As Frieze London runs this week, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips will hold sales that are estimated to bring in between £182.3 and £269 million ($208 million and $353 million) before buyer’s fees are added. With those fees, the results should surpass the £188 million haul at the same series of auctions last year.
A breakdown by auction room reveals a very lopsided contest. This past summer, Christie’s opted out of its usual evening sale to focus on this week, while Sotheby’s piled on the quantity with a much-higher-value sale. This time, the situation is reversed, with Sotheby’s serving up just 84 lots in two sessions of contemporary art with a £38.5 million-to-£54.4 million estimate ($50.4 million million–$71.2 million). Christie’s estimate is some three times larger, £96.3 million to £145 million ($126 million–$190 million), with 592 lots over five sessions. Two are devoted to Impressionist and Modern art, a first for Frieze Week.
Combined, Phillips and Bonhams are not far behind Sotheby’s, aiming for between £35 million and £51 million ($45.8 million–$66.8 million).
Over 900 lots will be hammered in the week. Here are a few of the notable sellers, who are mostly uncredited in the catalogues.
Richard Prince’s Hurricane Nurse (2004) will be offered at Christie’s with a top estimate of $6.6 million. Photo courtesy Christie’s.
CHRISTIE’S
Damien Hirst
The biggest consignor to Christie’s is the artist Damien Hirst, whose six lots are designated in the catalogue anonymously as coming from an “Important Private Collection.” They are valued at between £12.2 million and £15.8 million ($16 million–$20.7 million) and all are guaranteed, either by Christie’s or a third party. Most valuable is Jeff Koons’s 20-foot polished stainless steel Balloon Monkey (Blue), 2006–13, with a £6.5 million–£10 million estimate ($8.5 million–$13 million). Hirst bought it from Gagosian in 2007, then waited six years for it to be finished. Koons’s market has generally been in decline since his silver Rabbit (1986) sold in 2019 for $91 million. Another work from the same edition as this lot, Balloon Monkey (Magenta), sold for £10.1 million in 2022.
Hirst is also parting with two works by Richard Prince. Hurricane Nurse (2004), estimated at £3.5 million–£5 million ($4.6 million–$6.6 million), was bought from Sadie Coles in London in 2006 just after the secondary market for Prince’s “Nurse” paintings took off. A Prince appropriation of a cowboy in a desert photograph was purchased from Gagosian in 2007, just after Gagosian bought it at Phillips, maybe for Hirst, for $744,000. It is now estimated at £1.2 million–£1.8 million ($1.6 million–$2.4 million).
The other works Hirst is selling are a Georg Baselitz painting (despite their very different artistic sensibilities, the two have a close relationship), a 2021 stack of painted orbs by Annie Morris purchased from Timothy Taylor that same year, when they were rising in value, and a 2016 Neo Rauch painting bought from David Zwirner that year.
Willem de Kooning, Untitled XVIII (1986). Courtesy of Christie’s Images, Ltd.
Eric Clapton
The other celebrity selling at Christie’s is a rock star, Eric Clapton, who is disposing of a late Willem de Kooning ribbon painting (£4 million–£6 million or $5.24 million–$7.85 million). It’s not guaranteed right now, but if it sells, it will provide Clapton a healthy return, since he bought it in 2008 for £2.7 million.
Sutapa Biswas
The most interesting sale in my book is an early work by Sonia Boyce, who in 2022 became the first woman of color to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Boyce’s quartet of painted selfies, From Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy (A Case of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis, made in 1987, when the artist was emerging as a figure of note in the Black Arts Movement in Britain, was acquired by fellow artist Sutapa Biswas and included in Rasheed Araeen’s landmark 1989 exhibition “The Other Story” at the Hayward Gallery. Nothing by Boyce has ever made as much as £20,000 at auction, but last year, at 61, she signed by Hauser and Wirth, which no doubt had a bearing on its eye-opening estimate of £120,000–£180,000 ($157,000–$236,000). The seminal work is being sent to the block by Biswas.
Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1963–64), which is expected to make at least $3.3 million on the block.
SOTHEBY’S
Peter Brant
The paper-pulp former billionaire Peter Brant is never far from the Andy Warhol market as a buyer of masterpieces, but he’s not as frequently a seller. So it’s something of a victory for Sotheby’s to have a work from his holdings (referred to anonymously in the catalogue as a “Distinguished Private Collection”) as the most important Warhol for sale during Frieze Week. Self-Portrait (1963–64) was acquired from Gagosian in 1998 and subsequently exhibited, not just at the Brant Foundation, but museums all over Europe, such as the Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2014, which exhibited over 160 Warhols (all from the Brant Foundation). The painting is an early example of the artist’s use of the photo booth and is, as such, an art-historical marker. Another photo-booth self-portrait of this date sold for $11.3 million in 2014. This one is estimated at £3 million to £4 million ($3.30 million–$5.24 million).
Frank Gallipoli
Wall Street executive Frank Gallipoli is best known as the buyer of many of the seminal YBA works shown at the Royal Academy’s “Sensation” exhibition of the Saatchi Collection in 1997. But Sotheby’s offers evidence that there is more to his collection than that. Arched Figure No 2 (1997), by Louise Bourgeois, estimated at £500,000–£700,000 ($656,000–$918,000), is from a series of sculptures investigating hysteria and consists of bone covered in fabric. In a 2022 show at the Basel Kunstmusuem that paired Bourgeois with Jenny Holzer, Gallipoli was listed as the lender of the piece, which he acquired Cheim and Read in 2007.
