Sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips in London this June were a mixed picture across the board, with several notable lots hammering for beneath their estimates, and others withdrawn altogether. Still, there were a number of record-setting sales and estimate-beating results. We’ve rounded up our picks of the 10 most significant below.
Gustav Klimt, Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), 1918
£85.3 million ($106.8 million)
Sotheby’s
Undoubtedly the showstopper of the London summer auction season, this sumptuous portrait by the Austrian master Gustav Klimt was on the artist’s easel when he passed away in 1918. Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) is one of only a handful of portraits by Klimt still in private hands and this latest sale set a new record for the artist’s work at auction. It also became the most expensive work to be sold at a European auction house, a record previously held by Alberto Giacommetti’s L’homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) (1960), which sold for $104 million in 2010.
The sale was also a major coup for Sotheby’s and is a sign of the continued strength of the market for Klimt’s work: The artist’s previous record of $105 million was set just last year for Birch Forest (1903), which was sold as part of the Christie’s Paul Allen sale.
—Arun Kakar
Arthur Jafa, Monster, 1988
£139,700 ($174,828) (179% above mid-estimate)
Sotheby’s
Working across video, sculpture, photography, and installation, Arthur Jafa interrogates the power of Black culture and the complexity of Black experience, paying particular attention to the relationship between visual culture and music. The sale of his photograph Monster (1988) at Sotheby’s “The Now” evening sale for $174,828 set a new auction record for the critically acclaimed artist.
Monster, a self-portrait in which Jafa confronts the camera with his head lowered, skewers menacing portrayals of Blackness in popular culture. The work was created before Jafa found his footing in fine art. At the time, he was working as the cinematographer on Julie Dash’s seminal feature film Daughters of the Dust (1991).
Jafa’s profile has risen rapidly since 2016, when his found-footage film Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2016) rippled through the art world and was acquired by major institutions including the Met, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate. The artist has racked up additional accolades for subsequent films, including a Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and he has worked on a number of music videos with names such as Kanye West.
Currently, Jafa is at work on a permanent installation at Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, which follows his solo presentation at the foundation which closed in February.
—Olivia Horn
Duncan McCormick, Trevor’s Dream, 2022
£177,800 ($225,455) (1,322% above mid-estimate)
Phillips
With his distinctive palette and uncanny portrayal of space, British painter Duncan McCormick has recently emerged to take the art market by storm. Drawing inspiration from the landscapes and interiors from his youth “like long-remembered daydreams,” McCormick’s work is predominantly rendered in acrylics. His paintings tend to take a determinedly upbeat point of view, with their luminous, audacious colors and a quirky, flattened perspective.
McCormick’s meteoric rise and eye-catching oeuvre are clearly attracting collectors, as evidenced in his most recent auction results.
A typical McCormick-style scene is depicted in his 2022 work Trevor’s Dream, a domestic interior in vivid, Hockney-esque colors, which beat his previous auction record this week to go for an impressive $225,455 at Phillips’s “20th Century to Now” sale. This was just the latest in a strong string of six-figure sales for McCormick, who has consistently eclipsed his pre-auction estimates—although, notably, Spanish Pool (2021) went for a more modest £56,700 ($72,028) at Christie’s just a day before.
— Josie Thaddeus Johns
Ellen Berkenblit, Nite Vibe, 2015
£40,640 ($51,260) (63% above mid-estimate)
Phillips
Ellen Berkenblit’s punchy, colorful paintings of women and animals resemble the work of comic strip artists of the mid-20th century. Her work often features a signature cast of characters that includes a girl, tiger, mouse, and leopard, amongst other animals and objects. Often depicted in profile, the narratives of these comic strip–esque paintings are intentionally ambiguous, leaving them open for viewer interpretation and engagement.
Drawing inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art (especially the work of Robert Rauschenberg), Berkenblit’s expressive paintings grapple with questions of gender and consumerism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The artist’s distinctive vibrant, yet spatially flat, style is achieved through her masterful use of gouache on paper, which allows colors like cardamom yellow, purple, and hot pink to pop against her black backgrounds. Her most recent solo exhibition, “Norton,” was held at Anton Kern earlier this year (her ninth with the New York gallery).
