Fair Warning: Lots of Passes, but Sotheby’s Modern Sales Still Bring in $427 Million
Above the fireplace in the Los Angeles living room where the music executive Mo Ostin entertained celebrity clients like Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell were two unusual paintings by René Magritte. The Belgian surrealist was still an acquired taste when Ostin started collecting him in the 1990s, long before the painter started commanding upwards of $50 million in the global art market.
But the artworks certainly found an audience on Tuesday as bidders competed for over 15 paintings from the collection accumulated by Ostin, who died last year, and another 54 lots included in Sotheby’s latest Modern Evening Sale, which helped the auction house realize $427 million in a single night. That figure was below the $500 million that the company had predicted but still the third highest total for a single night in its history, Sotheby’s said.
The lots in the Mo Ostin sale, which carried a pre-sale estimate of $103.3 million to $155.3 million, ultimately brought $123.7 million. The prize was a paradoxical painting from Magritte’s “Empire of Light” series, which sold for $42.3 million with buyers’ fees after the auctioneer spent 10 minutes attempting to rouse higher bids from four collectors who were battling for it. (The artist’s high price was $79.8 million, established a year earlier.)
The 1951 work includes motifs that are synonymous with the artist, such as the juxtaposition of a bright sky with a dark landscape. Another painting completed two years earlier, “The Domain of Arnheim,” sold for $19 million and was inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name.
Source: The New York Times
