S&P ratings, which are issued to both companies and countries, indicate the degree risk to investors. They span from AAA to D.

The auction house’s revenue has dropped 22 percent on the heels of a new, simplified fee structure that drastically lowered—and standardized—the traditional buyer’s premium, sellers’ fees, and commissions. At the time of the restructured fee announcement, chief executive Charlie Stewart said these are “changes [that] we’ve been contemplating for a long, long time.”

“I think this it’s good to have a fair, and clear, set of terms in the art market. This is kind of a growing-up moment. It’s a step toward maturity for the art world,” Stewart added. Some in the art world, however, considered the restructuring a risky move, since negotiating sellers’ fees is among the most powerful tools in an auction house specialist’s arsenal. For headline-grabbing lots, sellers’ fees are often brought down to zero. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, the price of Sotheby’s bonds has dropped by about 8 percent in the last month, leading to worry among investors that the auction house won’t be able refinance loans that are due in 2026. Prices for bonds due in 2027 have dropped to below 87 cents on the dollar, down from around 93 cents in mid-May.

The auction house’s debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which compares the company’s total debt to its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and is used as a measure of how easily a company can pay off its debt, increased from 7.7 times to 10 times, indicating higher debt relative to earnings.

Despite a cloudy financial outlook, Sotheby’s paid shareholders $8.5 million in dividends in the first quarter of 2024 and a total of $90 million last year.

S&P has a negative outlook on Sotheby’s rating, meaning it could downgrade the rating further if performance doesn’t improve. Sotheby’s is a private company owned by French telecom entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, who bought the house in 2019 for $2.7 billion.

Sotheby’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The seven-foot-wide work seems to have significantly declined in value. When Christie’s brought the work to auction in 2022, that house gave it a $30 million estimate; just before the sale, the work was quietly withdrawn. This time, Sotheby’s has awarded the work a $15 million–$20 million estimate.

Any Basquiat coming to auction is deemed an event, largely due to the phenomenally high prices his work typically commands. Although the recent secondary market prices are still high, Basquiats used to more regularly outpace their high estimates by large sums at auction. The dip in prices could be explained by collectors being more thoughtful about how many millions they are willing to spend at auction, and by auction houses adjusting estimates to better fit those new, high interest rate–driven buying habits.

In May, Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, led a modern and contemporary art sale at Philips, selling for $46.5 million. That painting had been estimated to sell for $60 million. The other two Basquiats sold by the house in evening sales that month—Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer), from 1981, and Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982)—headed to auction at lower values, selling for $7.8 million and $12.6 million, respectively. Those figures, which all include buyer’s premium, were squarely within the works’ estimates.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, too, had Basquiats for sale in May. An untitled 1984 collaboration between Basquiat and Andy Warhol went to Sotheby’s with an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It sold for $19.3 million. Meanwhile, yet another 1982 work, The Italian Version of Popeye Has no Pork in His Diet, sold at Christie’s for $32 million on an estimate of around $30 million.

Earlier this year, Phillips’s Americas president Jean-Paul Engelen told Puck’s Marion Maneker that Basquiat was “the new Picasso,” a euphemism for the fact that the artist has now achieved legendary status on the market. According to Maneker, roughly $125 million worth of Basquiat’s work sold in May. Look back to the last four years, and that figure crosses the billion-dollar mark.

There’s no question that Basquiat’s market has juice at the moment, a trend that it likely to continue. The only question is whether Sotheby’s priced the work low enough to get collectors interested. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. The work, according to Sotheby’s website, has a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, which means it has effectively already sold. The question, now, is who’s taking it home.

The house is reportedly set to cut around 50 employees based in London, and per the Art Newspaper, similar layoffs may follow in New York and at other Sotheby’s locations in Europe.

A Sotheby’s representative did not immediately respond to request for comment on the Art Newspaper report, which stated that the auction house had entered a “consultation period” in which it would evaluate its financial future.

The report follows two slow but hardly catastrophic auction weeks at Sotheby’s, one held in March in London, the other held in May in New York. Although neither high-profile sale week of contemporary and modern art was a runaway success, the auction house’s leadership said it was pleased with the results.

Last year, Sotheby’s laid off at least 10 senior employees, a cutback that also seemed to coincide with the departure of at least four people involved in NFT-related sales.

Since 2019, Sotheby’s has been held privately by Patrick Drahi. In the past few years, however, there have been rumors of possible financial changes at the auction house, including a potential plan to take Sotheby’s public once again that first made the press in 2021.

