All art-world eyes were on London last week as the Frieze fairs returned and the city’s marquee evening auctions brought buyers back to the salesrooms. While there is a little less glitz, glamour, and champagne in the day sales, these offerings—which often provide higher margins for the auction houses—remain the bread-and-butter of the business. They also provide a worthy place to scout artists on the rise, identify bodies of work from established names gaining new appreciation, and suss out other market shifts before they hit the big time.
We examined the results from day sales at Phillips, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s to bring you six lots that upended expectations.
Isshaq Ismail, Nkabom 1 (2019)
Isshaq Ismail, Nkabom 1 (2019). Courtesy of Phillips.
Auction: Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £10,000 to £15,000 ($13,750 to $20,600)
Sold for: £138,600 ($190,560)
In the past week, the Accra-born artist (b. 1989) has gone from never having had a work at auction before to having three—all of which sold for between six and 10 times their estimates. Ishmail, one of a number of young Ghanaian artists making waves on the international scene, has described his boldly colored, thickly impastoed figuration as “infantile semi-abstraction.” He has been championed by dynamo curator and dealer Destinee Ross-Sutton, who included him in her 2020 Christie’s exhibition “Stay It Loud.” Two other works by the artist—Nonchalant 2 (Nana Kwesi Wiafe) (2020) and Blue Face III (2019)—recently sold for $110,000 and $121,090 at Christie’s Online and Sotheby’s London, respectively. While the rush on his work could portend a bit of a bubble, it’s clear that demand for work by the young painter is currently far outstripping supply.
—Annie Armstrong
Stanley Whitney, Iraqi Blues (2007)
Stanley Whitney, Iraqi Blues (2007). Courtesy of Phillips.
Auction: Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £120,000 to £180,000 ($164,940 to $247,400)
Sold for: £302,400 ($415,660)
This color field painting by Stanley Whitney (b. 1946) contains all the trappings of a work by the beloved gestural artist: horizontal bands stretch across the canvas punctuated by bold, imperfect blocks of color like musical notes. Whitney’s paintings are often inspired by jazz music: This one, Iraqi Blues (2007), is named after singer-songwriter Elvis L. Carden’s eponymous album, the release of which coincided with the United States’s military presence in Iraq. The painting more than tripled its low estimate and is now the second most expensive work sold by the artist after Light a New Wilderness (2016), which fetched $724,800 at Christie’s London earlier this summer. For an artist with a career as decorated as Whitney’s, the progression of his auction prices into the mid- to high six figures feels well supported, and overdue.
—Annie Armstrong
Hurvin Anderson, Girl in a Tree (2018)
Hurvin Anderson, Girl in a Tree (2018). Image courtesy Christie’s.
Auction: Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £40,000 to £60,000 ($55,260 to $82,890)
Sold for: £387,000 ($534,646)
The success of this gently figurative painting, which depicts the back of a figure seated in a tree at Montego Bay, comes as the artist’s market is heating up. Just days before Christie’s day sale, another, larger canvas by Anderson (b. 1965) went for £7.4 million ($10 million), leaps and bounds past its high estimate of £1.5 million ($2 million). The artist also has a large solo exhibition on view at Thomas Dane Gallery in London (until December 4). In the works in the show, titled “Reverb,” wild nature presides over the figures, much in the style of Girl in a Tree. The emotion and sense of nostalgia for a place the 65-year-old artist has roots in (his parents emigrated from Jamaica to Birmingham, U.K., before he was born) emanates from this powerful painting.
—Kate Brown
Flora Yukhnovich, Puits d’amour (Wells of Love) (2021)
Flora Yukhnovich, Puits d’amour (Wells of Love) (2021). Image courtesy Christie’s.
Auction: Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £20,000 to £30,000 ($27,630 to $41,451)
Sold for: £910,500 ($1,257,869)
The artist (b. 1990) sent shockwaves through the art world when one of her moody takes on Rococo sold for 12 times its estimate at Phillips in June, breaking the $1 million mark not long after she’d made her auction debut. (Who is she? was the question on many a market-watcher’s lips.) After that, it didn’t take long for other sellers to come out of the woodwork. No fewer than five of Yukhnovich’s paintings hit the block during the Frieze Week sales, all of which sold for at least three times their estimate. This example, which was donated to benefit the Rays of Sunshine Children’s Charity, takes inspiration from the colorways and flourish of Tiepolo.
—Kate Brown
Hilary Pecis, Camellias and Leopard (2019)
Hilary Pecis, Camellias and Leopard (2019). Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Auction: Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £30,000 to £50,000 ($41,000 to $68,000)
Sold for: £277,200 ($379,400)
As Artnet News wrote in a profile of Pecis this past summer, it’s fitting that after a year of being mostly stuck at home, the artist’s portraits of domestic life in Matisse-inspired hues have found an eager new audience. “We have seen huge interest for Hilary Pecis’s work since setting her auction record at £340,000 here at Sotheby’s in June,” said Antonia Gardner, the head of Sotheby’s contemporary art day sale. It doesn’t hurt that Pecis’s summer solo show at Timothy Taylor Gallery in London sold out swiftly at prices ranging from $20,000 to $60,000, leading to pent-up demand on the secondary market. The recent announcement that David Kordansky Gallery—where Pecis worked as a registrar before becoming an artist full time—would represent her only served to heighten the buzz.
—Eileen Kinsella
George Condo, Untitled (1985)
George Condo, Untitled (1985). Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Auction: Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Sale
Estimate: £12,000 to £18,000 ($16,400 to $24,600)
Sold for: £77,600 ($106,000)
Condo is world famous for his surreal portraits that mash up Goya-esque characters with disjoined, Cubist-style features. These works—and their growing appeal in Asia—have made him a reliable cash cow for auction houses. During the Frieze Week sales, seven of his paintings hit the block. Five sold above estimate (most of them, substantially so); one sold within estimate; and one failed to sell. Perhaps the biggest sleeper success of the bunch was this quaint and very early still-life. Even though it reflects none of his signatures, the artist’s name clearly still resonates. The painting soared past its modest estimate of just £18,000, quadrupling expectations.
—Eileen Kinsella