Well, the balance of this sale was rather lackluster … in fact, at times the bidding was so quiet (or nonexistent) that you could hear the crickets chirping outside! Hopefully is was a good lesson for the salerooms that it is time to cut back on the number of sales they are having. By lot 69, 15 works had failed to sell and a few of the sold works had trouble reaching their reserves (or just met them) — these included two works by Damien Hirst, a Scully, Tuymans, Baselitz, two by Basquiat and a Quinn.
Of the 69 works in the catalog, 68 were offered (one was withdrawn) and 53 sold — 78% and the total take was £60.3M (hammer). Gonna be real tough to reach the $1 billion mark for the London sales … but we still have the Old Masters next week!
Basquiat’s “Quij” – Unsold