By Tuesday evening, after a full day split between roving the fair floor at Art Basel and reporting on the city’s first digital art fair, the Digital Mile, I had a choice to make: do I follow Art Basel’s VIP crowd along the well-trodden party path (Perrotin et al.) or stick with the new kids on the block from the NFT, crypto, and generative AI world? Unfortunately, I tried to do both.

My first port of call was a party hosted by four galleries—Mendes Wood DM, Crèvecoeur, Sylvia Kouvali, Taka Ishii—in the bar L’Avventura, located on the roof of a giant concrete parking lot by Basel’s main train station. As I made my way there, I bumped into The Baer Faxt‘s Josh Baer, who told me he’d seen it all before and was heading back to his hotel to catch some Zs before an early flight Wednesday morning. I arrived at 9:30 and took the elevator to the top floor, where I caught collector and New York socialite Paul Judelson standing at the entrance, taking a break from the swarming bar. Sharp suits, designer dresses, buckets of lip filler, a handful of kooky characters sporting crazy outfits, and loads of booze; it seemed like any other Art Basel party, just younger with a stunning sunset view across the city from the terrace.

Anastasia Krizanovska, Crèvecoeur’s gallery manager, told ARTnews that she hoped the bash would be “more relaxed, free, and easy” than the other blowouts at Basel. George Newall, cofounder and director at Winter Street Gallery in Martha’s Vineyard, certainly looked at ease surrounded by beautiful women on the terrace. Inside by the bar, art consultants Ellen De Schepper and Laura De Beir told me they were digging the vibe because it wasn’t as crowded as Les Trois Rois.

“We were invited by Alix [Dionot-Morani] from Crèvecoeur who is showing lots of Sol Calero and artists we like, who we bought for our clients in Belgium,” De Schepper said. “We love Mendes Wood DM – they’ve thrown very cool parties in Paris and Brussels.”

Thomas Rom, the art adviser and 15-year Art Basel veteran, meanwhile, was planning his exit to Hotel Merian over the Rhine where the Young Boy Dancing Group was performing. “I want to see Young Boy because I want to connect back to my queer community and see something that feels like it captures the moment,” he told me. “It’s going to be more fun than any other place tonight.”

Rom may have been right; L’Avventura’s dance floor was spartan (although it was still relatively early) but I didn’t have time to hang around and see the horseplay unfold, if any.

I knew the Digital Mile cohort were already at the Merian, watching Young Boy, so I took the elevator to the street with the intention of walking across the Mittlere Brücke bridge to the hotel. But I was waylaid out front when a tightlipped trio from Masterworks offered me shotgun in their cab, on the condition that I wouldn’t quote them. They drove to the center of town to the Gothic revival Elisabethenkirche, where the Perrotin party was in full force. With the queue surprisingly short, it seemed like a good opportunity to pop my head and cover all bases.

Host Emmanuel Perrotin played a DJ set dressed in a bright-blue hoodie, reportedly due to an earlier tuxedo malfunction, before French-Korean DJ-singer Miki Duplay captivated the audience with a bizarre routine that straddled something between burlesque and beatbox. Pedro Winter (Daft Punk’s former manager), Samuel Boutruche, Andy 4000, and b2b (never heard of them) also performed to the crowd. DJ Jacques and his neo-tonsure haircut were the headline act.

German gin company Monkey 47 sponsored the event in partnership with Art Review so the alcohol was flowing, and I’d say the punters were a touch more refined and older here compared to L’Avventura. Silver foxes Rafael Pic (Quotidien de l’Art’s editor in chief), Martin Guesnet (Artcurial’s European director), and Thierry Peyroux (from the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs) added a dash of sophistication.

I soon lost track of time, and before I knew it, the clock struck 1:30 am. Regrettably, too late to hang with the digital art guys at the Merian, but not too late for a nightcap at Les Trois Rois. Always a good place to harvest some gossip from slack-tongued art dealers merry off a day’s dealings at Art Basel. After a 10-minute walk I arrived at the hotel to find a line of expectant people snaking along the sidewalk. I did try to skip the queue on account of being a hack, but the concierge, tipsy on authority, refused me. I even tried to sweet-talk German soccer legend and avid collector Michael Ballack into getting me in but he was having none of it.

“Don’t bother, darling,” an Argentine artist told me on her way out, “it’s super boring in there anyway.”

