Sotheby’s May 2010 Contemporary Art Results
Sotheby’s May 2010 Contemporary Art sales concluded yesterday with the day sale which brought $53,417,050, comfortably within the $41/58 million pre-sale estimate. The result brought the overall total for the May Contemporary Art sales to $243,386,050, well above the pre-sale estimate of $154.9/219.7 million.
Discussing the sale Scott Nussbaum, Sotheby’s Specialist in charge of the sale, said: “Following on from Wednesday night’s success, I was delighted to see the second part of the Contemporary Art sales achieve a total of $53,417,050, well within the pre-sale estimate of $41/58 million. Calder was once again in demand with Two Polychrome Flowers with Black Leaves from 1959 meeting the high estimate to sell for $1,538,500 million (est. $1/1.5 million). In addition, there were strong prices for works by Warhol, Fontana, de Kooning, and Stella, as well as for more recent contemporary art such as Tom Wesselmann’s Sunset Nude (Big Red Pillow) from 2002-3 which sold for $1,010,500 (est. $800,000/1 million). The sale was 78.2% sold by lot and 85.9% sold by value.”
You might also be interested in this video on the installation of the Maurizio Cattelan Untitled sculpture which sold at the evening sale for $7.9 million – a new record for the artist. The video can be viewed here - http://www.sothebys.com/video/
