Top 10 multimillion dollar sales at New York’s spring art auctions

For better or worse, the very top of the auction market is its own little world. If a painting that’s expected to fetch US$20 million sells for US$30 million at Christie’s, that doesn’t say much about the market for US$20,000 paintings 60 blocks south in a Lower East Side gallery. Analysing the top of the market, in other words, has implications for, well, the top of the market.

But for those who do have a stake in US$20 million-plus paintings, this was a fairly interesting week at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips in New York. At those auction houses’ impressionist, modern, post-war, and contemporary sales, international collectors demonstrated a continued interest in the same handful of artists as last November’s auctions, which, in turn, faithfully mirrored the top lots from the May season that preceded it.

In November, the top performers included work by Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko – and Leonardo da Vinci, but we can be fairly certain that was an exception. The May 2017 sales saw a few others added to the mix including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Constantin Brancusi.

This season’s top 10 lots were a mix of all of the above (as you can see below).

There were signs, though, that a changing of the guard might be imminent. Just one price tier below this year’s top lots were a grouping of comparatively fresh faces. Paintings by Kerry James Marshall and David Hockney sold for a stunning US$21.1 million and US$28.5 million, respectively, at Sotheby’s; a painting by Mark Bradford sold for US$7.6 million at Christie’s.

All three artists, in contrast with the ones listed below, are still alive.

In the meantime, the top of the market remains lofty: the top 10 lots sold for a combined US$587.4 million in the span of just a week.

1. Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Sur le côté gauche), US$157.2 million