Despite a slight slowdown in the art market compared to previous years, the annual May auctions hosted by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips delivered solid results, with most sales meeting expectations.
The week was not without challenges, including a cyberattack on Christie’s website leading up to the auction, as well as several high-profile withdrawals from both Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale and Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale. Despite these setbacks, the auctions still had their fair share of excitement.
One of the notable surprises was the withdrawal of Brice Marden’s diptych Event (2004-07), which had a starting estimate of $30 million. Its exclusion didn’t prevent the 21st Century Evening Sale from reaching a respectable $80.3 million (including fees), aligning closely with the auction house’s pre-sale forecast of $104.1 million to $155 million. The highest-selling artwork of the evening was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting The Italian Version of Popeye Has No Pork in His Diet, which fetched $32,035,000.
The 20th Century Evening Sale performed largely as expected, reaching a total of $413 million. This amount was comfortably within the projected range of $342 million to $497 million. The star of the night was David Hockney’s A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967), which had never before been offered at auction. It sold for $28.6 million, slightly above its low estimate.
A particularly noteworthy moment occurred during Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale when British-Mexican surrealist painter Leonora Carrington set a new auction record. Carrington’s 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert broke her previous record, soaring well past its high estimate of $18 million to achieve an impressive $28.5 million. This sale made her the highest-priced UK-born female artist at auction, surpassing her prior sale of $3.3 million. Carrington now ranks just behind Frida Kahlo as the second most expensive Latin American artist, with Kahlo’s Diego y Yo (1949) fetching $34.8 million in 2021.
Ultimately, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale raised $198.1 million, a solid figure but slightly lower than the results from the same auction the previous year.
