier this month, Sotheby’s, the only publicly traded company among the three major auction houses, reported a loss of $7.1 million for the first quarter, worse than the $6.5 million loss registered for the equivalent period last year. Over all, the company had net income of $108.6 million in 2018.
In the accompanying conference call, Mike Goss, the chief financial officer at Sotheby’s, described the New York sales as “all-important” to the company, which has just opened more than 90,000 square feet of new exhibition space at its Upper East Side headquarters.
Sotheby’s, like Christie’s and Phillips, will be looking to the American street artist and designer Brian Donnelly, known professionally as KAWS, to give their figures a boost. Drawing inspiration from cartoon characters including the Simpsons, the Smurfs and SpongeBob SquarePants, KAWS hasn’t been taken particularly seriously by art critics. But his paintings are now popular with wealthy collectors. Last month in Hong Kong, one sold for an extraordinary $14.8 million, almost 20 times the low estimate. For the first time, all three houses will be including works by KAWS in their evening sales.
MONDAY
Amedeo Modigliani, ‘Tête’
Impressionist and modern art tends to yield few surprises at auction these days, now that most wealthy buyers prefer to purchase contemporary pieces. But spectacular results can still be achieved for works that have crossover appeal to the two collecting camps.
Amedeo Modigliani is one of the few modern artists whose auction prices have soared in recent years. In 2015, one of his celebrated paintings of nudes sold for $170.4 million. There has also been a major financial re-evaluation of his hauntingly primitive stone sculptures.
Back in 2010 in Paris, one of the 25 or so “Têtes” he carved in the 1910s soared to $52.3 million, more than 10 times the presale low estimate. Another from the series sold for $70.7 million in 2014.
Christie’s will be offering a limestone “Tête,” dating from about 1911-12, for at least $30 million. This work is certain to sell, courtesy of a guaranteed minimum price, but will it fly like the others?
TUESDAY
Claude Monet, ‘Meules’
On Tuesday, Sotheby’s will offer a sumptuous 1890 canvas from Monet’s “Meules” (Grainstacks) series, the Impressionist painter’s first systematic attempt to evoke the same motif in different atmospheric conditions. He produced 25 paintings of the subject, and this is one of just eight left in private hands. Presumably encouraged to sell by the $81.4 million achieved in 2016 for another from the series, the anonymous owner has been guaranteed a minimum price of at least $55 million. The seller bought the painting at auction in 1986 for $2.5 million, according to Sotheby’s.
WEDNESDAY
Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Buffalo II’
American Pop Art is the strength of the Robert B. and Beatrice C. Mayer Family Collection at Christie’s evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. It’s one of the big estates of the season, valued at around $125 million, and it is led by Lot 5B, Robert Rauschenberg’s important 1964 silk-screen painting, “Buffalo II,” completed and purchased shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Evoking a pivotal moment in American history, the piece is estimated to sell at $50 million to $70 million.
Jeff Koons, ‘Rabbit’
The auction market for the work of Koons is no longer as hot as it was, but this enigmatic sculpture inspired by a child’s shiny balloon was first exhibited at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 1986 and is widely regarded as the artist’s master work. Made in an edition of three plus one artist’s proof, the example at Christie’s is the last left in private hands. Unusually for such a high value lot, ”Rabbit” is being offered (at least at the time of writing) without a guaranteed minimum but is expected to sell for at least $50 million.
THURSDAY
Mark Rothko, ‘Untitled’
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the seller of the most highly valued work at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art on Thursday night.
SFMoMA has deaccessioned Rothko’s 1960 maroon, red, white and gray abstract work to raise acquisition funds to “enhance its contemporary holdings” and “address art historical gaps in order to push boundaries and embrace fresh ideas,” according to the museum’s director, Neal Benezra. The museum is hoping to raise at least $35 million from the sale.
Some critics have suggested that if a museum wants to more broadly diversify its collection — say, for artists of color or women — it could ask trustees for help. This museum’s collection, which contains five other Rothko paintings, has been criticized for a preponderance of white, male, blue-chip artists.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, ‘Self-Portrait’
Two years ago, Jean-Michel Basquiat became a higher-selling artist at auction than his Pop artist mentor Andy Warhol when Basquiat’s “Untitled” sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s. The result confirmed the elevation of street art to the very top of the auction market.
Wrapping up the week, Phillips is selling six works by the artist in its 20th century and contemporary art evening sale on May 16. The pieces come from the estate of Basquiat’s friend, the Los Angeles hip-hop producer Matt Dike, who died in January.
The works include the powerful “Self-Portrait” from 1983. Painted on two found wooden doors and incorporating trademark passages of collage, the work is estimated to raise at least $9 million and is notable for showing the artist’s torso with a single skeletal leg.
“The strength of the piece is the self-portrait and the use of collage,” said Larry Warsh, a New York collector of Basquiat works and editor of “Basquiat-isms,” a collection of quotations by the artist, to be published next month.
“For me the early works using found objects are the ones that make the grade. Sadly the things that sell are shiny and crisp,” Warsh added, referring to the artist’s canvases, which have fetched higher auction prices.
KAWS, ‘Kurf (Hot Dog)’
Sotheby’s is offering the most highly valued work by KAWS, featuring one of the artist’s trademark X-eyed cartoon characters, with a low estimate of $1.5 million. In 2013, Sotheby’s sold a KAWS painting of similar size for $293,000, according to the Artnet database of salesroom results.
Yuki Terase, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in Asia, puts KAWS’ work in the category of street art, which is undergoing the same transition that Pop Art made in the 1960s and 1970s, she said. “Collectors are simply responding to what they like and what they aesthetically resonate with the most.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.