“It’s a tricky market, we’re not anticipating fireworks,” Christie’s chairperson Guillaume Cerutti instructed The Artwork Newspaper moments earlier than the public sale home’s twenty first century night sale started. Cerutti’s muted forecast was confirmed proper by the tip of the skinny, 38-lot public sale, which made $79m ($96.5m with charges)—simply inside the revised presale estimate of $77m to $114m (all estimates are calculated with out charges), however beneath the unique $82m low estimate that included heaps that have been finally withdrawn. This determine can also be south of the totals constituted of equal gross sales final November ($106.5m) and Might ($114.7m, each with charges).
Maybe spooked by the flopped $70m Giacometti final evening at Sotheby’s, 4 heaps have been withdrawn previous to the sale, together with an un-guaranteed Christopher Wool portray estimated between $3.5m to $5.5m and works by Rudolf Stingel and Mike Kelley, (each est $500,000-$700,000). With simply two passes, the night had a robust sell-through price of 92%, although this was closely pre-ordained by round 60% of the sale backed by third-party ensures. In the meantime, solely three heaps carried in-house ensures, underlining the unwillingness of public sale companies to tackle additional danger within the present market, at a time when revenue margins from staffing-intensive night gross sales are emaciated.
As with Christie’s twentieth century night sale on Monday (12 Might)—when new highest public sale have been achieved for Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo—it was girls who gained huge Wednesday evening: three of the 4 information set throughout the sale have been for feminine artists.
Marlene Dumas, Miss January, 1997 Courtesy Christie’s Photographs Ltd. 2025
Chief amongst these is Marlene Dumas, whose 1997 portray Miss January made artwork market historical past, albeit with comparatively little fanfare. Fetching $11.5m—or $13.6m with charges—it’s now the costliest work by any dwelling feminine artist offered at public sale. The towering portrait, measuring 280cm in peak, depicts a magnificence queen standing confidently, nude from the waist down save for a single pink sock. It was offered from the gathering of the Miami mega-collectors Mera and Don Rubell, who acquired it from Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam greater than 20 years in the past.
Miss January was delivered to the podium halfway by way of the sale, which was gamely steered by the auctioneer Yu-ge Wang. Eliciting simply two bids, it went swiftly to its guarantor by way of Christie’s deputy chairman Sara Friedlander. Miss January supplants the earlier record-holder, Propped (1992) by Jenny Saville, which in 2018 offered at Sotheby’s in London for £8.2m (£9.5m with charges, which was then round $12m). Dumas’s earlier public sale report was $6.3m for The Customer (1995), offered at Sotheby’s London in 2008.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Child Growth, 1982 Courtesy Christie’s Photographs Ltd. 2025
The Dumas report was virtually instantly adopted by the night’s high lot, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Child Growth (1982), considered a portrait of the artist and his mother and father, and which has been loaned to round 20 monographic exhibits. Wang rapidly walked the portray as much as its $20m low estimate, the place it swiftly hammered to a bidder one the road with Christie’s new world president Alex Rotter. With charges the worth got here to $23.4m.
One of many night’s uncommon pockets of deep bidding was elicited for Simone Leigh’s Sentinel IV. The elegant, monumental bronze was purchased by the consignors in 2020, the 12 months of its execution, from Hauser & Wirth, which represented her for lower than two years earlier than she left to Matthew Marks. Three bidders chased the work as much as $4.7m ($5.7m with charges), going to a telephone bidder with Nick Cinque, close to the higher finish of its $3.5m to $5.5m estimate. This was greater than sufficient to greatest Leigh’s earlier report of $2.8m, set at Sotheby’s in London in 2023.
Emma McIntyre, Up bubbles her amorous breath, 2021 Courtesy Christie’s Photographs Ltd. 2025
Additional information have been additionally set for work by Emma McIntyre and Louis Fratino—respectively at $201,000 for Up bubbles her amorous breath and $756,000 for You and Your Issues (each with charges). They have been among the many small handful of ultra-contemporary names featured within the sale, a stark reversal from only a few years in the past, when moist work by younger artists dominated this gross sales class.
Sturdy costs have been additionally achieved for Elizabeth Peyton, whose portray Jarvis and Liam Smoking hammered at $1.3m ($1.6m with charges), above its $1.2m excessive estimate, and Roni Horn’s solid glass sculpture Reverse of White v 2 (2007), which made $1.1m (with charges) in opposition to an estimate of $700,000 to $1m. Works by girls artists nonetheless didn’t show completely impervious to market malaise: a Louise Bourgeois marble sculpture of an arm hooked up with a hand at both finish, estimated between $500,000 to $700,000, was handed.
“Tonight was a narrative of ladies, all the perfect bidding was for feminine artists,” the adviser Wendy Cromwell stated shortly after the sale closed. “However general it was a quiet sale and the room was half empty, it was solely commerce.” She added: “What we noticed tonight was practical bidding, in a means it’s what auctions have been like again within the day—dozens of bids on every work, costs catapulting, that’s a part of an exuberant second that we’re not in.”
New York’s marquee spring auctions proceed on Thursday (15 Might) with Christie’s day sale of post-war and modern artwork and Sotheby’s three-part night public sale of works from the property of Barbara Gladstone and the gathering of Daniella Luxembourg, plus by its multiple-owner modern artwork sale.
