AFP, NEW YORK
With a Magritte painting estimated to sell for nearly US$100 million, drawings by pop artist Keith Haring and a rather gnarly banana, New York’s auction houses this week would try to shake up a stale market.
The sale of Magritte’s Empire of Light (L’Empire des lumieres), which is to go under the hammer tomorrow night at Christie’s, would surely be one of the high points of the autumn season, when hundreds of works are expected to be sold — and hundreds of millions of dollars spent.
The seminal 1954 work is one of a series of paintings from the Surrealist master depicting the interplay of shadow and light. Its estimated price is US$95 million, which would easily shatter the previous record for a Magritte, US$79 million in 2022.
People react to the artist Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, background, during an auction preview at Sotheby’s in New York on Monday last week.
Photo: AP
Christie’s is hoping that with the Magritte and a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by the 86-year-old American pop artist Ed Ruscha, it can reinvigorate an art market that has slowed since last year.
The auction house — which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family — said sales totaled US$2.1 billion in the first half of this year.
That is down for the second straight year, after a peak of US$4.1 billion in 2022, as the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A man stands next to Rene Magritte’s L’Empire des lumieres during a press preview for a Christie’s auction in New York on Nov. 8.
Photo: AFP
“The current market correction, which began in 2023 with global geopolitical unrest, high inflation and interest rates affecting collectors, has spilled into 2024,” Bank of America said in a note.
For Max Carter, the vice chairman for 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s, “our market is very much defined, certainly now, by supply more than demand.”
Sotheby’s is hoping to make a tidy profit from the sale of private collections, such as that of Sydell Miller, a beauty industry mogul who died this year and whose Florida home reputedly looked like a museum.
The auction house is hoping the collection would generate US$170 million to US$205 million in sales, including one of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (Nympheas), which is expected to rake in more than US$60 million.
One of the highlights of the week would be a fresh banana taped to a wall, a provocative work by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The debut of Comedian at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019 sparked controversy. This is its third iteration — the first two were eaten, Sotheby’s Web site says.
This time, the auction house believes the work, a commentary on what qualifies as art, could go for US$1 million to US$1.5 million. The buyer would receive a certificate of authenticity and instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.
