subject: Art Market Watch Women Take Over In New York Mod & Contempo Sales By Jessica Mizrachi [print this page] International Womens Day fell on MarInternational Womens Day fell on Mar. 8, 2012, and the art market seemed to take note during sales of modern and contemporary art, held at Christies, Phillips de Pury and Sothebys in New York during Mar. 7-9, 2012. The so-called mid-season auctions are mammoth (in terms of volume) and the price point for entry is lower than at the major sales.
Its no surprise, then, that these auctions typically contain a large number of works by women, more than are typically in the primetime sales. Still, its curious to note that the top lot at each auction house was a work by a woman
artist.
(For the record, the highest price paid for a work by a woman artist at auction is $10.86 million for Les Fleurs, 1912, by Natalia Goncharova in 2008. The top price for a living woman artist is $6.6 million paid for Cady Nolands
Oozewal, 1989, in November 2011. And the record for any work at auction is $104.3 million for Alberto Giacomettis Walking Man, 1960, in 2010.)
Christies First Open
At Christies First Open sale on Mar. 7, the trippy Nu Azul (1997) by Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes sold for $626,500 (with premium), more than triple the presale high estimate of $200,000.
Runner-up lots included a small Ed Ruscha work that carried the same estimate and sold for $554,500, and a diaphanous quilt-like wall hanging by Jim Hodges, This is Where Well Stay (1995), that sold for $482,500, just above its
$400,000 presale low estimate. Hodges auction record is north of $2 million.
The auction also represented a small triumph for artists from emerging markets -- a term used most commonly for work created by artists from the BRIC countries. Nu Azul was sold by the Readers Digest Association, which also
parted with Louise Lawlers Is She Ours for $120,100 (est. $30,000-$50,000).
The Hodges was one of 45 works being sold by supercollector Peter Norton, the software pioneer. His lots included a 1999 life-sized 3D bathroom made of diaphanous sewn silk -- including a rather off-putting toilet -- by the Korean
artist Do-Ho Suh ($86,500), and Los Angeles (1984), a 42-part installation of black-and-white photos with English text panels by Sophie Calle ($68,500), who also created a version of the piece in French.
A classic work by Deborah Kass, Double Double Yentl (My Elvis), from the Norton Collection, which shows a cross-dressing Barbara Streisand as Yentl and sold for $62,500, a bargain though the price is well above the $15,000
presale high estimate and a new auction record for the artist. This time around Kass outperformed Andy Warhol, at least in terms of his Polaroid self-portrait in drag, which went for $18,750.
Five artists donated works to benefit the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to the LGBTQ community. Top lot here was an American flag executed in gold on a cardboard box, titled
Mamy Poko Pants Diapers, by the Vietnamese-born conceptual artist Danh V -- a star of the current Ungovernables exhibition at the New Museum -- that sold for $33,750, against a high estimate of $7,000 -- his first appearance
at auction.
Another gold leaf work, this one by Jim Hodges, sold for $50,000, and Marilyn Minters Nail Biter fetched $10,625. A pair of photographs by Roni Horn added an additional $3,750 to the kitty, but a photograph donated by Jack
Pierson was bought in.
In a possible instance of spot fatigue, the highest estimated lot of the evening -- a Damien Hirst spot painting -- also went unsold (est. $600,000-$800,000). In total, the sale achieved $10.6 million for 196 lots sold.
Phillips de Pury & Company
For the third year in a row, Phillips de Pury hosted a small evening sale alongside its larger March contemporary art sale. The pair of sales on Mar. 8 totaled $7.2 million, and Cindy Sherman led the group there, too, when a
nightmarish 2004 photograph from her Clown series sold within presale estimates for $446,500. Another photograph, this one from the Color Tests series, brought $68,500. It had last sold at auction in November 2008 at
Sothebys New York for $37,500.
The first lot of the evening sale, and the most hyped, was a 2004 Maybach 57 featured in the Spike Jonze-directed music video for Jay-Z and Kanye Wests song Otis. Though the vehicle was being offered partly to benefit Save the
Children, it sold for about half its $100,000 low estimate ($60,000).
