Price Check! Here’s What Sold—and for How Much—at the 2019 Edition of Art Basel Hong Kong

Here's what art dealers say they sold at the well-attended Hong Kong fair (though watch out for number-fudging and other kinds of general sneakiness).

Art Basel Hong Kong, Pace Gallery Booth. Courtesy of Art Basel.

The seventh edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong drew a staggering 88,000 people during its five-day run—a new high for the fair and 5,000 more than the record number that attended Art Basel’s Miami edition in December. But just how many of those visitors were buying?

The fair boasted some flashy, high-priced items, including a $19 million Picasso at the booth of Luxembourg & Dayan and a $15 million David Hockney at Acquavella. But while eight-figure works did not fly off the stands, a number of seven-figure paintings—as well as a veritable stream of mid-priced fare—were snapped up by buyers.

Among the highlights: Lee Bul’s giant floating torpedo, an Instagram favorite presented in the Encounters section, was purchased by a Chinese museum. George Condo had three paintings sold at three different booths for six-to-seven-figure price tags. But that’s just the beginning. Below, we’ve pulled together more of the event’s notable sales from published reports, our own reporting, and press materials.

Nota bene: Sales reports are notoriously slippery in the art world. Some purchases may have been finalized long before the fair, while others might only be handshake deals, still waiting on paperwork and cash. But prices themselves are more reliably telling, providing a snapshot of where individual artists stand in the matrix of the art market today. Even here, of course, there is room for slippage: Some dealers occasionally offer inflated figures, while others prefer to report ranges or the “asking price” to obscure the actual selling price, or to cover up favorable treatment that one buyer may have received over another. (We did not include reported sales unaccompanied by a price or price range in our list, so the galleries that tend to disclose figures are disproportionately represented here.)

The sales below are sorted by medium and price, with all figures converted to USD for ease of reading.

PAINTINGS

George Condo, The Day I Went Insane (2019). Courtesy of Skarstedt.

$2.85 million: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Elvis (1962) at White Cube Gallery

$2 million: Mark Bradford’s Superman (2019) at Hauser & Wirth

$1.8 million: Zao Wou-Ki’s 17.02.71-12.05.76 (1971) at Cardi Gallery

$1.8 million: Georg Baselitz’s Immer noch unterwegs (2014) at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

$1.75 million: Jack Whitten’s The Eleventh Loop (Dedicated to the Memory of Adrienne Rich) (2012) at Hauser & Wirth

$1.7 million: Alice Neel’s Olivia (1975) at David Zwirner

$1.5 million: Luc Tuymans’s D.A. (2014) at David Zwirner

$1.2–1.4 million: George Condo’s Boy in Striped Shirt (2011) at Almine Rech Gallery

$1.2 million: George Condo’s The Day I Went Insane (2019) at Skarstedt Gallery

$975,000: Willem de Kooning’s Seated Woman (1969/80) at Skarstedt Gallery

$850,000: Marlene Dumas’s Blue Pole (1999) at David Zwirner

$850,000: Henry Taylor’s Queen & King (2013) at Blum & Poe

$750,000: George Condo’s Orange and Green Female Portrait (2019) at Sprüth Magers

$650,000: Yoshitomo Nara’s How Yer Doing? Stayin’ True to You? (2006) at Pace Gallery

$600,000: Michaël Borremans’s The Cheese Sandwich (2019) at David Zwirner

$590,000: Bridget Riley’s Measure for Measure 24 (2018) at Sprüth Magers

$560,000: Georg Baselitz’s Ho visto un volo di colombe (2014) at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

$450,000: KAWS’s TO BE TITLED (2019) at Skarstedt

$420,000: Tracy Emin’s I Took You Home (2018) at White Cube

$360,000: Oscar Murillo’s Alibaba (2016-18) at David Zwirner

$350,000: David Hockney’s 28-foot-wide Pictures at an Exhibition (2018) at Richard Gray Gallery

$309,000: Günther Förg’s Untitled (2002) at Hauser & Wirth

$300,000: Lee Ufan’s Dialogue (2017) at Lisson Gallery

$224,736: Imi Knoebel’s FIGURA U (2018) at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

$220,000: Luchita Hurtado’s Untitled (You) (1974) at Hauser & Wirth

$165,000: Stanley Whitney’s The Last Cowboy Song (2019) at Lisson Gallery

$150,000–250,000: Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 17-40, 2017 at Almine Rech Gallery

$100,000: A painting by Sue Williams at 303 Gallery

$90,000 each: Two paintings by Joyce Pensato; The line up III (2000) and Let’s stay together Donald (2001) at Lisson Gallery

