The art market is doing wonderfully in New York, thank you for it. The very famous Macklowe collection was sold for a total of 922 million dollars (880 million euros) by Sotheby’s, after a new sale on Monday, May 16.
Sotheby’s, which moved from London to New York and has been owned since 2019 by Franco-Israeli telecom mogul Patrick Drahi, topped the fall season in November by totaling $676.1 million in sales in a single evening alone. with the first batch of 35 works from this Macklowe collection. On Monday night, the other 30 coins sold out in ninety minutes for $246.1 million.
With a “total of $922.2 million”this in fact “the most expensive collection ever sold at auction”, welcomed Sotheby’s. It was put on the market in two batches after the divorce of the wealthy couple formed by Harry Macklowe, a real estate developer, and Linda Burg, an honorary administrator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York.
Christie’s not left out
Among the successful sales of the evening, the painting Untitledof Mark Rothko, left for 48 million dollars, the Seestückby Gerhard Richter, sold for $30.2 million and the Self Portraitby Andy Warhol, which reached $18.7 million, according to Sotheby’s.
In November, Le Nez, by Alberto Giacometti, an impressive suspended bronze on which the sculptor had started working in 1947, had been sold for 78.4 million dollars, No. 7minimalist painting by Mark Rothko, 82.4 million, and Number 17, 1951by Jackson Pollock, sold for $61.1 million.
The spring sales season began on May 9 at Sotheby’s competitor Christie’s (owned by French wealthy François Pinault), which sold a portrait of Marilyn Monroe – Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, by Andy Warhol – for $195 million. This makes it the work of art of the XXand most expensive century ever sold at public auction.
Thursday evening, Christie’s had also sold for 831 million dollars of works, including the bronze sculpture 14 year old little dancer, by Edgar Degas, part at 41.6 million dollars, the highest ever at auction for the French artist. And the Raptorsa skeleton of a dinosaur Deinonychus antirrhopusmade up of 126 fossilized bones and measuring more than three meters long, was sold for 12.4 million dollars.