In recent years, Berkenblit’s work has slowly been making a presence in the secondary market. At Phillips’s “20th-Century to Now” auction in London, her 2015 painting Night Vibe set an auction record for the artist, selling for £40,640 ($51,260), which was twice its low estimate of £20,000.
—Ayanna Dozier
Ludovic Nkoth, Identity of the Moment, 2019
£63,500 ($80,520) (27% above mid-estimate)
Phillips
Cameroonian artist Ludovic Nkoth saw a second strong appearance at Phillips with Identity of the Moment (2019), which sold for a healthy $80,520—27% over its mid-estimate—at the auction house’s “20th Century to Now” sale.
The large-scale portrait, a tender interior scene featuring an at-home haircut, is typical of the artist’s practice. Taking cues from artists like Charles White and Kerry James Marshall, Nkoth uses vibrant colors and loose, expressive brushstrokes to create images of Black diasporic communities that draw on his own experiences of immigration and cultural dislocation.
“There are many aspects of my everyday life that make it into my paintings: my surroundings, the architecture from my present and my past, all the environments I occupy,” he told Artsy in an interview last year.
Beyond his nascent success at auction, Nkoth’s work has been recognized with a recent exhibition at Pond Society in Shanghai, his first institutional solo show. In May, he was included in MASSIMODECARLO’s standout presentation at Frieze New York. The gallery represents him alongside François Ghebaly and Luce Gallery.
—Olivia Horn
Victor Man, Weltinnenraum (World Within), 2017
£1,734,000 ($2,170,023) (1,287% above mid-estimate)
Christie’s
Victor Man’s auction results are catching up with the esteemed Romanian artist’s critical acclaim. Man is known for magnetic, small-scale portraits and still lifes, often allegorical in nature and painted in a palette of muted greens, blues, and blacks. Though he may not be familiar to the casual art market observer, over the past decade, the artist has had solo exhibitions at prestigious international institutions, including Haus der Kunst and Museo Tamayo. His works are included in the permanent collections of some of the world’s most renowned museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Not to mention, he has exhibited at the Venice Biennale on multiple occasions, from representing Romania in 2007 to being featured in Okwui Enwezor’s international exhibition “All the World’s Futures” in 2015.
The Romanian artist’s breakout auction sale took place in March 2022 at Christie’s when D with Raven (2015)—a small oil painting measuring just 8 1⁄2 by 6 1⁄4 inches—sold for $287,501, 757% above its mid-estimate. A handful of Man’s works have gone to auction since, selling for solid estimate-beating prices. Yet none were near the enthusiasm for Weltinnenraum (World Within) (2017). This eye-opening sale at Christie’s 20th and 21st century evening sale marks the first time the artist’s work has broken the million-dollar mark at auction.
Last year, Man held solo shows at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris and was also featured in the exhibition “Open Storage: 25 Years of Collecting,” curated by Allan Schwartzman, at Cindy and Howard Rachofsky’s the Warehouse, Dallas. In addition to Max Hetzler, Man is also represented by Blum & Poe and Gladstone Gallery.
—Casey Lesser
Diane Dal-Pra, It Belongs to You, 2020
£113,400 ($141,915) (184% above mid-estimate)
Christie’s
Diane Dal-Pra’s surreal, intimate paintings and works on paper have a distinctive, pillowy style, often depicting contorted bodies draped in translucent material. Reminiscent of René Magritte, these surrealistic works are executed with stillness and depth, and have proven highly popular with collectors.
This popularity is reflected in the artist’s auction results in the last month: The standout piece It Belongs to You (2020) sold for an astounding $141,915 at Christie’s 20th and 21st century evening sale. The painting, an odd composition portraying a woman embracing a goat, wrapped in fabric, was one of two six-figure sales Dal-Pra achieved in quick succession, with Una Vita Cosi (2019) selling for $112,575 at Christie’s in May.
It’s part of a wider rise in art world interest in Dal-Pra’s work, which was recently featured in the acclaimed group show “Rear View” at LGDR in New York. The artist just opened her first U.K. institutional solo exhibition, titled “Dissolutions,” at Mostyn in Wales. Prestigious institutions such as the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, the Yuz Museum Shanghai, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami have recently added her works to their collections, attesting to her increasing importance on the global art stage. Dal-Pra is represented by MASSIMODECARLO and Galerie Derouillon.
