Last night’s sale was expected to bring in about $500M and with the auction’s commission, the total eclipsed $700M ($705.9M). It is important to note that of the 35 lots offered, more than half had some sort of guarantee … basically, they were sold before the sale even started.
Top seller was the record setting Picasso at $179.4M with fees and coming in second was a Giacometti (owned by Sheldon Solow and expected to bring $130M) that brought $126M ($141.3M with fees). It missed its projected target, but are we going to worry about that? Probably not since $141.3M is now the record auction price for a sculpture.
Normally the auction rooms will give some indication in their post-sale release as to the location of the buyers … as of now, the top 10 lots all show as ‘anonymous’. It will be interesting to see how many of them were acquired by Asian buyers. We all know that the salerooms are always chasing the dollars and this time it is my bet that it will be some of those Hong Kong dollars.
In case you want to read what Scott Reyburn has to say about last night’s record breaking sale, here is a link to his article in The New York Times.
Pablo Picasso “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)”