Christie's and Sotheby's generated close to $1.2 billion from their New York sales of Modern and Contemporary art this fall.
Christie's brought a total of $759.35 million from its two sessions ($107.45 million at the 21st Century Art sale on November 7 and $651.9 million at the 20th Century Art sale on November 9). The house said it attracted more than 2.5 million spectators on various platforms globally in addition to the bidders in the sales room.
There was a strong demand and soaring prices for new female artists such as Jenna Gribbon, Ilana Savdie, and Issy Wood, as well as a new record for Gagosian-supported Chinese artist Jia Aili. His work Combustion from 2016 sold for more than $4.7 million over his previous record of $3 million.
There were big results for both Monet and Bacon at Christie's, with Claude Monet's Le Basin aux Nymphéas selling for $74 million and Francis Bacon's Figure in Movement selling for $52.1 million. There was also a new record for Richard Diebenkorn with Memories of a Visit to Leningrad selling for $46.4 million.
At Sotheby's, with total fall sales of nearly $850 million, $424.55 million was achieved through the sale of the Emily Fischer Landau Collection alone. She was a deeply committed collector and philanthropist, bequeathing the Whitney Museum with a donation of almost 400 works in 2010. She died in 2022 at the age of 102. A boss indeed.
All of the 31 works offered from her collection sold, the three top-valued works being:
Picasso, Femme à la montre, $120 million
Jasper Johns, Flags, $41 million
Ed Ruscha, Securing the Last Letter (pictured above), $39.4 million
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