Short on patience due to a lack of sleep, I took her word for it, accepted defeat, and caught a cab.

(The Centre Pompidou is generally synonymous with the Musée National d’Art Moderne, in which it is housed. While the Musée d’Art Moderne de Ville de Paris exists, it is located elsewhere.)

A decade ago, the painting, titled Suprematism and supposedly dating to 1915, was embroiled in the investigation of Itzhak Zarug, an Israeli art dealer who was convicted in Germany of selling forgeries in 2018. In a recent email to ARTnews, Germany’s Federal Police (BKA) said that in 2014, after seizing the painting from Zarug, experts with the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia’s top fine arts museum, “laid out several aspects of the painting clearly proving it to be a fake.” The work was subsequently listed on the Art Loss Register (ALR), the world’s largest database of lost and stolen art.

Co2Bit Technologies, a United States tech company that uses AI and blockchain technology to assess environmental impact and finance climate mitigation efforts across the globe is now disputing that assessment. Co2Bit lent Suprematism to the “exhibition” at the Pompidou after purchasing it in early January for a price in the “eight figures,” company chairman Ronald Wilkins told ARTnews.

Co2Bit spent a year on “due diligence” to confirm the painting’s authenticity prior to purchase, according to Wilkins, a process that he said involved hiring five independent experts to authenticate the artwork, before having it appraised in New York “by a separate company,” the name of which he declined to disclose. Neither did Wilkins disclose the names of the experts, instead describing them as two Russians, two US-based experts, and “the go-to authentication guy for the top three museums in the world.” He later added that two of the experts work regularly with Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

In addition, he said, Co2Bit hired several experts from the International Chamber of Russian Modernism (InCoRM), including president Patricia Railing, an art historian on the Russian avant-garde, to “verify the artwork.” Initially, Wilkins said that all the experts hired by Co2Bit certified Suprematism as a bona fide Malevich, adding that InCoRM was “talking about putting it in” in a new edition of the artist’s catalogue raisonné. (A four-volume catalogue raisonné by the late art historian Andréi Nakov, who was once married to Railing, was published in 2002.)

However, Railing told ARTnews in an email that not only was InCoRM disbanded a decade ago, the organization never “authenticated works,” it only provided “art historical analysis.” She further added that she has never heard of Co2Bit or Wilkins, and they have never hired her either independently or through InCoRM. Railing said she had no knowledge of—nor role in—a new edition of the 2002 catalogue raisonné or a supplement to it. She further stated any reliance on her work to include a new painting in such a project was both “preposterous” and a “travesty of my work.”

When pressed to provide ARTnews with authentication certificates, Wilkins refused, and said “scientific authentication” is available to a buyer. When asked about the finer details of InCoRM’s involvement during the last of three phone interviews, Wilkins backtracked.

“I don’t think we solicited InCoRM to authenticate the painting,” he said. “By that point in time we had [verification from] five very renowned and trusted people.”

When ARTnews followed up a final time before publication, Wilkins denied over WhatsApp ever hiring or contacting Railing directly and said Co2Bit did not hire any experts. Instead, he said, “we were told that experts (who were in some way associated with [InCoRM]) had previously been involved in the authentication of numerous works owned by Zarug, including ours.”

Suprematism Comes with a Checkered History

Suprematism’s recent provenance history is perhaps as intriguing as its disputed authorship.

The work was one of 1,778 paintings seized by German authorities in 2014 as part of an investigation into Zarug, who ran a gallery in the German city of Wiesbaden. An investigation and public trial ensued, ending in 2018, when the Wiesbaden Regional Court convicted Zarug and his business partner, German Tunisian national Moez Ben Hazaz, on charges of fraud using fake paintings, and attempted fraud in connection with the forgery of provenance documents. While the two men were cleared of the principal allegation of masterminding a counterfeiting ring, they were sentenced to 32 months and three years in prison, respectively, but were released with time served.

Only three artworks (attributed to Malevich and fellow Russian avant-garde heavyweights El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko) were used as evidence to convict Zarug and Ben Hazaz, and confiscated permanently. (Suprematism was not one of the three works.) While the remaining 1,775 paintings were returned, including Suprematism, the BKA told ARTnews “it cannot be emphasized enough that the handover of the painting to [Zarug] does not imply at all that the works of art were … found to be authentic.” At the time, German law, as the BKA noted, only prohibited the sale of forgeries, not possession of them.