Lampley joined Sotheby’s in 2018 after having worked as a specialist at Christie’s where, in 2015, she began leading that house’s Impressionist and Modern Art team in 2012. Over her six years at Sotheby’s Lampley has helped real in marquee worthy consignments and estates, including the Macklowe collection and a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution in 2021 and, much to the chagrin of Christie’s, the Emily Fisher Landau collection in 2023.

When asked about the move Lampley said “after 20 years of auctions, I am excited to experience another side of the art world, and to learn from the very best. My love of art is what drives me, and I am looking forward to getting closer to artists and thinking deeply about the evolution of a body of work.”

Besides overseeing Sotheby’s Contemporary, Modern, Photographs, 20th Century Design, and Prints departments, Lampley was a driving force behind Sotheby’s robust private sales department and invariably has a rolodex full of contacts that will be greatly appreciated and put to good use at Gagosian.

“Brooke is a proven secondary market operator with strong client relationships. She has a drive and entrepreneurial spirit that I think will fit in well at the gallery,” Larry Gagosian told ARTnews.

Lampley is slated to start at Gagosian this fall and will continue to be based in New York.

Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart informed the auction house’s staff of Lampley’s planned exit via an email on Wednesday evening, a copy of which was shared with ARTnews. “We are grateful to Brooke for her many contributions to the company over nearly seven years,” the letter read, “…we wish her all the best and look forward to collaborating with her in her next endeavor.”

According to the email, people under Lampley will report to Sebastian Fahey, the global fine art managing director. The Modern & Contemporary Americas team will continue to be led by David Galperin in Contemporary, Courtney Kremers in Private Sales, Julian Dawes in Impressionist and Modern, and Scott Niichel across the middle market Modern and Contemporary categories, the email confirmed.

The 71 works included multiple pieces by Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Alberto Giacometti, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Jasper Johns, Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anish Kapoor, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, and Jackson Pollock.

The sale of the artworks through Sotheby’s auctions and private sales occurred after the value of shares of Revlon Inc., which his holding company had acquired for $1.74 billion in 1985, fell significantly due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global stock markets. Perelman has been using those as collateral for loans.

While there had been previous reports about Perelman selling off “a large portion of his sprawling 1,000-item art collection,” the recent court filing in a four-year-long insurance court case is the first account released to the public of all the works sold, according to Bloomberg Law, which first reported the news.

Deutsche Bank issued the margin call—a request for additional capital in a brokerage account—that prompted the businessman to sell the 71 artworks and other assets. The financial institution also lent against the billionaire’s art.

At least two of the artworks from Perelman’s collection went to another Top 200 Collector: Ken Griffin. The founder of Citadel and long-time trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, Griffin purchased Brice Marden’s Letter About Rocks #2 and River 4 for $30 million and $9.5 million after visiting Perelman’s home in the Hamptons in 2020.

A representative for Perelman declined to comment to Bloomberg Law.

Helphenstein, who regularly critiques the art market, received criticism this week for a video she made as she was live-streaming Sotheby’s “Now” evening sale on Monday. In a clip that has been circulating on social media, Helphenstein jokes about the name of a Sotheby’s auctioneer bidding on behalf of a client.

“Who would name their child ‘Ashcan’?” Helphenstein says, laughing offscreen. “Asking for a friend. Who would name your child Ashcan? Maybe they are not American, and it means something in a different language.”

Helphenstein was referring to was Ashkan Baghestani, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art day sales in New York. “I’m Ashkan, do you feel good about yourself posting xenophobia, intensive and hate speech on your social media account?” Baghestani wrote on his Instagram Story. “Maybe travel more and educate yourself on the beauty of Persian culture.”

The post was reshared by several people from the auction house, with some tagging Helphenstein and saying the comments were inappropriate.

Following the negative response, Helphenstein issued a statement apologizing for the comment. “I take full responsibility for making an offhand comment about a name I was unfamiliar with, and made a joke in poor taste,” she wrote in an Instagram Story. “I have apologized directly to the person, and I have also been in dialogue with every single person who has posted today that I am a xenophobic, bitter Karen who posts hate speech.”

“I acknowledge your apology,” Baghestani said in an Instagram Story of his own. “I’m proud of my name and my culture. I am a second generation immigrant born and raised in Switzerland and you are often mocked for my ethnicity. Without my background I wouldn’t be where I am today. I was disappointed that someone with a platform like yours would make these kinds of comments. I appreciate your commitment to mindfulness and respect for others going forward… we live and learn, no ill feelings and apologies accepted, love and light.”