Naomi Milgrom in 2018. Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images
PHILLIPS
Phillips boast several collectors of note amongst the consignors in its London sales, including Marcel Brient (who’s selling an Elizabeth Peyton) and Barbara Herbig (a Marcel Broodthaers), but there are others they have chosen not to reveal, including the following.
Pierre and Anne Marie Trahan
In 1984, Pierre Trahan founded the essential-oils business Cedarome in his grandmother’s garage in Canada. It has grown into a major company, and Trahan, and his wife, Anne-Marie, have branched out into art collecting, founding the Majudia collection in 2004. Housed since 2011 at Montreal’s Arsenal, a former shipyard much like Venice’s Arsenale, the collection now has works by 500 artists, including Anish Kapoor, Ugo Rondinone, Laure Prouvost, and Canadians like David Altmejd and Rodney Graham. Since 2013, its operation has expanded to Toronto and New York, and collaborated with other collectors, like Canadian Francois Odermatt.
Estimated by Phillips at £600,000–£800,000 ($786,000–$1.05 million), Tracey Emin’s painting This is life without you – You made me Feel like This (2018), was bought from Xavier Hufkens and has been exhibited at the Arsenal and the Royal Academy in London. Its estimate matches the highest estimate ever placed on a painting by Emin. (In fact, that previous lot was a series of 12 paintings, Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, 1996.) Large paintings by Emin have recently been estimated at around £500,000 ($655,000 million), but they have sold for up to £2.3 million ($3.01 million).
Naomi Milgrom
In one of the most extensive consignments of the week, Australian billionaire collector Naomi Milgrom is disposing of about 10 works anonymously at Phillips under the sobriquet “Distinguished Private Collector.” Leading the pack with a £250,000–£350,000 estimate ($327,000–$458,000) is Andreas Gursky’s large C-print New York, Mercantile Exchange (2000), bought from the Matthew Marks Gallery that same year. Like several works in this sale, it was included in the Auckland Art Gallery’s 2013 exhibition of selections from her collection, “A Puppet, a Pauper, a Pirate, a Poet, a Pawn and a King.” Others pieces being sold by Milgrom are by Francis Alÿs, Wilhelm Sasnal, William Kentridge, Richard Prince, Ugo Rondinone, Danh Vo, Damien Hirst, and the young artists Ella Walker and Jesse Mockrin.
KAWS’s Untitled (2015), which will be offered at Phillips. Photo courtesy Phillips
Moco Museum
Described as a “hybrid of commercial gallery and ticketed museum” by Plaster, Moco Museum is a relatively new setup, opening in Amsterdam in 2016, Barcelona in 2020, and London last month. Its revenue is derived from ticket sales and membership schemes. Co-founder Kim Logchies-Prins told the Art Newspaper that 60 percent of its exhibitions in Amsterdam and Barcelona were owned by Moco, and 25 percent were loans. In London it was more like 65 percent on loan. Another source told me that, while works in the museum are not for sale publicly, privately they are. That might explain why at least five works consigned anonymously to Phillips’s day sale with an estimated value between £880,000 and £1.27 million are also represented on the Moco Museum website. They are:
– KAWS, Untitled, 2015, painting, estimated at £250,000–£350,000 ($327,000–$458,000)
– Kehinde Wiley, Sleep, 2022, painting, estimated at £150,000–£200,000 ($196,000–$262,000)
– Damien Hirst, Untitled (Birthday Card), 1988, a pink heart-shaped butterfly painting, estimated at £250,000–£350,000 ($327,000–$458,000)
– Kehinde Wiley, Sleep (Mamadou Gueye), 2021, sculpture, estimated at £150,000–£200,000 ($196,000–$262,000)
– Invader, ALIAS SP-52, 2011, estimated at £80,000–£120,000 ($105,000–$157,000)
It is not clear whether the museum owns all of these works or what role it has played in the consignments. The Wiley painting was mentioned by Moco on Instagram when it “returned” to Barcelona after an absence last year. The KAWS painting, which was “lent to the Barcelona Museum from the Moco collection,” according to Moco’s website, was bought at Phillips Hong Kong in 2018 for HK$6.7 million ($856,000) and is now expected to take a tumble, with a £250,000 ($328,000) low estimate.
Jimmy Lahoud
On September 19, 2008, Lebanese-born businessman and restaurateur Jimmy Lahoud was spotted in Sotheby’s at Damien Hirst’s famous “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” auction, placing the winning bid on a pair of Hirst’s circular butterfly paintings that sold for £205,250 against a £120,000 low estimate. One of them, Psalm 6: Domine, ne in furore, has now reemerged at Phillips with a £70,000–£100,000 estimate ($92,000–$131,000), not so far from half what he paid for the pair. Lahoud surely knows Hirst through his restaurant business, as co-owner of Soho’s Quo Vadis together with celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, who commissioned Hirst to decorate it with his art in the late 1990s. Lahoud also reportedly owns works by Picasso, Miró, Chagall, Warhol, and Matisse, which have decorated his restaurants.