Suprematism was one of 200 paintings that the BKA said it established as fakes through laboratory examination and the expertise of the Tretyakov, the Chagall Committee, the Picasso Museum Münster, and other institutions that specialized in the respective artists. In the Tretyakov’s 2014 assessment that Suprematism was not authentic, according to the BKA, experts said that the composition’s coloration was judged to be “completely different from [Malevich’s] originals” and that the signature on the back “is not from Malevich, it looks like a copy.” In addition, the BKA said it believed all 1,778 artworks originally seized were forgeries “due to the improper storage of the paintings (no special climatic conditions, few security devices, poorly packed)” and “incomprehensible provenances and expertise from dubious art historians.”

All 1,778 paintings seized in 2014—including Suprematism and the 199 other works that the BKA allegedly established as fakes—were registered with the ALR in 2018, according to James Ratcliffe, ALR general counsel and director of recovery. Many of those paintings, including Suprematism, have resurfaced on the market since their return to Zarug.

Zarug’s previous counsel did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite the determinations of the legal authorities, Wilkins has stood firm on the painting’s supposed authenticity and said Co2Bit’s goal is to sell the work at a profit to provide funds to “some of these very, very needy parts of the world where we try to make a difference.” When asked if a major auction house would take on such a disputed work, he said that he was “fairly confident” they would, but that the preference was for a private sale. The most expensive Malevich sold at auction to date is his Suprematist Composition (1916), which hammered for $85,812,500 at Christie’s New York in 2018.

Jo Vickery, director of Vickery Art Ltd and former international director of Russian art at Sotheby’s, told ARTnews that the major auction houses “check works with the ALR as a routine part of their due diligence” and added that “they will not sell any painting which is listed on the database.”

Wilkins went so far in an interview as to attack the credibility of the Tretyakov, pointing to a 2015 art smuggling investigation into the museum, though it’s not clear what, if anything, ever came of it. When ARTnews presented Wilkins with the BKA’s findings from the 2014 investigation, he seemed to relent.

“I desperately need a copy of that,” Wilkins said. “I’m going to send that off to our board and everybody involved – that’s critical because we were never presented that.”

Painting lent to Grand Salon event at Centre Pompidou ‘as a favor’

At the center of Suprematism’s return to the public eye is the January event at the Centre Pompidou.

That event was held in the Grand Salon, one of six event spaces available for rent at the Pompidou, and organized by GPF as a private event to “promote world peace,” according to the organization’s president Jean-Lou Blachier. When ARTnews asked Blachier about who financed the event, he said that Co2Bit’s Wilkins had, while Wilkins said it was GPF. Later, Blachier said it was a sponsor.

The nature of the event also seems to be in dispute. Blachier said that Wilkins had lent Suprematism merely to decorate the room and “illustrate the necessary need for peace.” As far as GPF was concerned, Blachier added, “It could have been another painting or another sculpture …” Meanwhile, Wilkins said that he lent the painting as a “favor” to Blachier, as GPF had helped facilitate the company’s largest contract, with China.

Press releases published by the New York PR firm Eminence Rise Media both before and after the event, including one published to the GPF website, described the event as an “exhibition” celebrating Malevich, hyped Suprematism as a genuine Malevich, and said it was “at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Paris.” The December release cites the “certification” of Railing and said it would be included in a “supplement” to Nakov’s catalogue raisonné, while a March release went so far as to state that the painting would be on the front cover of the Suprematist Catalog Raisonné to be published in 2025. It further said publication will feature artworks that were “looted and seized in the 1930s by the USSR government from dissident artists linked to Russian suprematism.”

Railing said she had never heard of Eminence Rise Media, and that they “have no right whatsoever to quote me and my work – which again is an opinion and in no way a ‘certification.’” She added that she has no knowledge of or connection with the supposed 2025 Raisonné referenced in the press releases.

In that final press release, Eminence Rise Media claimed that Zarug “acquired almost all the works of art sold privately by the Russian government in 1994 and bought back all the works scattered in foreign collections, including a major work by Kazimir Malevich.”

Konstantin Akinsha, the founding director of the Avant-Garde Art Research Project, a UK-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting education about Russian avant-garde art, disputed the idea that the USSR or the Russian government confiscated many works from dissident artists and that nearly all of Malevich’s paintings “remained in the possession of his family.”

