The past year was decidedly quieter on the auction front. Both the volume of trophy offerings and seven- and eight-figure results were far lower when compared to previous years. This was in part due to the absence of blockbuster single-owner collections by the likes of Rockefeller, Macklowe and Paul Allen. The collections that did become available sold for far less than they might have realized when the art market was at its frothy heights. In the first six months of 2024, there was a 30-percent drop in auction sales, compared to the same period in 2023.
However, the auction realm was not without its colorful and standout occasions. From million-dollar fruit to surrealist stars, these are the five moments that caught the art world’s eye.
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s New York. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Love it or hate it, the banana was back in a big way this fall.
In late October, Artnet’s Katya Kazakina broke the news that Sotheby’s would offer Maurizio Cattelan’s most famous work at auction. The banana, titled Comedian (2019), was first introduced and sold by Perrotin gallery at the 2019 edition of Art Basel Miami. The work, which sent shockwaves through the art world, consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall and came in an edition of three. The first two sold for $120,000 each, while the third sold for $150,000.
This one came to auction with a whopping price tag of $1 million and was backed by a guarantee from Sotheby’s. As Kazakina noted: “Sotheby’s consignment arrives at an opportune time. The market is hungry for fresh material that can excite collectors. The big semiannual auctions in New York in November are expected to be slimmer than usual.”
Sotheby’s delivered on the high expectations, with plenty of pre-auction hype—the banana was enshrined in its own custom-built room with an arched doorway during the sales preview. And the salesroom was packed on the evening of November 20, both at the house’s Upper East Side location and in its virtual viewing room, where commentators quipped, “We’re only here for the banana dude,” and, “The world has gone bananas.”
The bidding began at $800,000 and quickly rose beyond $1 million, with bids being lobbed inside the room, on the phone, and online. Sotheby’s specialist Jen Hua ultimately placed the winning bid on behalf of crypto king Justin Sun, who naturally paid in crypto. Including a buyer’s premium, the final price was $6.2 million.
A week later, and after having eaten the banana in a publicity stunt, Sun said he wants to “thank” the vendor who sold the fruit. It is likely that he read the New York Times report about the man who sold the banana to a Sotheby’s representative for just 25 cents. Sun said he is hoping to make some reparations and announced he will purchase 100,000 bananas from the fruit stand to show his appreciation of Shah Alam, who is not the owner of the stand and would not likely see much of that profit.
The $121 Million Magritte
Rene Magritte, L’empire des Lumières (1954). Photo: Christie’s.
Just one day before the “banana-mania” Sotheby’s sale, a painting by Surrealist master René Magritte smashed expectations at Christie’s when L’empire des Lumières (1954) fetched $121.2 million in New York, setting a new auction record for the Belgian Surrealist painter.
The canvas was offered during an auction dedicated to the estate of famous designer and collector Mica Ertegun, who passed away the previous year. That further bolsters the notion that the supply of masterpieces at auction is often driven by the “Three D’s,”—death, divorce, and debt. Further enhancing the appeal of the Magritte painting was the fact that it had been in the Ertegun collection for over 50 years.
It was estimated at $95 million and was backed by a third-party bid, so it was guaranteed to sell. The previous Magritte auction record was $79.8 million, achieved for a 1961 version of L’empire des Lumières at Sotheby’s in 2022. “That is about $86.7 million, adjusted for inflation,” Artnet News noted at the time.
New Benchmarks and Unusual Bidding Strategies for Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat,Untitled (ELMAR).Courtesy of Phillips.
It was notable that Phillips, which is typically a perennial third to Christie’s and Sotheby’s, boasted the top price of the New York May sales. The 1982 Basquiat Untitled (Elmar), sold for $46.5 million.
As Artnet News reported, it ended up selling via phone to a client of the auction house’s deputy chairman Robert Manley, the guarantor is widely thought to be Japanese mega-collector Yusaku Maezawa. Though the price is just a hair above the painting’s $40 million low estimate, it still reflects a 2,500-percent increase from the $16,000 primary price tag that it was bought for at Annina Nosei Gallery, in the early 1980s.
Elsewhere we saw at least one unusual auction strategy employed by a would-be Basquiat buyer, which raised eyebrows or else drew laughter in the salesroom. At a mid-May evening sale at Christie’s, as auctioneer Georgina Hilton was preparing to bring down the hammer on the top lot of the night, Basquiat’s The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet (1982), a gentleman in the room with a cellphone glued to his ear suddenly stood up and shouted, “Hold on!”
“You don’t even have a paddle,” Hilton noted. As she continued to close the sale, he walked to a corner of the auction room, clearly grappling with a bad connection; soonafter, he disappeared. The Basquiat was then sold to a patient client, bidding through a Christie’s specialist, for a hammer price of $27.5 million, or $32 million with premiums.
A new record for Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington, Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945). Courtesy Sotheby’s.
It has been gratifying, to say the least, to see some top women painters begin to get their due in the marketplace, thanks in no small part to greater attention and research as well as the spotlight put on female Surrealists in the 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale, which was curated by Cecilia Alemani.
In May, at Sotheby’s New York, Carrington’s 1945 tempera, Les Distractions de Dagobert, was the star of Sotheby’s modern art evening sale, selling for $28.5 million (including premium) setting a new auction record for the British artist.
The work sold after 10 minutes of bidding, included a battle between a man seated in the room and someone on the phone with a Sotheby’s specialist. The determined bidder turned out to be Argentinian developer and businessman Eduardo F. Costantini, who founded the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (MALBA). The win marked something of a full circle for him.
“This is a superb piece in the history of Surrealism,” Costantini said to Artnet News as he left the salesroom. “I was the underbidder 30 years ago for this picture, and I didn’t want to miss it this time.”
The Rosa de la Cruz Denouement
Rosa de la Cruz. Photo: Zachary Balber.
When prestigious collector and philanthropist Rosa de la Cruz passed away early this year at the age of 81, mourners gathered at the eponymous de la Cruz Collection in Miami for a memorial service. Real estate developer Craig Robins gave a speech and fellow top collectors Mera and Don Rubell were in attendance.
The 30,000-square-foot private museum was displaying works by a who’s who of contemporary artists, which de la Cruz collected over 20 years. It included works by Sterling Ruby, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Wade Guyton, and virtually no one knew that this would be the last public gathering at the celebrated institution.
Within weeks, the de la Cruz Collection was closed, and its treasures headed to the auction block, as first reported by Artnet News’s Katya Kazakina.
The sale came as a shock to the many people who admired de la Cruz’s passion for the collection she had built so carefully. “It was easy to forget that what came to be seen as ‘an institution’ was essentially the passion project of a single individual—who has now passed away. And so it has come to this: the trophy artworks that were Rosa de la Cruz’s pride and joy are heading to auction,” Kazakina wrote at the time.
Christie’s was selected to sell the bulk of the collection, estimated at more than $30 million. The sale was held on the evening of May 15, and the house guaranteed all 26 lots, though one was withdrawn nonetheless. The remaining 25 pieces sold for $34.4 million with buyer’s premium, solidly within the event’s original presale estimate of $25 million to $37 million.