New Champion: Rothko, “Orange, Red, Yellow,” 1961, $86.88 million, sold at Christie’sForget about the Rockefeller Rothko. Now it’s the Pincus Rothko (from the estate of collector David Pincus, the late Philadelphia menswear mogul) that holds the auction record not only for a Rothko but also for any work of contemporary art, at an astonishing $86.88 million. To my eyes, more than David Rockefeller‘s pretty pink, yellow and white confection, this pulsating red picture was everything you could want in a work by this artist—gravitas, luminosity, mesmerizing impact.
Here’s the former champion:
The star of a scintillatingly successful sale, the Pincus Rothko was, as I said at the end of this post, “to-die-for.” But I was uncertain whether it could fetch more than the earlier offering from a world-famous owner with a celebrated, world-class collection. Now we know.
Auctioneer Christopher Burge, who at one point let slip that this was his “last outing,” ran the most fast-paced art auction that I’ve ever seen. Last week, Sotheby’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer had waited patiently for the price to inch upwards in the final bidding on Munch‘s “The Scream” (which, at $119.92 million, is the most expensive artwork ever auctioned). That was a long slog, but worth the wait.
Burge, by contrast, maintained a breakneck pace from Lot 1 to the very end, even bringing down the hammer prematurely on a record-breaking Richter, which sold for $21.81 million, including buyer’s premium. “Too late. You had your time,” Burge told a bidder who would have bettered the $19.4-million hammer price if Burge had been less hasty. Who knows how much higher it could have gone?
But why did someone who has more verve than auctioneers half his age seem to indicate, in a quick aside, that we might not see him up there again? Here’s the statement that Christie’s released to me, when I e-mailed a quick query about this while the sale was still in progress.
Christopher remains and active business-getter for Christie’s and a top client-relations contact and we are certain we will see him at our auctioneer rostrum again
We can only hope.
Whether he’s planning to semi-retire or not, Burge tonight clearly had the crowd rooting for him (as well as for the robust health of the art market). Someone whom I assume was the Christie’s staffer who took the winning phone bid on the Rothko told Christopher, “That’s my going-away present for you.” (I wasn’t in the salesroom tonight; I watched via the live webcast, which shows a view only of the podium, not the players.) Burge was cheerfully batting 1000 until he struck out on Lot 51, a Joan Mitchell (which failed to sell).
“Awww!” sighed the sympathetic crowd. It was an almost perfect game.
Still, there was no reason to feel sorry for Burge or Christie’s last night. The sold total, including buyer’s premium, was a whopping $388.49 million, a record for any contemporary art auction. The hammer total was $343.29 million, easily outstripping the presale estimate of $236.25-$329.95 million.
Previous artists’ auction records kept dropping like flies all night—some 13 were achieved, including major prices for Calder ($18.56 million), Pollock ($23.04 million), Yves Klein ($36.48 million) and Barnett Newman ($22.48 million). With only three of the 59 lots failing to sell, the auction was 95% sold by lot and an astonishing 99% sold by dollar, which in itself must belong somewhere in the record books for major contemporary art auctions.
The end of the sale occasioned hearty applause, whoops and whistles.
Sotheby’s, whose contemporary sale tomorrow evening is estimated at $221-311 million (assuming that no works are withdrawn), now has a very tough act to follow. Then again, it certainly had a lot to boast about last week.