Spring sales of modern art and modern art often arrive with steady painting drum sounds, estimated at more than $50 million, suggesting confidence in the industry’s roster of super-rich collectors who trade them like financial assets.
Now that drums sound like the pain of rain – the world’s leading auctioneers have recalibrated the art market, which has been stunning by economic uncertainty over the past three years, and face new challenges such as tariffs.
Among the hundreds of artworks sold this season (including works by Picasso, Basquet, Magritte and Matisse), there is only one pair of $50 million thresholds: Giacometti's bust was estimated to be over $70 million in 1955, while the potential record-breaking work in the Mondrian Valley is about $50 million.
But if there is no sight of dinosaurs, bananas and cryptocurrencies, then big auctions can go back to the foundation. It was a season of traditional products when these companies were caught in layoffs and fewer headline estates or deals. Seeking external investment; in the industry's broader downturn, sales fell 20%, which has already brought global sales to $57.5 billion.
“The market is very quiet now,” said New York art consultant Jacob King. “The materials you'll see in a day's sale are now being sold at night.”
Despite these challenges, auction houses are betting on themselves to raise money in a week in New York’s Christie, Sotheby’s and Phillips. Their merger is estimated to be between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion.
“Last season was tough because we had to put the sales bricks together,” Sotheby's executive Lisa Dennison said of the November auction. “Earing sales in May, we do feel the pipeline flowing more.”
Drew Watson, director of art services at Bank of America's private banking, noted that the biggest shipment of the season was announced in April after President Trump's tariffs came into effect, giving people a reason for optimism. “You hope that if people are really invisible to the art market right now, then a lot of high-end lots won’t be put on the market,” he said.
But the market remains soft, with new super-rich collectors scarce, adding to the pressure on auction houses. Here are six waist-bottom artworks in the evening sale that may indicate the health of the art market.
Alberto Giacometti
“Grande Tête minced meat (Grande Tête de Dego) (1955), over $70 million, Sotheby’s Modern Night Auction, Tuesday
Giacometti at the end of his career created a bronze bust of his brother Diego, the artist's studio assistant and Muse. The sculpture has the highest estimated time in New York spring sales and does not have the lowest financial guarantees from Sotheby's or third parties to ensure the artwork is sold, which is a typical expensive lot. Seller, the Soloviev Foundation, a nonprofit founded by real estate tycoon Sheldon Solow, will receive a bigger payment if the estimated work is sold.
Solow died in 2020, and he obtained the work from the Maeght family in 1980, which established its first private art foundation in France, namely Maeght. According to its website, the foundation is uninstalling busts to support its philanthropy, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Henry Street settlement.
Simon Shaw, director of Sotheby’s arrangement for sale, said of Giacometti: “This has always been Mother Lode. He described it as “In the season, this will be the most exciting thing, and it’s a huge sculpture.” ”
Another artwork sold at Christie's in 2010 for $53.3 million; according to inflation adjustments, today's price will be $78.1 million, indicating that the artwork has been hardly appreciated in the past 15 years. Experts say Sotheby's offers products that can sell more because it is the only painter in the series.
Piet Mondrian
“Big Red Plane, Blue, Yellow, Black and Blue Composition” (1922), approximately $50 million, Christy, Leonard and Louise Rigio: Works collected, Monday
When Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio died last year, he and his legacy Louise received a huge art collection, advocated for the art of blue chip minimalism, and donated to nonprofits like Dia Foundation, as well as master paintings like Pablo Picasso, modern paintings by Rene Magritte and Rene Magritte and Fernand Leger.
Louise decided to sell the apartment and commission nearly 40 pieces of art to Christie, including a painting by Mondrian that will be the most expensive artwork of the auction house this season, estimated to be around $50 million.
Mondrian is considered a pioneer in European abstraction, thanks to his early experiments in color and geometric shapes in the 1920s. Today, the financial value of his paintings is associated with the red ratio covering the canvas, making Rigio’s example a potential record-breaking. (The previous benchmark was set at Sotheby's in 2022, when similar art was sold to anonymous buyers for $51 million.)
But Mondrian was sold at a height of the market, leading industry analysts to debate whether the prestige of the Riggio name could overcome the economic uncertainty that works today. Auction houses also have great risks in providing guarantees for all art, which means Christie’s needs to buy anything that is not available for sale.
“They made a guarantee of a big house and it was hard to sell it,” said art consultant Kim. “It's good material, but these are big estimates and there's a lot to sell.”
