Warhol
Earlier this week, Christie’s London offered up their evening selection of Post-War and Contemporary art… As you may expect, the results were pretty impressive, as evening sale results often are. The sale as a whole was expected to bring between £111-161M, up significantly from last year’s sale which only brought in £96.4M ($133M) on an expected £67-107M.
Basquiat
Leading the way this year was Andy Warhol’s Six Self Portraits, which was surprisingly up for sale after being successfully auctioned off just a few year ago. Back in 2014, the work sold through Sotheby’s New York from $30.1M (est. $25-35M) and this time sold for £22.6M, which works out to a very similar $31.3M… this time however, with a more conservative £16-20M. In second was Basquiat’s Multiflavors, which found a buyer at £12M ($16.65M – est. £10-15M) followed by Peter Doig’s Charley’s Space at £10.9M ($15.1M – est. £6-8M).
Doig
A number of other lots made solid prices… Three Studies for a Portrait by Francis Bacon made £10M ($13.8M); a 1950 Pollock brought in £9.35M ($12.9M); Twombly, Calder, Hockney, Richter and Fontana all had works sell in excess of £1M… conversely, 5 works failed to sell – the most notable being Warhol’s Birth of Venus (After Botticelli), which was pegged with a £4.5-5.5M estimate.
By the end of the evening, 60 of the 65 works found buyers, or roughly 92%… the sale totaled £137.9M ($190.5M) including buyer’s premiums, which was right in the middle of the expected range with 30% of the sold works going for prices above their estimate range, 43% within the range and 26% falling below the estimate range.