Eminence Rise Media declined to disclose to ARTnews who had hired them to publish the press releases and Wilkins denied hiring the PR firm. 

Meanwhile, Angela Lampe, curator of modern art at the Centre Pompidou, told ARTnews that she was not aware that Suprematism had been lauded as a genuine Malevich within the museum complex. The Centre Pompidou, for its part, said in a statement that it had no knowledge the painting was displayed there and that the event “was not an exhibition but a conference, which did not take place in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, but in an independent space privatized by the GPF.”

(In addition to the museum, the Pompidou complex houses screening rooms, a performance theater, a conference room, a public library, and the Kandinsky Library. The public generally uses the term Centre Pompidou to refer to the contemporary art museum in the complex.)

“No authorization was given in this context to use the image, name, or brand of the Centre Pompidou or its components,” the Centre Pompidou said in a statement, adding that it has since contacted the GPF “to ask them to remove the misleading information published on its site about this event.”

At the time of publication, the aforementioned press release remains on the GPF website.

When ARTnews asked Wilkins directly if the painting had been “exhibited” at the Pompidou in a bid to boost its legitimacy, he refuted the idea. “We are not on trial and don’t need to state our case …” he wrote in a WhatsApp message, and declined to answer further questions.

Akinsha of AARP, meanwhile, said that such a move might be without precedent.

“Sneaking disputed paintings into exhibitions and [catalogues raisonnés to legitimize their provenances is nothing new, but … exhibiting a dubious artwork in a rented room in a major museum] without the institution’s permission might be unprecedented,” Akinsha said.

During the livestreamed demo on May 30, the museums presented projects aimed at establishing new kinds of relationships with museumgoers, from innovative fundraising models to live “minting” experiences. The aim, according to the organization, is to help museums “engage younger, tech-savvy audiences, secure funding, and stay relevant in a rapidly digitizing world.”

WAC Lab was launched in 2021 by the France-based nongovernmental organization We Are Museums with the goal of educating cultural institutions in Web3 and transforming them into “emerging technology pioneers.” It is supported by the Tezos Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Tezos blockchain, which has long been the art world’s blockchain of choice because of its engagement with the industry and lower environmental impact.

“It is obvious that museums have to adapt to new models and challenges, and change drastically to do so,” Diane Drubay, founder of We Are Museums and WAC Lab, told ARTnews. “One of the main challenges is the speed at which they need to adapt, but if they manage to do so, these museums will become relevant for the present generation and even more for future generations.”

The WAC Lab program includes a six-week fellowship that trains museum professionals to be Web3-literate, and a regular online discussion for the same arts personnel, WAC Weekly, about leveraging blockchain technology. There is also a monthlong accelerator program, now in its third season, that helps institutions build blockchain projects that they pitch. Projects rely on a variety of funding models, from institutional financing to self-raised budgets.

Each season of WAC Lab focuses on a particular theme; past ones have covered fundraising, NFTs, and acquisitions. The most recent season, which ran from April 22 to May 19, took the “creative application of blockchain even further by blending museum culture with blockchain culture … to unveil the potential of decentralized governance and new types of loyalty programs,” Drubay said.

For this season’s fellowship, 20 institutions were selected, while 10 major museums participated in the accelerator. Each accelerator participant was paired with one of seven participating tech companies to help them conceive and execute their project.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, for example, worked with digital agency Broken Egg, which helps brands and companies leverage Web3. Together, they developed an immersive experience for an upcoming experimental space at the museum that will guide visitors through the woodworking processes of various contemporary artists in the museum’s permanent collection.

Kim Lý, an interactive media producer at the museum, said in a statement that the museum hopes projects like the one developed through WAC Lab will increase the museum’s exhibiting capacity by 50 percent.

“For us, this interactive project is an exciting, pivotal moment for our institution’s long-term digital strategy,” she said.

Nimi, a Web3 tech startup that works with cultural institutions to create digital artwork collectibles, collaborated with three institutions in using Web3 to cultivate a more engaged younger cohort of patrons. Nimi CEO and founder Anh Nguyen told ARTnews the company’s strategy with WAC Lab participants was to “leverage token-based engagement strategies to bring gamification and loyalty and reward models to empower younger audiences to have more ownership and agency in the future of arts.”

