Julie Mehretu breaks auction record at Sotheby’s evening sales.
© Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
The Takeaway: Sotheby’s “The Now” and contemporary sales in New York last night hammered a solid $261.5 million ($305.7 million including fees), safely within the estimated range of $245.7 million to $349.8 million.
Seven artists set new auction benchmarks. Among them, Julie Mehretu’s Walkers With the Dawn and Morning (2008) hammered for $10.7 million—a new record for an African artist at auction.
Several predicted big hitters also sold squarely within their estimated price ranges, such as Kerry James Marshall’s 1992 pool scene (1992), which sold for $10.2 million, and Jenny Saville’s Shift (1996–97), which sold for $10.9 million.
Julie Mehretu, Walkers With the Dawn and Morning, 2008. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
The top five results from the two sales were as follows:
- Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Self Portrait as a Heel (Part Two) (1982) sold for $42 million.
- Gerard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1997) sold for $31.9 million.
- Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers (1990–91) sold for $27.9 million.
- Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio (1963) sold for 20.5 million.
- Frank Stella’s Honduras Lottery Co. (1962) sold for $18.7 million.
Other than the Julie Mehretu, other artists to set new auction records were:
- Barkley Hendricks’s Yocks (1975) sold for $8.3 million, well above its high estimate of $6 million.
- Ad Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting (1960) sold for $3.5 million.
- Mohammed Sami’s The Praying Room (2021) sold for $952,500, quadrupling the work’s $150,000 high estimate.
- Amy Sillman’s Junker 1 (2009–10) sold for $984,250, above its $600,000 high estimate.
- Barbara Chase-Riboud’s La Musica / Amnesia (1990) sold for $647,700, about five times its high estimate of $120,000.
- Marina Perez Simão’s Untitled (2022) sold for $422,000, more than tripling its high estimate of $120,000.