$84,000–160,000 each: Four works by Qiu Shihua (1997–2017) at Galerie Urs Meile

$67,875: Tim Eitel’s Four Squares (2019) at Pace Gallery

$65,000: A Sam Falls painting at 303 Gallery

$55,000: David Hockney’s Pictures at an Exhibition (2018) at Richard Gray Gallery

$52,000 each: David Hockney’s Inside It Opens Up As Well, and In the Studio, December 2017 at Richard Gray Gallery

$50,000: Loie Hollowell’s Linked Lingam in mauve, yellow and blue, 2018 at Pace

$45,000–50,000 each: Four paintings by Cui Jie at Metro Pictures

$38,000: Ivan Morley’s Still Life and A True Tale (both 2019) at David Kordanksy

$35,000: Will Boone’s mixed media on canvas, Hydra (2019) at David Kordansky

$26,000: Alejandro Campins’s Boulevard de la serie Letargo (2018) at Galleria Continua

$26,000: Tala Madani’s Untitled (2018) at 303 Gallery

$15,000 each: Three paintings by William Monk including Study for Within (2019) at Pace Gallery

$13,000–20,000 each: Three paintings by Sam Falls at Galleria Franco Noero

$6,500: Kohei Nawa’s Moment #111 (2019) at Pace

$5,000: Kohei Nawa’s Moment #120 (2019) at Pace

 

SCULPTURES & MIXED MEDIA

Lee Bul’s presentation, courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Lehmann Maupin, and PKM Gallery.

$600,000: Nam June Paik’s Columbus (Eco-Lumbus) + Columbus Boat (1991) at Annely Juda Fine Art

$500,000 each: Two of Carol Bove’s stainless steel sculptures at David Zwirner

$460,000: Antony Gormley’s SET (2016) at White Cube

$400,000 each: Two of Bove’s smaller sculptures, Hairpin and The Golden Game (both 2018), at David Zwirner

$250,000: Fred Eversley’s Untitled (parabolic lens) (2018/1969) at David Kordansky Gallery

$200,000: Lee Bul’s Willing To Be Vulnerable—Metalized Balloon, presented jointly by Galerie Thaddaeus RopacLehmann Maupin and PKM Gallery

$180,000: A mixed-media installation, PiXCell-Bambi#19 (2019), by Kohei Nawa at Pace Gallery

$120,000: Charles Gaines’s Numbers and Trees: Central Park Series III: Tree #9, Suzy (2016) at Hauser & Wirth

$95,000: Jaume Plensa’s Study for Julia (2017) at Richard Gray Gallery

$75,000: A work by Nick Mauss at 303 Gallery

$60,000: Yoan Capote’s Isla (circunstancia) (2019) at Galleria Continua

$45,000: Evan Holloway’s The Machinist’s Daughter (2019) at David Kordansky Gallery

$43,000: A sculpture by Alicja Kwade at 303 Gallery

$30,000: Lauren Halsey’s sunday funday, airway (auntie fawn) (2019) at David Kordansky

$28,000 each: Two works by Jeppe Hein at 303 Gallery

$25,000: Yuan Goang-Ming’s video Everyday Maneuver (2018) at Chi-Wen Gallery

$11,200 each: Two works by Laure Prouvost, IDEALLY YOU WOULD LOOK HERE NOT THERE and IDEALLY A BLAST OF FRESH AIR WOULD SURROUND YOU (both 2019), at Lisson Gallery

 

PHOTOGRAPHS, PRINTS, & WORKS ON PAPER

Jonas Wood, Bullets (mini) (2017). Courtesy of the artist and Art Basel.

$425,000: Lorna Simpson’s Blue True Illustration (2019) sold to an institution in Asia at Hauser & Wirth

$400,000: A fabric and lithograph book by Louise Bourgeois titled Ode a L’Oubli (2004) at Hauser & Wirth

$300,000 each: Two works on paper with cotton collage by Zhang Xiaogang at Pace Gallery

$140,000: Adam Pendleton’s Untitled (masks) (2018) at Pace Gallery

$120,000: Jonas Wood’s Bullets (mini) (2007) at David Kordansky Gallery

$95,000: Elizabeth Peyton’s Ally and Jackson, Stephanie and Bradley (2019) at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

$50,000: A work by Florian Maier-Aichen at 303 Gallery

$48,000: Matthew Brannon’s silkscreen, Concerning Vietnam: Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, Cockpit (I) (2019), at David Kordansky

$40,000 each: Two monotypes by Dana Schutz at Two Palms

$40,000: A monotype by Stanley Witney at Two Palms

$28,000: Torbjørn Rødland‘s The Red Axe (2018) at David Kordansky

$18,000: Giovanni Ozzola’s Horizon–Per Te (2019) at Galleria Continua


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