For example, Nimi worked with the Goethe-Institut Lisbon in Portugal to develop a system where people earn membership tokens, and accrue various benefits, through attendance. For 221A, an arts and culture space in Vancouver, B.C., that includes a library and artist housing, they helped develop a token-based library card.

Nimi also worked with Germany’s Museum Ulm, on nextmuseum.io, an online digital platform for collaborative curation of exhibition projects. Nextmuseum.io launched in 2020, with funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation; Nimi helped develop the platform’s engagement model and create a system for nudging stakeholders “to take actions, contribute, and develop ownership.” Museum Ulm’s ultimate hope for the accelerator was to transform nextmuseum.io into a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, in which participants have a say in the decision-making and direction of the platform’s projects. Typically, DAOs are funded by issuing governance tokens, which holders then use to vote; nextmuseum.io’s system will grant tokens to stakeholders who engage with the platform.

“For example, a token can be earned for publishing an open call, joining the discussion by commenting, attending an event, or writing about nextmuseum.io on social media,” Museum Ulm digital curator Marina Nething told ARTnews. “A certain number of tokens will grant the holder access to exclusive options and perks. Technology leads the way of our museum into the future.”

Such strategies are sorely needed at cultural institutions, Nguyen said, as the average member age reaches into the 60s or 70s, while millennials and Gen Z remain unengaged.

“Despite steady visitor numbers, younger audiences are less engaged,” Nguyen said of museums today. “Fewer become members and support museums in the short, medium, and long-term.”

A report by the International Council of Museums assessing the impact of Covid on cultural institutions found that the pandemic has changed “museums’ perception of the digital world forever.”

“Although the resulting economic crisis will obviously be a major obstacle in terms of the economic and human resources that museums will be able to invest, more and more institutions are now aware of the fundamental importance of digitization,” the report reads.

WAC’s Drubay similarly described museums as currently undergoing an “identity crisis” in a post-pandemic world. The crisis has pushed museums to be “fearless,” she said in “taking big, bold steps” toward Web3 in contrast to their slow, tentative engagement with social media and Web 2.0.

At the close of WAC Lab’s demo day, Drubay said, “whether through their creativity or audacity, the projects developed for this season show just how far cultural institutions are willing to think outside the box when it comes to Web3.”

Last month, the company set up two portable scanners in the John Martin Gallery in London to issue certificates for an exhibition of paintings by British artist Andrew Gifford. Similar in size to a digital piano, each scanner has a 1:1 macro lens on the end of a robotic arm that slowly moves to selected points on the canvas and takes incredibly detailed photos of 5×5 mm areas.

“The principle behind the technology that HP initially invented to identify printed documents is that if you squirt ink onto paper, and if you look at it closely enough, the splatter of the ink is unique, like a fingerprint,” Angus Scott, Artclear’s cofounder and CEO, told ARTnews. “This also applies to oil paintings, so you have ready-made signatures built into each artwork.”

Several algorithms iron out any variations in focus, angle, and lighting to ensure the scanner records consistent images every time it returns to analyze the same points on each painting. “We want to eliminate the human element and risk from provenance analysis, “Scott added. Three contemporary galleries in London have signed up to Artclear’s services: the John Martin Gallery, the Lungley Gallery, and Des Bains. Hephaestus Analytical, an art authentication service that uses machine learningis also onboard but Artclear has yet to approach auction houses.

The director of Des Bains, Maria Valeria Biondo, told ARTnews that she believes “Artclear’s scanning technology will give collectors more confidence – as an emerging gallery it can be a great tool to show professionalism.”

All data captured by the scanners is decentralized and kept offline to protect against cybercrime. The digital certificates are then permanently connected to the physical artworks and securely stored on the blockchain. Artclear’s chief technology officer, Sanjeev Kumar, said the company plans to develop much smaller scanners on tripods so galleries, auction houses, artists, and collectors can issue and check Artclear’s digital fingerprints themselves. 

Scott used the example of convicted art dealer Inigo Philbrick, who was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2022, to outline the benefits of Artclear’s provenance tracking. Philbrick created bogus custody receipts in his name for artworks he bought at auction on behalf of a consortium of investors, then went on to sell the works multiple times using the fake receipts.

“With Artclear, the auction house could have assigned ownership to the actual owners, and this would have prevented transfer without their consent,” he said. “Our tech makes it possible to permanently lock down key facts about an individual work of art and verifiably link them to their subject, the artwork itself, and their source, such as the artist. An artist can use Artclear to start a definitive file of information about their newly created works, avoiding the sort of controversy recently faced by Damien Hirst, as well as protecting the value of their oeuvre for their collectors.”