Baghestani did not respond to a request for comment. Sotheby’s declined to comment.

Helphenstein’s Jerry Gogosian account currently has 138,000 followers. She also runs a podcast and a newsletter, and has in the past collaborated with auction houses such as Sotheby’s. For Sotheby’s, in 2022, she curated a show titled “Jerry Gogosian’s Suggested Followers: How the Algorithm Is Always Right.” Helphenstein recently returned to school as an MBA student at NYU’s Stern School of Business. But in February, she announced that she would put school on hold because she had signed with the LA-based talent agency UTA.

THE HEADLINES

CARRINGTON’S SURREAL NIGHT. The Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is the talk of last night’s otherwise mostly mixed auction at Sotheby’s in New York. Her 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert surpassed previous records with $28.5 million paid with fees, reports Harrison Jacobs for ARTnews. Surrealism is getting a lot of love this year with exhibitions marking its centennial, but the fact that a female artist like Carrington is setting impressive auction records is also a positive sign of change. In fact, “the recent surge of interest in previously overlooked women artists connected with the Surrealist movement marks a profoundly significant cultural shift,” stated Allegra Bettini, head of Sotheby’s New York modern art evening sales. Overall, Wednesday’s sale yielded $235 million, led by a Monet hammering at $34.8 million with fees, though there continued to be signs of nervousness from buyers, following tepid sales and Christie’s website security crisis during the first two nights of New York’s marquee art auctions.

BEAM ME UP, JUDGE. Two men who found the lost, first model of the USS Enterprise prototype for the TV series Star Trek are now blasting towards court and suing Heritage Auctions for fraud and deceptive trade practice, reports the South China Morning Post. In April, the auction house announced with joy that they were returning the model to Eugene Roddenberry Jr, the son of the series creator, Gene Roddenberry. But the two men who found the model in a storage unit, Dustin Riach and Jason Rivas, claim the auction house questioned their title to the model, and convinced them to sell it for a low price of $500,000 to Roddenberry Entertainment, violating property law, according to their lawyer, an allegation the auction house has denied.

THE DIGEST

Spain’s ministry of culture is unveiling a trove of Roman archaeological treasures that researchers were able to recover from the temporarily drained reservoir of Valdecañas in Cáceres province, in a race against looters and rising water levels. The Roman city of Augustobriga was flooded by the 1957-built reservoir, but between 2019 and 2023 much of it resurfaced due to drought, making it possible for researchers to save precious remnants, including a megalithic dolmen, the complete cartography of Augustobriga, and stone boars made by the pre-Roman Vettones people. [El Pais]

A believed-lost, over 40-year-old statue of retired Queens resident and Italian-American ‘master seamstress’ Maria Pulsone was found by the model’s granddaughter, and will go on view at the Italian American Museum in New York, when it reopens this summer. The work will be included in the museum’s exhibition about the garment district and the story of the Italian immigrant experience. [WWD]

The new Kunstsilo modern and contemporary art museum has opened in a former 1930s grain silo in southern Norway. Vertiginous concrete tubes in the massive, vacant waterfront structure have gone from housing 15,000 tons of grain to displaying one of the most important collections of Nordic modern art in the world, including the holdings of collector Nicolai Tangen, whose foundation co-funded the museum. [The Guardian]

Hoor Al Qasimi will be the next artistic director of the 2026 Biennale of Sydney. Qasimi is currently the president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the daughter of the Emir of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi. [The Art Newspaper]

The Joan Mitchell Foundation has announced Sarah Roberts will become its inaugural senior director of curatorial affairs. Roberts previously worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture. [Artforum]

Curator and author Lou Stoppard discusses her current exhibit, Annie Ernaux and Photography at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, which bridges Ernaux’s observant, impersonal writing style with photography. Inspiration for the project came with Ernaux’s own description of her writing in Exteriors, as an attempt “to describe reality as through the eyes of a photographer and to perceive the mystery and opacity of the lives I encountered.” [Literary Hub]

THE KICKER

HOCKNEY’S DRAGONS. The biggest star attraction at this weekend’s opening of “Turando” at the Los Angeles Opera, are not the singers. It’s the artist David Hockney, or more accurately, the set design he made for the opera in the 1990’s. Compared to German Expressionist filmmaking, Hockney’s design is a “virtuosic testament to the artist’s lifelong exploration of abstract figurative painting and his abiding love of opera,” writes David A. Keeps for The Los Angeles Times. In his biography, Hockney also talks about the project: “I had seen many productions of ‘Turando,’ most of them kitsch beyond belief, overdone Chinoiserie, and too many dragons … I suggested that we take the dragons away and put them into the roofs, in forms that felt like dragons.” The resulting “harsh edges, strong diagonals, mad perspectives,” a fantastical scene of red and ultramarine, will be brought back to life during this weekend’s first performance.