Olga de Amaral
“Imagen Perdida 27 (Lost Image 27)” (1996), $300,000 to $500,000, Phillips Modern and Modern Art Night Auction, Tuesday
The tapestry of the 93-year-old Colombian artist Olga de Amaral marks her first appearance at the New York Night Auction, the latest symbol, another well-known female artist moved from the edge of the market to its upper echelon.
“She really rediscovered and finally came out of the dove hole,” said Jean-Paul Engelen, a Phillips executive. “She is no longer a craft artist or a Latin artist. She is just an artist.”
Many other female artists this season are real auction stars, with work reliably selling millions of dollars (such as Agnes Martin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Cecily Brown), or talent estimated below $100,000 or less (such as Danielle McKinney, Emma McKinney, Emma McIntyre, and Ilana Savdie). De Amaral stands somewhere between them, as a well-known artist, her value is still climbing after the first survey of major European museums held in Cartier, Paris last October.
The seller of the tapestry purchased the artwork directly from De Amaral in 1996. The artist weaves a linen grid covered with gold leaves to create a glittering abstraction. Her other three artworks are all on crowded one-day sales in New York, including the 2006 tapestry “Imagen Paisaje I (Landscape Picture I),” with an estimated value of $1.5 million at Sotheby's.
According to experts, Phillips chose a lower-priced piece for evening sales, indicating that auction houses struggled to attract large volumes of goods from sellers this season. The company's overall estimate of evening sales is much lower than its competitors, with the highest sales (1984 Basquet paintings, estimated to be $6.5 million higher) almost 90% less than the highest batch of equivalent sales last year.
“In this market, we have something we think we can sell well,” Engren said.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
“Baby Boom” (1982), $200-30 million, Christie's 21st Century auction, Wednesday
Andy Warhol
“Big Electric Chair” (1967-68), approximately $30 million, Christie's 20th-century evening auction, Monday
In 1985, the poster promoted a collaborative painting exhibition between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, which included artists posing in boxing gear as if in squares rather than collaborating. Forty years later, Basquiat eliminated all competitors, including former champion Warhol, to become a leader in the art market, said Christie’s global president Alex Rotter.
“If you asked me to name an artist, it's Basquet,” Rotter said. “He has been the most attractive to people at different price levels over the past five years.”
After a long madness in buying Warhol paintings, most of the main examples now live in museums and private collections that you don’t want to sell. His absence in the market made Basquet a standard old man, as his paintings and paintings are still circulating frequently.
The emergence of Warhol's “big electric chair” will test whether superhealth has changed for artists' appetite. This is a lonely piece that is estimated to sell for over $10 million this season and shows that Warhol is fascinated by the dark abdomen of America. The artist's first European and American museum survey included “big electric chairs”. In 2019, a multicolored version of the work was sold at Christie's auction, slightly above its undervalued price of $19 million.
Screen prints are also the same as Basquiat's Baby Boom paintings, one of the most accessible works for an artist, and it was the best year of his career. This painting is an artistic historical record of religious iconography, reinterpreting Jesus, Mary and Joseph as the holy family of artists and their parents.
Rotter said Basquet’s paintings show the evolution of the artist’s style. “It's '81, the radical Basquet came out. It's '82, he has confidence in radicalism.”
Carroll Dunham
“Bathman 17 (Black Hole)” (2011-12), $250,000 to $350,000
Sotheby's was auctioned on the night's auction of artworks owned by two respected gallerists, London gallerist Daniella Luxembourg's collection, estimated at $41.1 million, and the more modest group once owned by Barbara Gladstone, overestimated $17.2 million.
Gladstone, who died last year at 89, is a generation that promotes artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Keith Haring and Elizabeth Murray. Her gallery of the same name continues after the death of her, with the remaining four partners operating in six locations around the world.
Sotheby's offers more than a dozen artists are still represented by gallery: Alighiero Boetti and Richard Prince.
Another artist, Carroll Dunham, disappeared from the gallery’s website just a few weeks ago. Since 2004, Gladstone has hosted more than a dozen exhibitions of Dunham artworks.
This subtle change brought some conspiracy to the sale of his painting “Bathman Seventeen (Black Hole). Although the work is estimated to be lower than the 2017 auction record of “Integrated Painting”, Gladstone’s personal ownership of “Bathingers” could also provide a boost, even though Dunham and his gallery are already separated.
“The works for sale in her collection are iconic examples of every artist’s work, each of which is an important work in the history of contemporary art.” Molly Epstein, a senior partner at the consulting firm Goodman Taft, said. Epstein added that Gladstone chose to live with these works “to make them more meaningful.”
