NY Auction Season Highlights: Lauder, Weis, and a Market on the Move

The art market has been very slow this year. The May auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s weren’t great, and because of that, the whole summer felt sluggish. Even major galleries didn’t open new shows after the summer break—it was that quiet.

From left: #Rothko, No. 31; #MaxErnst, Le roi jouant avec la reine; #Mondrian, Composition with Red and Blue from the #WeisCollection. in the Christie’s preview.

To bring some energy back, the auction houses lowered their estimates and secured major collections, like Leonard A. Lauder, at Sotheby’s and the Weis Collection at Christie’s. I went to both preview exhibitions, and honestly, they were incredible. I’ve been going to auction previews for almost ten years, and these two collections were truly at the top. Personally, I loved the The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis.

I was a little disappointed, though, as the final sale prices weren’t as strong as Sotheby’s results. This November season was also the first sale after Sotheby’s opened its new location in the former Whitney Museum, which they purchased and renovated.

From left: #Picasso’s 1930s painting La Lecture (Marie-Thérèse); #Matisse, Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre); and #Léger, Composition avec personnages  at the #WeisCollection in Christie’s preview.

The building is beautiful. However, I wasn’t very impressed with how they set up the preview exhibition. Still, the Klimt from the Lauder Collection was absolutely stunning.

I was certain it would fetch a high price.

I even went back again later to see it one more time, but the crowd was huge, and it was hard to get in. While I was there, a TV reporter asked me about #Cattelan’s gold toilet because I had seen and used it when it was at the Guggenheim, but I didn’t get to check it this time. The line was too long, so the interview never happened.

#Klimt “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer)” from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at Sotheby’s was sold for a $205 million hammer price, making it the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction

The mega galleries also tried to boost the season, showing blue-chip artists in November: David Zwirner had Joan Mitchell, Pace showed Agnes Martin, LDR focused on major 1980s New York artists, and Gagosian presented Jeff Koons and Richard Serra. Even the Museum of Modern Art New York added some momentum with their shows featuring Ruth Asawa, Wifredo Lam, and Helen Frankenthaler.

The results overall were good. Sotheby’s had a few record prices, including works by Klimt, Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer),the image left and Frida Kahlo, "El sueño (La cama)".

But In general, prices have softened significantly. A good example is Degas’s La Coiffure (La Toilette), the image below — the work sold for around $7 million in 2021 but achieved less than $4 million this season, landing right at its low estimate. Blue-chip Art prices have clearly come down, while works priced around $1 million or below performed relatively well and attracted healthy bidding.

Even so, the overall tone of the sales suggests that the market is stabilizing and beginning to recover. Hopefully this positive momentum continues into Art Basel Miami Beach this year.

#Degas “La Coiffure (La Toilette)” 

Christie’s 20th Century Art sale preview — in the beginning of the video, you can see #GeorgiaO’Keeffe, The Red Maple at Lake George, and in the end, works by Korean artist #KimWhanki, 19-VI-71 #206, and a #Noguchi, MYO sculpture. Kim Whanki’s painting sold for the second-highest price ever achieved for a Korean artist, with the first-highest price also going to one of his works.