While 96 percent of lots sold and several bidding wars broke out, nervousness continued to be evident among buyers through the large number of incremental bids, 32 out of 50 works sold with guarantees and/or irrevocable bids, as well as several works by blue-chip artists that passed or sold well below estimates, including two by Pablo Picasso. Two oil paintings, Georges Braque’s Anvers, le mât (1906) and Sam Francis’ Yellow, Orange and Blue (1958), were also withdrawn prior to the auction.

The first bit of drama in the evening occurred when five bidders competed for Calder’s 5-foot-high, 25-foot-wide mobile Blue Moon (1962), which carried an estimate of $7 million to $10 million. After more than five minutes, Lot 3 sold for $12.2 million, or $14.4 million with fees, to a buyer in the room. Auctioneer Oliver Barker would later openly ask a former staffer in the audience, “Are you bidding or just pointing at the Calder?”

Later, three bidders on the phones chased after Claude Monet’s Meules à Giverny (1893) for even more time at eight minutes. The colorful Impressionist painting of haystacks would hammer at $29.8 million, or $34.8 million with fees, an amount that prompted cheers and applause. It went to a buyer on the line with Sotheby’s deputy chairman for Asia, Jen Hua, on an estimate “in excess of $30 million.” The auction house said after the sale the painting sold to a buyer in Asia.

Shortly afterwards, interest in Leonora Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) proved to be even more competitive among six parties, including two in person.

The Surrealist painting featured behind Barker’s rostrum was already set to be a record-breaker with its estimate of $12 million to $18 million. But during the nearly ten-minute bidding war, Barker oversaw bids between senior vice president Alejandra Rossetti, Hua, and a person in the room, before the latter finally offered $24.5 million. Barker gave Rosetti and Hua time to counter-bid before raising his hammer, but there were no more new offers from the phones. “The gentleman has waited long enough,” Barker said.

That amount was finally enough to secure the Surrealist painting. At about $28.5 million with fees, Carrington’s previous auction record of $3.25 million set at Sotheby’s New York two years ago was obliterated and it even surpassed the auction records for fellow Surrealists Max Ernst ($24.4 million in 2022) and Salvador Dali ($21.7 million in 2011). And it turned out the purchase was three decades in the making.

After the sale, Sotheby’s identified the buyer as Top 200 collector Eduardo F. Costantini, an Argentinian developer, businessman and the founder of the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires.

“An iconic painting, The Distractions of Dagobert, is one the most admired works in the history of surrealism and an unparalleled masterpiece of Latin American art. I was the underbidder when she reached the artist’s record 30 years ago and tonight once again, we made a new auction record! This masterpiece will be part of a collection where amongst other two important works by Remedios Varo and another record breaking Frida Kahlo are also found,” Constantini said in a statement.

(When Sotheby’s sold Les Distractions de Dagobert to its anonymous consignor in 1995, it went for $475,000.)

After Monet and Carrington, René Magritte’s Le Banquet (circa 1955 to 1957) was the third highest lot of the night, selling for a hammer price of $15.5 million, or $18.1 million with fees, on an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It also had a third-party guarantee.

Other lots which achieved eight figure sums were Monet’s Antibes vue de la Salis (1888) for $12 million hammer, $14.1 million with fees (estimate of $12 million to $18 million); Picasso’s Buste d’homme (1969) for a hammer price of $10.8 million, $12.7 million with fees (estimate of $8 million to $12 million); an untitled painting by Mark Rothko from 1969 which hammered at $9.5 million or $11.25 million with fees (estimate of $10 million to $15 million); as well as Édouard Manet’s Vase de fleurs, roses et lilas (1882) which sold for $10.1 million with fees (estimate of $7 million to $10 million).

