Sotheby's Contemporary: Official Tallies of a Record-Studded Sale

Here are the just-released facts and figures, hot off Sotheby's presses:

The 1950 Rothko, "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," at $72.84 million (including buyer's premium), set a record not only for the artist but also for any contemporary work at auction. (The previous Rothko record was $22.42 million.) Since David Rockefeller stated that he was going to donate the proceeds to charity, there should be some very happy beneficiaries.

Among the sale's 14 artists' auction records (with buyer's premium) were: Bacon ($52.68 million), Basquiat ($14.6 million), Rauschenberg ($10.68 million), Wesselmann ($5.86 million).

Tonight's sale totaled $254.87 million, including the buyer's premium---a record for a contemporary art auction. The hammer total was $225.41 million, within the presale estimate of $196.8-$265.1 million.

Despite generally strong prices, big-money buy-ins of three Pollocks and a Richter did take a significant toll on the results. Also left stranded: de Kooning's "Untitled (Woman)" of 1966, unsold at $3.5 million against its $4.5-6.5 million estimate.

In all, nine of the 74 works failed to find buyers.

The official price list is here. The online catalogue (enabling you to match the prices to the works) is here.

One interesting sidelight: Auctioneer Tobias Meyer announced at the beginning of the evening that "interested parties" might be bidding on Lot 22, the Bacon. According to the catalogue's "Conditions of Sale," such parties may be "providing or participating in a guarantee of the lot." In other words, someone (such as a dealer or collector) unaffiliated with Sotheby's may have helped to back a guaranteed price for the Bacon (along the lines that I described in my Wall Street Journal article today). Since the painting far outstripped its presale estimate (and, presumably, its guarantee), the gamble should have paid off handsomely for the guarantors, who typically take a large percentage of the price in excess of the amount that they guarantee to the seller.

I wonder if there were any questions about the Bacon's "interested parties" at the post-sale press conference. We'll have to read Lindsay tomorrow.

I won't be able to give you the same kind of blow-by-blow blog tomorrow night for Christie's, as I did tonight for Sotheby's (in my prior post): Their sale, estimated to bring a hammer total of $225-305 million (higher than tonight's estimate) won't be webcast.

And Christopher Burge is SO ready for prime time!

May 15, 2007 11:19 PM | | Comments (0)

Categories:

Leave a comment

Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on May 15, 2007 11:19 PM.

Blogging the Sotheby's Contemporary Sale was the previous entry in this blog.

Between-Sale Ruminations on the Art Market and the Stock Market is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads



AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.