Jeff Koons
The results tonight were rather interesting and uneven. Some works did well and others found it very hard to find buyers – selling on the reserves – and others found no takers. Jeff Koons was hit hard when his New Hoover… ($10-$15M) and Wall Relief with Bird ($6-$8M) went unsold, while his Lobster sold on the reserve – after the auctioneer pulled some teeth — on the flip side, his The New Jeff Koons (a duratran and florescent light box) which carried a$2.5-$3.5M est sold for $9.4M.
John Currin’s Lydian (painted in 2013 – yes, this year) did well when it sold for $2.97M (est. $500-$700K), Yves Klein’s Sculpture Éponge Bleue Sans Titre, SE 168 made $22M (est. on request) and Clyfford Still’s PH-21 made $20.8M (est. $16-$20M). Barnett Newman’s Onement VI (est. $30-$40M) made $43.8M and Richter’s Domplatz, Mailand [Cathedral Square, Milan] brought $37.1M (est. $30-$40M).
Other big name works found no buyers — these included Rothko’s Untitled (est. $6-$8M), Roy Lichtenstein’s Insulated Staple (est $2-$3M), Warhol & Basquiat’s collaboration PE D G Two Heads ($2-$3M) and Bacon’s Study for Portrait of P.L. (est. $30-$40M)
Of the 64 works offered, 53 sold (82.8%) and the total take was $297M – that works out to about $5.6M per work offered. Now that is a lot of MONEY!!