Les Distractions de Dagobert wasn’t the only Surrealist work to get a bidding war. Varo’s Esquiador (Viajero) (1960) garnered bids for more than five minutes, including from Lulu R.C. de Creel, head of Sotheby’s Mexico. The work sold hammered for $3.4 million or about $4.2 million with fees, on an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million. The auction house said Varo’s work went to a buyer in Asia.

Activity after the major Carrington sale was noticeably more subdued, with works like Picasso’s L’Enlèvement (1933) hammering at $600,000 or $762,000 with fees (estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million); Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure: Umbilicus getting a hammer price of $785,000 or just under $1 million with fees (estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million); and Vincent Van Gogh’s Tête de paysanne (1882) selling for a hammer of $620,000 or $787,400 with fees on an estimate of at least twice that at $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

Two works by blue-chip artists immediately prior to the van Gogh portrait would also fail to sell: Picasso’s Femme au chapeau (1941) (estimate of $6 million to $8 million), and the Henry Moore sculpture Working Model for Mother and Child: Block Seat (estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million).

One of the most notable declines in market value was seen in Hans Hofmann’s Lava (1960). The six-foot-tall oil-on-canvas painting sold at Christie’s for more than $8.8 million during a November evening sale in 2017, setting a record for the artist. The work was even featured on the cover of an exhibition catalogue for a survey at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963, and included in several retrospectives at the Tate, the Whitney, and the National Gallery in Washington. But, at Sotheby’s Thursday, Lava wasn’t that hot even with a third-party guarantee. It hammered at $3 million, or just under $3.7 million with fees on an estimate of $3 million to $5 million, going to a buyer on the phone with Sotheby’s Chairman of the Americas and former Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison.

Near the end of the night was a reminder about how much one online bidder can mean amidst the ongoing website issues at Christie’s. Interest for Pierre Bonnard’s Nu s’habillant (1925) involved multiple Sotheby’s staffers on the phone which led to a back-and-forth between head of contemporary marquee private sales Charlotte van Dercook and an online bidder. After nearly three minutes, the online bidder with paddle number 25 would secure a hammer price of $2.5 million, or just over $3 million with fees, well above the estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million.

“Thank you so much for your patience,” Barker said.

The painting, carrying a $12 million–$18 million estimate, hit that price after 10 minutes of bidding. Argentinian developer and businessman Eduardo F. Costantini—who was in the room—bid against buyers on the phone with Alejandra Rossetti, senior vice president for business development for the auction house in Miami, and Jen Hua, Sotheby’s deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia.

“An iconic painting, The Distractions of Dagobert, is one the most admired works in the history of surrealism and an unparalleled masterpiece of Latin American art. I was the underbidder when she reached the artist’s record 30 years ago and tonight once again, we made a new auction record! This masterpiece will be part of a collection where amongst other two important works by Remedios Varo and another record breaking  Frida Kahlo are also found,” Constantini said in a statement after the sale.

Costantini is an ARTnews Top 200 collector known for founding Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. In 2001, he donated over 220 works of Latin American art to the museum, including numerous pieces by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Costantini has been known to set records for Latin American artists by purchasing key works at auction.

In 2020, Costantini set records when he bought works by Remedios Varo and Wilfredo Lam. In 2020, at Sotheby’s, he purchased the latter’s Omi Obini (1945) for $9.6 million, making it the highest price ever achieved for a work by a Latin American artist at the time. Connstantini then broke that record in 2021 when he bought Frida Kahlo’s Diego y yo (Diego and I) at Sotheby’s for $34.9 million.

The price achieved for the Carrington on Wednesday far surpassed her previous record at auction, which was set two years ago for The Garden of Paracelsus (1957), when it sold for $3.2 million.

“The recent surge of interest in previously overlooked women artists connected with the Surrealist movement marks a profoundly significant cultural shift. Leonora Carrington has proved to be a lightning rod of attention, setting the stage for Les Distractions de Dagobert, the apotheosis of Carrington’s oeuvre, to take its place as a masterpiece of 20th-century art,” Allegra Bettini, the head of Sotheby’s modern art evening sales in New York, said in a statement prior to the sale.

As Bettini noted, the upsurge in prices for Carrington, who was born in England and based in Mexico for much of her career, tracks with a surge in interest in women Surrealists, a trend best exemplified by the 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani. That show was titled “The Milk of Dreams,” after a book of the same name by Carrington.

Les Distractions de Dagobert was featured in the exhibition “Surrealism and Magic: Enchanced Modernity,” which was on view at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, also in 2022.

