In the wake of Brexit and the American
elections, as well as recent evidence of a softening global art market, the November sales are, surprisingly, chock-full of first-class material, including three Gerhard Richter paintings valued in excess of $20 million apiece and a $40 million Willem de Kooning entry. The jammed week, featuring not only Impressionist and modern evening sales but postwar and contemporary events as well, also includes a large, rare-to-market Wassily Kandinsky painting estimated at more than $18 million and a Pablo Picasso rated at $12 million - $18 million.Take note, however, that only work in the pipeline approaches the $50 million mark, a number that floated easily in the New York salesrooms until November 2015. (That one work is a late entry at Sotheby’s, Edvard Munch’s “Girls on the Bridge,” 1902, which is on the block for an undisclosed estimate in the region of $50 million.)“The market has to find its own footing,” says Brett Gorvy, chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s New York, “and I want to see high percentages sold and high quality for each object offered.” Echoing that desire, Simon Shaw, worldwide co-head of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s, remarks, “We’re offering a tightly edited, commercial sale that will perform well. We’re working very hard to keep the estimates less aggressive in order to encourage competition.” “There are enough people wanting
to buy works,” says Jean-Paul Engelen, worldwide head of contemporary art at Phillips. “It’s the sellers who need to be convinced,” he adds, referring to the narrowing flow of property, and repeating in part a conversation that started well ahead of the London auction season
last month. The house enters the crowded fray with the pristine
and crisply Minimalist Donald Judd wall sculpture Untitled 1988 (Menziken 88-16). Comprising six identically fabricated anodized-aluminum units with green over black and red Plexiglas, it is expected to bring in $2.5 million to $3.5 million. The factory-made, Judd-designed piece is an open box stack that stands close to 10 feet high, a stark yet handsome totem. It last sold at Christie’s New York in November 2011 for $2,042,500. The work is selling with no reserve.At the top end, the house is offering Roy Lichtenstein’s Nudes in a Mirror, 1994. The work, which comes with an undisclosed estimate, is notable for having been vandalized while on view at Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2005. Richter’s Dϋsenjäger, 1963 is also a leading lot and an example of his early work in the vein of Capitalist Realism. The work once belonged to Gunther Uecker and is estimated to bring in between $25 million to $35 million.The house is also offering a domestically scaled Richter Abstraktes Bild from 1990, measuring 4 by 3 feet and rich in the artist’s self-invented squeegee-applied kaleidoscope of paint. It is estimated at $5 million to $7 million. The work was acquired directly from the artist, so it is indelibly fresh
to market. Other highlights range from Alexander Calder’s painted- metal mobile Two Horizontals and Nine Verticals, 1956, left, carrying an estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million, and a striking figurative painting that depicts a knife-wielding woman by the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans, Sweet Disposition, 2003, estimated at $500,000 to $700,000.“I’m pretty confident,” says Jean-Paul Engelen, “this sale will be better than May’s, with more lots and a higher total.”
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