Christie’s back-to-back sales of modern art and works from the collection of the late Texas oil magnate Edwin L. Cox, brought in a collective $751.9 million.
The two sales achieved a collective 95 percent sell-through rate, with 77 out of the 81 lots offered finding buyers. Nearly half of the sales lots were secured with financial backing; 34 works from the sale had guaranteed. The Cox collection far outpaced its expectation of $178.6 million, generating a total of $332 million. Likewise, the 20th century art evening sale exceeded its low estimate of $324.3 million, bringing in $419.9 million.
Christie’s auctioneer Adrien Meyer took to the rostrum to lead the first portion of the night’s two-part sale, the results of which left the auction’s audience buzzing. He passed the gavel onto veteran auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen to lead the second part. In comparison to Tuesday’s fairly subdued contemporary art evening auction, two-pronged 3.5 hour-long event saw more spirited participation among the crowd and specialists due to excitement over the Cox collection’s long-held Impressionist works. Many of the prized paintings had not been seen in public for 50 years.
Another work by van Gogh offered from the Texas mogul’s collection caused a stir. Jeune homme au bleuet (1889), depicting a red-haired young man holding a blue flower by the stem in his mouth was completed just weeks before the artist’s death and had been in the Cox collection since 1981. Two bidders on the phone with modern art specialist Conor Jordan and Hong Kong chairman Elaine Holt faced off for the work. After a lengthy pause between the two specialists, the work hammered with Jordan’s bidder and sold for $46.7 million. The result, which elicited cheers from the audience, was nine times the $5 million estimate.
The work that fetched the highest price during the second portion of the night was Andy Warhol’s orange oxidized portrait of Jean Michel Basquiat from 1982. Coming to the sale with a guarantee, it was sold from the collection of Peter Brant. A bidder on the phone with New York chairman Alex Rotter triumphed over Christie’s European international senior director Isabelle de La Bruyere’s bidder to win the work—which sold well above its estimate of $20 million for a final price of $40 million.