The first sales of the fall auction season offered some encouraging signs for an art market that has spent the last few years searching for them. Buyers were willing to spend, sometimes well beyond expectations. But they were picky on which works they spent their money.
Across recent sales at Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s in New York, bidders chased down established artists, recognizable bodies of work, and lots carrying estimates that left some room to run, with records and bidding wars along the way.
Sotheby’s achieved the highest-ever total for a Contemporary Curated sale on October 7, ringing up $38.6 million. The sale featured works picked by the Knicks center forward and six-time NBA All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns and Jordyn Woods, a model and socialite, along with the collection of architect Robert A.M. Stern, who died last year. The Stern selection totaled $8.7 million, surpassing its $5.5 million high estimate, and 90% of lots found buyers. The Stern group was led by Andy Warhol’s Flowers, selling for $6.3 million. Helen Frankenthaler’s 1974 canvas Return and Exit fetched $3 million, twice its low estimate. Other standout lots came from George Condo, Roy Lichtenstein, and Ad Reinhardt. Records were set for Annie Leibowitz at $140,800 and Fritz Scholder at $537,600.
It wasn’t all knockout results, however.A piece by Avery Singer, born in 1987 and represented by the international powerhouse Hauser & Wirth, reflected the much-commented-on downturn in the market for young artists. Her painting Kundry (2018) bore a low estimate of $600,000. It fetched $2.1 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2022, amid a frothier market; was withdrawn from a sale at the same house in 2025; and yesterday fell far short of its estimate, fetching just $243,200.
Meanwhile, Reflections on Pop, Sotheby’s sale of works from the collection of Lichtenstein and his wife Dorothy rang up at $8.5 million, just exceeding the presale high estimate, with 96% of works sold. The Pop master is the subject of a retrospective opening this week at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
At Christie’s, a sale of postwar and contemporary art on October 1 brought in $28 million. The result was decent rather than spectacular, with the total reaching 86 percent of the sale’s aggregate low estimate.
Still, there was plenty of competition for the right material.
The sale was led by Wayne Thiebaud’s Coastal Farms (1997), which sold for $1.86 million, more than twice its $800,000 low estimate. A red Donald Judd sculpture from the collection of Barbara Jakobson followed at $1.3 million, while Sam Gilliam’s Region and Mind (1971) brought just over $1 million. A Josef Albers Homage to the Square painting sold for $960,000, more than doubling its $400,000 low estimate. (All prices reported include the buyer’s premium.)
In terms of the market, there’s little risk associated with those names. Thiebaud, Judd, Gilliam, and Albers all have established markets at this point, and their works are frequently represented in museum collections. But Christie’s also found room for price discovery farther down the scale. Judy Chicago’s Pasadena Lifesavers Blue Series #5 sold for $486,400, while Anni Albers’s Study for B brought $166,400 and Anicka Yi’s Counterfactual Imagination sold for $83,200. Christie’s said all three prices set auction records for the artists.
Phillips makes the selectivity argument even more clearly. Its modern and contemporary art sale on September 26 totaled $6.15 million, with 133 of 166 lots finding buyers, for an 80 percent sell-through rate.
Tom Wesselmann’s Drawing After Bedroom Painting #6 (1969) was the top lot at $348,300, landing comfortably within its $300,000 to $400,000 estimate. Yves Klein’s Monochrome bleu sans titre (IKB 321) and Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing each brought $335,400. Works by Hans Hofmann and John Chamberlain followed at $258,000 apiece.
The more telling result may have come from Fairfield Porter. His 1969 painting Flowers on a Bank, estimated at just $50,000 to $70,000, sold for $148,350. Meanwhile, Cecily Brown’s Untitled (Paradise) and Oscar Murillo’s geographical avalanche also exceeded their high estimates, each selling for $141,900.
Taken together, the sales hardly amount to an all-clear for the art market.
But they do show buyers willing to compete again when the material and the price are right. And unlike a few years ago, when newly hot contemporary artists could seemingly leap from one auction record to another, much of the strongest bidding this time centered on artists whose markets have been built over decades. For an art market that has spent much of the downturn learning the difference between demand and hype, that may be the more useful sign.
Source; artnews.com
