Sotheby’s first evening auctions in the company’s new Manhattan headquarters, the former Whitney Museum of American Art building designed by Marcel Breuer, brought in a total of $605.1m ($706m with fees) on Tuesday night (18 November). That result was right around the middle of the auction house’s pre-sale estimate for the night of $522.8m to $680.7m (all estimates calculated without fees). It was the highest total Sotheby’s has ever brought in from one night’s auctions.
The night’s total was fuelled in large part by the $456.2m ($527.4m with fees) generated by the sold-out (or “white-glove”) auction of 24 works from the collection of the late billionaire Leonard Lauder, which kicked off the evening. And more than half of the Lauder sale’s total came from a single lot, a full-length portrait by Gustav Klimt that became the second-most-expensive painting ever sold at auction after an epic bidding war. The subsequent multiple-seller The Now and contemporary art auction brought in $148.8m ($178.5m with fees) across 44 lots, only two of which failed to find buyers in the jam-packed salesroom above Madison Avenue.
The Lauder sale started strong with the first of two Alexander Calder mobiles. An untitled work from around 1953 quickly surpassed its $200,000 to $300,000 estimate to reach a hammer price of $700,000 ($889,000 with fees) after three-and-a-half minutes of frenzied bidding. The Calder mobile that followed immediately after, Four White on Little Red (1959), sold for $520,000 ($660,400 with fees).
The following lot, the Pablo Picasso work on paper Trois personnages (1971), sold for $800,000 ($1m with fees), right at the high end of its estimate. The work had been a part of Lauder’s collection since 1993, when he received it as a gift from his mother, the cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder.
The first of five bronzes by Henri Matisse from Lauder’s collection, La Serpentine (1951), was one the first lots of the night to sustain slow, back-and-forth bidding, eventually pushing it past its high estimate of $12m to a hammer price of $14.5m ($16.7m with fees). Edvard Munch’s Sankthansnatt (Midsummer Night, around 1901-03) likewise elicited sustained interest and eventually sold for its high estimate of $30m ($35.1m with fees).
Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914-16) came to market with an on-request estimate $150m (estimates are calculated without fees) and ultimately sold for a hammer price of $205m ($236.3m with fees) Courtesy Sotheby’s
The star of the sale—and, measured by pre-sale estimates, this entire New York auction season—was Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 1914-16), which was making its first-ever appearance at auction and sold for $205m ($236.3m with fees).
The painting is now the second-most valuable work of art ever sold at auction, surpassing Andy Warhol’s Sage Shot Blue Marilyn (1964) that sold for $195m with fees at Christie’s New York in 2022. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is also the most valuable work ever sold by Sotheby’s and broke the auction record for a work by Klimt, eclipsing Dame mit Fächer (Lady with Fan, 1917), which sold for £85.3m (with fees) at Sotheby’s in London in 2023. (The all-time record for a work of art at auction remains the Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which Christie’s sold for $450.3m in 2017.)
After a nearly 20-minute bidding war that proceeded at times in increments of $5m and sprang back to life after several calls of “fair warning” from auctioneer Oliver Barker, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer ultimately went to a bidder on the phone with Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of Impressionist and Modern art. The crowded room at Sotheby’s new headquarters in the former Whitney Museum of Modern Art building on Madison Avenue erupted with applause after Dawes’s bidder outdueled four other phone bidders and one woman seated in one of the front rows.
That blockbuster painting was followed by two studies on paper by Klimt, which sold for $410,000 ($520,700 with fees) and $380,000 ($482,600 with fees). Another highlight was his 1908 landscape painting Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow, around 1908), which sold for $75m ($86m with fees), while Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee, 1916) sold for $61m ($68.3m with fees).
Agnes Martin, The Garden, 1964 Courtesy Sotheby’s
A significantly more restrained pastoral painting from Lauder’s trove, and one of the night’s biggest triumphs, was Agnes Martin’s The Garden (1964), which hammered just shy of its $15m high estimate, for $14.8m ($17.6m with fees), setting a new auction record for her work. The Lauder sale’s hammer total of $456.2m surpassed Sotheby’s estimate in excess of $400m, giving cause for optimism amid difficult economic times for auction houses.
All the competitive bidding for Lauder’s treasures meant the single-owner auction ran 45 minutes over, delaying the start of Sotheby’s ensuing The Now and Contemporary art sale. But the charismatic auctioneer Phyllis Kao kept the proceedings upbeat and efficient in the second half of the night. The multiple-owner sale’s top lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto) (1981), which sold within its estimate of between $35m and $45m, for a hammer price of $41.5m ($48.3m with fees).
A new secondary-market record was set for the work of Cecily Brown when the British painter’s High Society (1997-98) sparked a contest between six bidders, ultimately driving its price to $8m ($9.8m). Yu Nishimura’s thicket (2020) sold for $560,000 ($711,200 with fees)—more than four times its high estimate—and set a new record for the artist at auction. Other artists whose high watermarks at auction were pushed higher during The Now and Contemporary art sale on Tuesday night include Noah Davis, Antonio Obá and Robert Alice.
The buzziest lot of the evening’s second half was Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016), widely reported to have been consigned by Steve Cohen, the Museum of Modern Art trustee and billionaire owner of the New York Mets baseball team. Sotheby’s had set the estimate for the 18-karat gold, fully functional toilet at just over $9.9m based on the value of the gold used to make it as of 5pm on Tuesday. However, the work was met by an auction room seemingly drained of interest.
Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016) was offered with a $9.9m estimate based on its weight in gold Courtesy Sotheby’s
America garnered a single bid, from a client on the phone with Sotheby’s vice chairman for science and natural history Cassandra Hatton, and sold for a hammer price of $10m ($12.1m with fees). A cryptic announcement by Sotheby’s after the sale said the work had “sold to a famous American brand”, but a spokesperson for the auction house declined to elaborate. The following day, the franchise of US tourist destinations and oddities attractions Ripley’s Believe It or Not! revealed itself as the buyer.
The result for America fell short of Cattelan’s auction record, which remains $17.2m, set in 2016 at Christie’s New York by the sculpture Him (2001), which consists of a kneeling, child-like depiction of Adolf Hitler.
Sotheby’s said this iteration of America is the only known version still in existence. Another edition was installed in a bathroom at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it drew more than 100,000 users during a year-long run. That piece was loaned to Blenheim Palace in the UK in 2019, but it was stolen just two days after it went on display. Two men were convicted in the case earlier this year, and investigators believe the gold toilet was ultimately melted down and destroyed.
The Now and Contemporary art auction brought in a total of $148.8m ($178.5m with fees), within but on the lower side of Sotheby’s estimate of $143.6m to $198.2m. That may be in part because the only two lots that did not sell, large paintings by Kerry James Marshall and Barkley L. Hendricks, had been expected to bring significant sums: $10m to $15m and $9m to $12m, respectively. Still, the second half of the double-header outperformed the equivalent auction last November, which generated buzz from another catchy Cattelan provocation but totaled only $96m ($112m with fees).
Sotheby’s $706m debut in its new Breuer Building home came one night after Christie’s kicked off the marquee New York auctions with a double-header of its own, generating $574.7m ($690m with fees). On Wednesday (19 November) the action shifts to Phillips for its evening sale of Modern and contemporary art sprinkled with scientific specimens—including an endearing juvenile triceratops nicknamed Cera—and then back to Christie’s for its evening sale of post-war and contemporary art, which will include choice lots from the estate of the late collectors Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson. Sotheby’s then closes out the series of big-ticket evening auctions with a triple-header on Thursday (20 November).