Christie’s Post-War to Present Spring Auction Yields $21.3 M., Led By $2.1 M. Helen Frankenthaler

Christie’s mid-season Post-War to Present auction in New York brought in $21.3 million, led by strong results for Helen Frankenthaler, Ed Ruscha, Richard Estes, and Diane Arbus.

The large live sale in New York on February 27 had 224 lots with 67 unsold and 12 withdrawals for a sell-through rate of 64.7 percent.

The top lot was Frankenthaler’s Concerto (1982), which sold for $2.1 million with fees, blasting past its estimate of $500,000 to $700,000; followed by Ed Ruscha’s Pressures (1967), which sold for just under $2 million with fees on an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million.

Art advisor Dane Jensen was one of the underbidders for the Frankenthaler painting on behalf of a client but called the final result “a bit of a mystery” due to its small size and time period. “To me that’s a lot of money to pay for that artwork,” he told ARTnews. “The other ones that sold really high were huge paintings. It’s definitely a new benchmark.”

By comparison, last year’s spring mid-season auction for the category on March 13 had 248 lots—61 unsold and 10 withdrawals for a sell-through rate of 71.3 percent—and yielded $21.5 million with fees. That sale also only had two works which sold for seven figures.

(All prices mentioned below include buyer’s premium and other fees unless otherwise indicated.)

After Concerto and Pressures, the next top lot in the mid-season sale was Richard Diebenkorn’s Untitled (Ocean Park) which sold for $781,200 on an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000.

Richard Estes’ East River (1994) sold for $693,000 and Diane Arbus’s Identical twins, Roselle N.J. 1966 sold for $630,000. Both works had estimates of $500,000 to $700,000. David Hockney’s Gouache Drawing, 1994 also sold for $541,800 under a high estimate of $600,000.

Rounding out the higher priced lots was Bob Thompson’s La Gamme d’Amour (1965), which sold for $504,000, above its estimate of $250,000 to $350,000; an untitled Keith Haring owned by Dutch furniture designer and art collector Martin Visser for $459,900 on a high estimate of $250,000; and Robert Mangold’s Untitled (blue-green) from the Mel & Martha Horowitz Collection which sold for $428,400 on an estimate of $180,000 to $250,000.

The work with the highest estimate that did not sell was Lot 226, Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Big Red Butterfly with Three Blue Eyes 856). The oil and colored pencil work on paper from 2010 had an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000.

“It’s just wild how that market changed,” art advisor Ivy Shapiro told ARTnews. “It’s very selective right now. I think things are a bit slow right now and uneasy.”

Works by blue-chip names that also did not sell included Josef Albers, Carl Andrew, a vase by Ai Weiwei, a subway drawing by Keith Haring, a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh, a conceptual work by Felix Gonzales-Torres from the Rosa De La Cruz collection, as well as a brass wire tiara by Alexander Calder.

Conversely, three works that did well were Yu Nishimura’s Sandy beach (2020), Jennifer Guidi’s Body, Mountain, Mind (Painted White Sand SF #2SF, White Yellow and Pink) and Lisa Yuskavage’s PXLP (1998).

Sandy beach had the strongest result, selling for $296,100, almost five times its high estimate of $60,000 and setting a new auction record for Nishimura. The Japanese artist will have his first solo show in the United States, an exhibition of new paintings, opening at David Zwirner in New York on April 24.

Guidi’s 8-foot-by 6-foot oil, acrylic, sand and linen work sold for $233,100 on an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. PXLP sold for $201,600 on an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000 to benefit L’Alliance New York a French language, education and cultural arts institution.

The result for PXLP follows the recent opening of Yuskavage’s solo exhibition at Zwirner’s three-story location in Los Angeles during the Frieze LA art fair. ARTnews senior editor Max Duron called the show “stellar” for how Yuskavage mined her archive, “placing figures from across her oeuvre in various imagined artist studios.”

“The challenges that Yuskavage sets up for herself are what make her paintings so fascinating,” Duron wrote.

Jensen said the results of mid-season sales can be rocky, especially in a fragmented, “spotty” art market that currently privileges Abstract Expressionism and figurative painting. “People will show up for the really great stuff, and then anything less, it makes it a tough, tough sale,” he said.

Notably, Titus Kaphar’s painting Historial Nonfiction (2018) with an estimate of $120,000 to $180,000 also did not sell. The portrait artist had a solo show at Gagosian’s location in Beverly Hills last year featuring paintings from the semi-autobiographical film “Exhibiting Forgiveness”, which debuted at Sundance.