—Josie Thaddeus Johns
Chase Hall, Earl Hooker Blues in D Natural, 2020
£75,600 ($94,610) (26% above mid-estimate)
Christie’s
Chase Hall’s paintings of Black leisure are a breath of fresh air in the contemporary art world. His dreamlike scenes and portraits of Black life draw inspiration from the work of Jacob Lawerence for the 21st century. In so doing, Hall sets out to capture the indefatigable talent and showmanship of Black life that continues in spite of histories and legislative acts of oppression.
At Christie’s 20th and 21st century evening sale in London, his 2020 painting Earl Hooker Blues in D Natural set an auction record for the young artist, selling for £75,600 ($94,610), exceeding its high estimate of £70,000. This was only the second appearance at auction for the accomplished artist, but confirms strong interest from secondary market buyers.
Hall’s profile has continued to rise following his new representation with David Kordansky Gallery and Galerie Eva Presenhuber last year and his debut solo museum exhibition, “The Close of Day,” on view at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art through August 21st.
Hall’s inventive painterly practice uses coffee grains as pigment against raw canvas; this process doubles as a critique of the legacies of plantation labor in cotton and coffee production in the United States and Caribbean. With coffee grains, Hall is able to achieve a vibrant color palette that creates depth and tonal variation in his portraits of Black men and women. This multi-shade dimension of Hall’s characters’ skin pigmentation intentionally troubles the historical visual representation of Black life that is monolithic or tonally the same.
—Ayanna Dozier
Sahara Longe, Self-Portrait, 2021
£113,400 ($143,750) (127% above mid-estimate)
Christie’s
One of three works with impressive results by the rising British artist Sahara Longe at auctions last month, this striking self-portrait sold for well above its high estimate of $76,206 in Christie’s 20th and 21st century evening sale in London. Featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2022, Longe has steadily been gathering renown for her striking figurative works that channel the techniques of the Old Masters into fresh, contemporary subject matter.
The sale comes at an exciting moment in the artist’s career. She was one of 10 artists commissioned by King Charles to paint portraits of the Windrush Generation, which went on view at Edinburgh’s Royal Palace in late June. And, she is currently featured in her first solo show with Timothy Taylor, which started representing her in April 2022. Titled “New Shapes” and on view through July 8th, the show is her first solo outing in the U.K. and features a stunning display of her latest body of work—vast canvases filled with stylized, geometric figures in jewel tones inspired by the people she witnesses in day-to-day life. Timothy Taylor will also show a solo presentation of Longe’s paintings at Frieze Seoul this September.
Longe is also shown by New York’s tastemaking Deli Gallery, where she had a solo show last year, and has previously shown with London’s Ed Cross Fine Art. This trio of June 2023 sales follows her auction debut in March 2022 at Phillips, when Striped Collar (2022) sold for $69,881, a striking 656% above its mid-estimate.
—Casey Lesser
Miriam Cahn, Herumstehen, 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17 (Standing Around, 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17), 2017
£201,600 ($252,293) (188% above mid-estimate)
Christie’s
Miriam Cahn has become something of a lightning rod this year after her controversial painting at the Palais de Tokyo in France was defaced by a protester, igniting a debate that even prompted President Emmanuel Macron to weigh in. The Basel-born artist—known for her haunting, ambiguous figuration—has also seen an intensification of interest from collectors at auction, achieving strong estimate-smashing sales under the hammer.
Cahn’s works have sold for six-figure prices on more than 10 occasions this year alone (the artist first sold work for six figures last year), including a new record set at Sotheby’s in March for Das Genaue Hinschauen (The Close Look) (2018), which sold for £584,200 ($702,964).
This work, Herumstehen, 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17 (Standing Around, 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17) (2017), sold by Christie’s, is a classic example of the artist’s style, featuring her signature gestural brushstrokes and bold colors to depict a distorted, tumultuous figure. The work sold for £201,600 ($252,293), beating its mid-estimate by a solid 188% and confirming a remarkable trajectory at auction for this divisive artist.
—Arun Kakar
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