Recap of Sotheby’s sale of contemporary Art at London, June 2007

Recap of Sotheby’s sale of contemporary Art at London, June 2007 Recap of Sotheby’s sale of contemporary Art at London, June 2007 – auction record for a work by Damien Hirst and for a contemporary Chinese painting]]>

June 2007, source: Sotheby’s
Auction history was made as Damien Hirst’s pill cabinet Lullaby Spring soared to £9.6 ($19.2) million, making Hirst the most expensive living artist at auction. The work had been estimated at £3–4 million. Also, the Contemporary evening sale brought the highest price of the auction week in London, when Francis Bacon’s Self Portrait sold to a private American collector for the spectacular price of £21.58 ($43) million – double its estimate of £8-12 million. Its dramatic sale followed fast on the heels of the unprecedented success of Bacon’s Study from Innocent X, which was sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2007 for a world record price of $52.6 million.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening sale exceeded its top estimate by 26%, realising£72,427,600, against a top estimate of £57.1 million. Over 66% of works sold in the Contemporary evening sale realized prices in excess of their top estimate, while over 50% of works sold in the Impressionist evening sale realised prices in excess of high estimate.

£1,520,400 ($3,029,549) was raised for the NPSCC – over three times the top expectation for the group of five works that had been donated by Damien Hirst, Keith Tyson, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Grayson Perry to benefit the NSPCC’s Treatment and Therapeutic Services. Tracey Emin attended the auction to rally the bidding, with great success. Her neon work entitled Keep Me Safe sold for £60,000 ($119,556), a record for the medium. Meanwhile, Keith Tyson’s Nature Painting, sold for £216,000 ($430,402) – a record for the artist.

Further demonstrating the international appeal and continued demand for Chinese Contemporary Art, seven works by some of China’s most important contemporary artists performed exceptionally well in the contemporary evening sale. Together, the works realised a combined total of £4,861,600 ($9,687,224), against pre-sale estimate of £1.5-2 million. The top-selling work among them was Yue Minjun’s The Pope, which sold for £2,148,000 – more than twice its pre-sale high estimate, £800,000 more than the previous record, and the highest price for a work of Chinese Contemporary Art at auction. Interest in these works was tremendous: a total of 81 absentee bids were left on these 7 works alone, with 22 bids registered for Liu Ye’s Untitled.

Also, the Contemporary day sale was the most successful day sale of its type ever held by Sotheby’s in Europe