One of the most startling things I saw happen during the first two days of art auctions in New York took place before any bids had been made.

A few minutes before Sotheby’s ultra-contemporary evening sale, “The Now,” was set to begin, a cameraman tripped over a stanchion and narrowly avoided putting an entire palm into a large, untitled work by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Several staffers were clearly shaken by the near-disaster involving this collaborative piece from 1984, which carried a low estimate of $15 million. 

Thankfully, Lot 105 remained undamaged. It sold for $19.4 million, a record for a Warhol-Basquiat collaboration, and the fourth-highest amount for the night.

Even with a crisis averted, the mood throughout the first two days of sales of the New York May sales was filled with anxiety among buyers and consignors. “It didn’t feel exciting in the room,” art adviser Dane Jensen told ARTnews.

A sense of narrowly avoided disaster characterized two sales at Christie’s the following night, held after several days of the auction house’s website being down due to a “technology security issue.” The de la Cruz collection and the 21st century evening sale still managed high sell-through rates; a YouTube livestream went on as planned, and online bidding continued through Christie’s Live, the house’s online platform for remote bidding. But several art advisers told ARTnews it would be hard to know how many people were deterred from jumping in on the action, especially for an estate that was so well-known. “Even one less bidder can make a huge impact on the performance of a work,” Jensen said. 

A high number of guarantees and irrevocable bids helped smooth things over and raise sell-through rates, but many lots by notable artists went for sums below their low estimates. Other lots were withdrawn, and still some others did not sell at all. At Phillips, Frank Stella’s Lettre sur les sourds et muets II (1974), from the private collection of gallerist Marianne Boesky, was estimated to sell for $5 million to $7 million. It failed to find a buyer. And despite being described by Christie’s as “considered the most important and ambitious painting” of Mark Tansey’s career, Mont Sainte-Victoire #1 (1987), estimated to sell for between $8 million–$12 million, also went unsold.

Incremental bids from several specialists in pursuit of a deal also pulled down the mood, with auctioneers like Sotheby’s European chairman Oliver Barker exclaiming, “It’s like extracting teeth, my goodness.”

As a result, several art advisers who spoke to ARTnews immediately after the start of the marquee sale week in New York also noted the unevenness of the initial results. 

On Monday night, art adviser Ivy Shapiro told ARTnews that, while there were a few sales that “went through the roof,” for the most part, Sotheby’s was subdued. “It’s cautious, but it’s steady. And if people want something, they want it.”

Jensen said the spectacle of art auctions can blind people to noticing how long things haven’t been doing well in different areas of the art market, such as flat demand for established postwar artists. It’s commonly thought that artists’ prices rise once they die, but this isn’t always the case, as evidenced by Stella, who passed away on May 4. Ifafa I, a significant 1964 shaped canvas by him, came to auction at Sotheby’s with a $14 million low estimate and hammered only just a little above that. “It may be that there isn’t a reason” the painting didn’t sell, Jensen told ARTnews. “It’s just because the market has gone down.” 

There were still bright spots, especially for painting and sculptures by artists of color, queer artists, and women. At Christie’s, records were set for Ana Mendieta (twice over in the same sale), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Reggie Burrows Hodges, and Diane Arbus. At Phillips, Kent Monkman tripled his record, bringing it to $381,000, for the 2020 painting The Storm. And at Sotheby’s, new records were established for Faith Ringgold, Justin Caguiat, and Lucy Bull, whose works all sold for more than $1 million. 

Sotheby’s extensive contemporary day sale on May 14 also saw several paintings far exceed their high estimates: Emmi Whitehorse’s #534 Untitled for $127,000 on an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000; Alex Katz’s May for $1.88 million on an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000; Salvo’s Senza Titolo for $406,400 on an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000; Olga de Amaral’s Pueblo X for $698,500 on an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000; and Antonio Obá’s Sankofa – Figura Com Alpargata for $228,600 on an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000. The works by Whitehorse and Salvo both did not have guarantees or irrevocable bids, and they sold for more than six times their high estimates. 

One of the most astute comments on the wobbly state of the art market came just as the week of sales was about to start. On the Nota Bene podcast, recorded last week and aired on Sunday, dealer Lock Kresler observed that we are seeing a very different scenario today than in the wake of the 2008 recession, when the art market made a pretty speedy recovery. “We haven’t seen a crash,” he said, “but we also haven’t seen anything resembling a window out.”