Art provenance specialist MaryKate Cleary believes using scanning technology to track provenance makes sense for primary works and those by living artists but the efficacy of such tools is debatable for historical works. “Provenance research is often a very labor-intensive process – researchers comb through libraries, archives, and scores of documents which are rarely digitized, so you need human analysis,” she told ARTnews.

Aubrey Catrone, another art provenance specialist, told ARTnews that overreliance on technology for provenance analysis is risky because “the current level of AI, for example, is not in a place to replace traditional research methods.” With regards to using the blockchain to secure data, Catrone added that “ideally, the market would unite all provenance and authentication information on one universal blockchain – but this is unlikely because there are so many art market actors and competing interests.”

Artclear is far from the only tech company working in the space. Arcual, founded in Switzerland in 2022 with the backing of the LUMA Foundation, BCG X, and MCH Group, the parent company of Art Basel creates digital and blockchain products with the aim of increasing security in art world transactions. Its unique “digital dossier” doesn’t rely on microscopic scanning of paintings; instead, it logs an ineradicable certificate of authenticity on the blockchain that’s signed by dealer and artist.

“The dossier can include digital or tokenized certificates, resale term agreements, and supporting documentation,” Rodrigo Esmela, chief product officer of Arcual, told ARTnews. “It provides immutable provenance that future-proofs an artwork, records its history and authenticity, and helps with its future resale.”

The company, which can process transactions up to $1 million (while taking a maximum of 1.5 percent commission from both sides), says its technology gives buyers the opportunity to receive digital copies of all documentation. Arcual also says it streamlines the sales process by speeding up payments.

Since its launch in 2022, Arcual has found traction with the art market. Last year, a number of galleries consigned work using Arcual’s Salesroom platform at Art Basel Hong Kong. The company also recently signed a multi-year deal with Future Fair, an art exhibition platform that hosts digital and in-person events to promote artists and small art galleries. Starting this April, the fair will now rely on Arcual to power the technology behind its Digital Companion online platform. “Arcual has built Future Fair’s Digital Companion to deliver on the premise that good products need to deliver value, be easy to use, and be impactful,” Esmela said, adding that the platform will “guarantee secure transactions.”

Artclear and Arcual have a strong focus on eliminating risk from the buyers’ end of the market, but one start-up aimed at benefiting creators is Fairchain, which was set up by Stanford University graduates alongside a group of artists in 2021. Like its competitors, Fairchain’s secure blockchain-backed certificates of title and authenticity (for physical works only) are meant to protect collectors from forgeries and disputes, but they also give artists the assurance that they’ll receive a resale commission every time their work changes hands on the secondary market.

Fairchain’s co-founder Charlie Jarvis told ARTnews that the venture “allows artists and galleries to certify works without any hardware or complicated set-up requirements,” while the “suite of ownership management tools makes it easy to manage the entire sale process.”

The venture-funded company which charges a percentage on each transaction collaborated with Artsy in 2023 for Black History Month, organizing an auction of eight Black artists. The partnership was billed as “a powerful stance in favor of sustainable, thoughtful, and meaningful support of creative communities [because] the auction allows artists to establish a resale commission rate for their artwork so they can maintain an economic stake in every future sale.”

Provenance tracking technology is still in its infancy, but as Artclear’s cofounder and chief business officer, Charlotte Black, told ARTnews, the potential of using blockchain to guarantee artwork authenticity stretches beyond eliminating forgeries and risk from the art market. “We hope Artclear will eventually enable people to go into an art gallery and borrow against paintings, for example, and also support collateral products and all sorts of things.”

Before fees, the total hammer price was $104.3 million, which leaned toward the presale low estimate of $95.3 (tallied without fees). While the sale was by no means a rip-roaring success, it was also hardly a disaster and was received with bullishness by the auction house. Long-established artists took home the top prices but several relative newcomers, especially women, fueled excitement.

At close of play, Antonia Gardner, the head of evening auctions, told ARTnews that the lot estimates were “realistic,” suggesting that the current health of the art market—still recovering from 2023’s decline—had tempered presale expectations.

