Christie’s 21st Century Sale Yields $96.4 M. and a New Record for a Living Female Artist

After two nights of decent, not disastrous auctions, Christie’s 21st century evening sale on May 14 continued the trend, yielding $96.4 million on a pre-sale low estimate of $79.5 million.

That number is lower than the ones for marquee sales held in the same category at Christie’s. The house’s 21st century sale last May posted $114.7 million for 57 lots—some $34.4 million of which came via works from the Rosa de la Cruz collection. And in November, the same sale at Christie’s had 42 lots and yielded $106.5 million.

There were admittedly fewer lots on Wednesday night. Of the 39 lots offered, 24 of them had minimum price house guarantees and 17 had third-party guarantees. Four of the 39 lots didn’t sell and three lots were withdrawn, resulting in a sell-through rate of 90 percent before withdrawals and 81.4 percent including them.

Multiple art advisers told ARTnews that the results could have been much worse, considering the recent fires in Los Angeles, the impact of new tariffs, volatility in the stock markets, and uncertainty about the future. Plus, multiple reports have noted large declines in auction sales of contemporary art last year.

“The market is funny right now,” art adviser Laura Lester told ARTnews. “Especially at the top end, if people can wait, they are waiting. It’s obviously an amazing time to be a buyer looking for opportunities. And I think the sales are evidence of that.”

Abigail Asher, another adviser, said of the sale, “There’s still clearly activity, but it has to be at the right price levels.” Ana Sokoloff, also an adviser, called the sale “lackluster.”

The auction was led by a selection of 14 works by blue-chip artists that once decorated the home of Ago Demirdjian and ARTnews Top 200 collector Tiqui Atencio. Notably, Bicho, a 1960 sculpture by Lygia Clark, was withdrawn prior to the sale, and the works Gray Panel II by Ellsworth Kelly (estimate of $2 million to $3 million) and “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (estimate of $500,00 to $700,000) were bought in.

The top lot by estimate was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Baby Boom (1982), which had an estimate of $20 million to $30 million and was consigned by mega-collector Peter M. Brant (who formerly owned ARTnews). The seven-foot-wide painting hammered at exactly $20 million, or $23.4 million with fees, after eight bids, going to a buyer on the phone with Christie’s global president Alex Rotter.

That work was followed by Marlene Dumas’s Miss January (1997), which came from the Rubell Family Collection and had an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. The nine-foot-tall painting opened at $9 million and hammered at $11.5 million, or $13.6 million with fees. The winning bid came from a buyer on the telephone with Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chairman for postwar and contemporary art. With this result, Dumas is now the world’s most expensive living female artist.

Some said the sale of the Dumas work was energizing. “In this in this uncertain world,” Asher said, “to see an object of such raw power and such feminist presentation reach a world record for a living female artist was really exciting.” But others were quick to point out that there bidding lasted just one minute and there wasn’t much activity surrounding the work. Lester called the sale of this piece “unexciting.”

Either way, Dumas has officially surpassed the record set by Jenny Saville in 2018. Saville’s nude self-portrait Propped (1992) sold for £9.5 million ($12.4 million) against an estimate of £3 million to £4 million in October 2018 at Sotheby’s London.

Work by another living female artist, Simone Leigh, seemed to garner more excitement. Bidding for Leigh’s 10.5-foot-tall bronze sculpture Sentinel (2020) started at $2.6 million, and the piece ultimately hammered at $4.7 million, or $5.7 million with fees, on a high estimate of $5.5 million. The winning bid was a buyer on the phone with Maria Los, Christie’s deputy chairman and head of client advisory for the Americas. The sale broke the artist’s previous auction record of $3 million, set by the sale of Las Meninas II (2019) during Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in May 2023. Leigh could be seen watching the sale of Sentinel on a livestream while attending MoMA PS1’s gala tonight.

Other top lots included Cecily Brown’s Bedtime Story and Ed Ruscha’s Blast Curtain from the home of Atencio and Demirdjian. Both works had high estimates of $6 million. Bedtime Story continued the trend of women artists commanding interest, hammering at $5.1 million or $6.2 million with fees. By comparison, Blast Curtain hammered at $4.6 million, or $5.6 million with fees.

Interest in female artists extended to Danielle Mckinney’s 2021 portrait The Fool, which had a high estimate of $70,000. A 4.5-minute bidding war erupted between a buyer in the room, an online bidder, and a buyer on the phone with Salome Tan Bo, Christie’s vice president of Impressionist and modern art and the regional director for China. The online bidder was the eventual winner, with a hammer price of $165,000, or $207,900 with fees.

In addition to the benchmarks set by the Dumas and Leigh works, a new record was set for painter Louis Fratino after You and Your Things (2022) sold for $756,000 including fees.

In addition to Baby Boom, Brant also consigned John Currin’s Jaunty & Marne (1997), which also hammered at its low estimate of $2.5 million, or just over $3 million including fees.

Brant was also behind the withdrawal of an untitled 1988 Christopher Wool work that spells out “Helter Helter” and was estimated at $3.5 million to $5.5 million. He also had consigned Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can Over Coke Bottle (1962), the last lot from Christie’s 20th century sale on Monday night, which was also withdrawn. Artnet News’s Katya Kazakina previously reported the consignments for the works by Currin and Wool.

“I have a lot of clients who are feeling very cautious right now, and this is just not the time to make a big swing,” Lester said. “And obviously, these auctions are pulling from the very top end of the market, and they’re very affected by this climate.”

The evening ended on a high note, with the sale of Emma McIntyre’s Up bubbles her amorous breath (2021). The painting garnered interest from commission bids, three specialists on the phones, and a bidder in the room before selling to a buyer on the telephone with Los for a hammer price of $160,000, or $201,600 including fees, far more than its high estimate of $70,000. The painting, which did not have a guarantee, also set a new auction record for the artist.

“It was women that carried the night, and that was very exciting,” Asher said. “What can I say? Maybe it’s because I’m a feminist.”