Hits and Misses at Sotheby's Highest-Grossing Auction in Its History

Why is this artist smiling?

No, the above photo was not taken at the Brooklyn Museum. It's Takashi Murakami, posing in front of his $15.16-million "My Lonesome Cowboy," immediately after last night's Sotheby's Contemporary sale, which set auction records for him and 17 other artists.

When I wrote yesterday about having once seen Robert Rauschenberg at a major auction of his work, it occurred to me that you just don't see artists attending their sales any more. So imagine my surprise when I beheld Murakami (who, happily, has ditched his celebrity stylists and looked very much like an artist), sitting at the back of the saleroom where another example of the raunchiest work in his current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum sold for an astonishing hammer price of $13.5 million ($15.16 million, with buyers premium), trouncing its $3-4 million estimate. (It comes from an edition of three, plus two artist's proofs.) The price was more than five times his previous auction record. Murakami told me later that none of his works had ever sold for that much privately either.

The artist returned the favor to Sotheby's by himself purchasing the last lot in the sale, Yoshitomo Nara's "Light My Fire," for $1.16 million, setting an auction record for a sculpture by that artist. He looked excited and gleeful as it was hammered down to him.

You can see the similarity in these two Japanese manga-influenced artists' sensibilities. Here's Murakami's new acquisition:



The $362.04-million total made this the highest grossing auction in Sotheby's history. It also outdid Christie's $348.26-million Contemporary total of the night before. But Sotheby's offered 83 works, compared to only 57 at Christie's. After some exciting bidding wars during the first half of the sale, some of the fizz was lost and 10 works went unsold.

The big success was the $77-million hammer price for Francis Bacon's "Triptych," against an estimate of approximately about $70 million. Setting an auction record for any work of contemporary art at $86.28 million (with buyers premium), it sold to a private European collector. Sotheby's has not, at this writing, provided the customary geographic breakdown of buyers.

Also astonishing was the $21-million hammer price (against an estimate of $6-8 million) for a golden Yves Klein, "MG9." At $23.56 million with premium, purchaser Philippe Ségalot, the Paris/New York dealer, set an auction record for the artist. Sotheby's joy was tempered, though, by the failure of the lot with the night's second-highest estimate---a Mark Rothko that had been estimated to bring "in excess of $35 million." It went unsold at $33 million, and, what's worse, the catalogue disclosed that the auction house itself had a direct ownership interest in it.

The one poignant moment of the sale occurred when this lot came around the turntable:


Robert Rauschenberg, "Overdrive," 1963

I had to fight back tears, seeing the earthbound stop signs that, to me, signified the stopping of Rauschenberg's life, and the bird at the top, representing his soul flying free. In writing about another work with (according to the auction catalogue) "many of the same elements" as "Overdrive," Calvin Tomkins once quoted Rauschenberg as saying this:

Look at that. The birds have freed the stop signs.

It set a new auction record for the artist. So what. Read Barbara Rose's appreciation from yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and forget about the financial appreciation.

For the complete price list, go here. The sale was 88% sold by lot, 86.8% sold by dollar value. The hammer total was $320.64 million---within the presale estimate of $288.05-356.65 million. Unless you include the buyers premium (which you should not, since the estimates don't include it), the total did NOT exceed the presale estimate---no matter what Sotheby's, the NY Times or Bloomberg tell you.