Twelve works by emerging artists including Takako Yamaguchi, Jadé Fadojutimi, and Emma Webster, alongside pieces by artists with developed blue-chip markets such as George Condo, went under the hammer first in The Now, with nine outstripping their high estimates. Only one painting went unsold (Nicole Eisenman’s Biergarten, 2007), while Yamaguchi and Rebecca Warren set artist records. Etel Adnan was the only other artist to witness a record, peaking at $564,159 for her Untitled (c. 1970) later in the sale after four bidders chased the painting, meaning all three of the evening’s record-breakers were women.

On another positive note, 60 percent of works by female artists surpassed their high estimates.

The Now result confirmed the ascendency of Romania’s Victor Man, whose market has seen rapid growth in recent seasons. His paintingThe Chandler (2013) clocked $515,803, five times its high estimate. Iraqi artist Mohammed Sami also had a good night—Electric Column (2021) sold well for $241,783. Sami has been the subject of major solo shows in London and New York, and is set to feature in another solo exhibition at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire in July.

Of the other 58 lots of modern and contemporary art, five sold for more than $6 million (Picasso, Monet, Signac, Bacon, Miró) and five didn’t sell at all. Across both sales, just over half the lots sold topped their high estimates. 

The Spring evening auction coincided with the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874 and the standout works naturally included paintings by Impressionist trailblazers. Claude Monet’s Arbres au bord de l’eau, printemps à Giverny (1885) nudged past its high estimate of $8.9 million to $9.8 million and Glaçons, environs de Bennecourt (1893) sold for just under $4 million, $500,000 shy of its high estimate. Neither had presale guarantees.

In fact, only seven works were guaranteed and only five secured with irrevocable bids, a reasonably low proportion compared to recent auctions like the Christie’s 20th-century art sale last November when half the lots were financially guaranteed. However, this didn’t appear to inject any nitro into the bidding on Wednesday.

Picasso’s Homme à la pipe (1968), described as “swashbuckling” by Sotheby’s and last sold half a century ago, inspired the auction’s only episode of applause. Auctioneer Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and co-head of Impressionist and Modern art worldwide, brought the gavel down at $17.4 million (compelled by an Asian collector’s underbid), making it the evening’s top lot. Another work by the Spaniard, a rare example from his blue period (1901-04)—Lluís Vilaró (1904)—was unfortunately pulled before the sale.

A handful of lots sent ripples of excitement through the packed auction room. Francis Bacon’s haunting Study of George Dyer (1970) achieved the second-highest price for a single study of Dyer (Bacon’s lover) at auction, fetching $8.7 million (high estimate, $8.9 million). The compact portrait was included in the painter’s major 1971 exhibition in Paris, the first time a living artist had been given a solo show at the French capital’s Grand Palais since Picasso. Lot 19, Frank Auerbach’s Head of E.O.W II (1964) sold for $5.1 million (high estimate, $6.4 million) against the backdrop of the artist’s ongoing and critically acclaimed exhibition of large-scale drawings at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Before the sale, James Sevier, Sotheby’s European head of contemporary art, told ARTnews that the portrait “carries all the hallmarks of Auerbach’s best works.”

A contingent of punters had apparently pinned their hopes on a dramatic bidding war that didn’t materialize over lot 22, Andy Warhol’s simple but poignant Flowers (1964–65). Immediately after it sold for $1.4 million, the room thinned out. 

Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes (1944) by Françoise Gilot from the collection of Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post, did incite some serious tension as four phone bidders dueled with one in the room. The painting eventually sold for four times its estimate at $918,774, marking one of the highest prices realized for Gilot at auction.

There was serious public interest leading up to the sale as 7,500 people visited the exhibition over a week, and bidding was global, with participants from 41 countries.

While a Chinese buyer bagged Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Fleurs dan un vase (c. 1878) for $3.1 million, there was otherwise a notable lack of Asian bidders. An upbeat Harry Dalmeny, Sotheby’s UK chairman, told ARTnews that “the timing of evening sales in London isn’t ideal for bidders in China.” James Sevier, the European contemporary art head, said that he was encouraged by the number of online bids coming from elsewhere, saying “it’s never been easier to buy at auction, which is only a good thing for the houses.”

The bidding was described as “slow, measured, and respectable” by Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman of global fine arts. He was optimistic about the result, adding that the “froth of 2023 was clearing” and the sale was “positive.”

Sotheby’s is now preparing for its modern and contemporary day auction on March 7, with big names like Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, and Banksy set to feature.