New York evening auctions: art sales of superlatives

Dhe auction business thrives on superlatives, and this collection surpassed everything seen before: Within one evening, sixty works belonging to Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen brought in 1.5 billion dollars at Christie’s auction in New York on Wednesday. The exceeded expectations had been up to 1.38 billion.

This makes the Allen collection the most expensive private collection ever auctioned: it trumps the Rockefeller collection, which achieved 835 million dollars at Christie’s in 2018 with around 1,500 objects, and the turnover of 922 million that the Macklowe collection achieved at Sotheby’s in May. Five works from Allen’s estate surpassed the hundred million dollar mark, including the buyer’s premium, and twenty reached new record prices for the respective artists. The following day, another 94 lots from Allen’s property changed hands for a total of almost 116 million dollars. All profits will benefit Allen’s philanthropic foundations.

“We may never see such a range, number and quality of masterpieces in a private collection again,” said Max Carter, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, after the auction. Three works from 1888 were valued at “more than” 100 million dollars: Seurat’s “Les Poseuses Ensemble (Petite version)” was sold at 130 million. Shortly thereafter, Cézanne’s mountain view ‘La montagne Sainte-Victoire’ was sold at 120 million, followed by Van Gogh’s springtime orchard ‘Verger avec cypres’ at 102 million.

Gustav Klimt’s “Birch Forest” from 1903, in which you think you can hear the leaves rustling, rose to 91 million, as expected. Allen bought the picture at Christie’s in 2006 for what was then the Klimt record price of 40.3 million plus a premium. Gauguin’s “Maternite II” (estimate “more than” 90 million) was brokered at $92 million. These five top works all set new auction records. Lucian Freud’s “Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau)” from the 1980s also set a record with a final bid of 75 million. Among the handful of old masters on offer, Sandro Botticelli’s tondo “Madonna des Magnificat” grew just beyond his expectations at 42 million.

Allen, who retired from Microsoft’s day-to-day business after being diagnosed with cancer in 1983 and died in 2018, collected art of outstanding quality and with encyclopedic aspirations. From the 1970s to the present, every decade of Western art history has been represented by representative artists in his collection.

Allen trusted his own judgment rather than advisors. He was particularly enthusiastic about landscapes, still lifes and abstractions; there are hardly any portraits in the catalogue, and there is also no capital Picasso. This paints the picture of a collector who was looking for peace and nature in art or a glimpse into another world – in line with his interest in brain research. “They say our brains are wired to look at landscapes,” Allen said in Washington in 2016 at the “Seeing Nature” exhibition, which featured works from his previously little-known collection. “This means that landscape paintings are almost universally attractive. They are a contemplation of the outside, but at the same time an individual expression of the artist.”

Again and again de Kooning

Next week, the New York Modern & Contemporary season continues with seven evening sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. Willem de Kooning is particularly well represented this time. At Sotheby’s on November 14, The David M. Solinger Collection Evening Auction, featuring works from the collection of the former President of the Whitney Museum, precedes the Modern Evening Auction. The 23 Solingen lots should bring in between 86.7 and 118 million dollars. The focus of the collection is on high-quality post-war art such as Miró’s “Femme, étoiles” (15/20 million) from 1945. The top lot is de Kooning’s “Collage” (18/25 million) on paper, in Solinger’s hand since 1952.