When the Long Museum, the private institution founded by Chinese mega-collectors Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, began selling work last year, it felt like a sign of the times. It meant that Asian collectors were not only being less active in terms of buying. They were actively selling, too.

Previously, the paintings being sold by collectors like Liu and Wang—a $34.9 million Modigliani that appeared at Sotheby’s last year, for example—came from the West and made their way to China via flashy purchases. Today, it is the opposite: these very same paintings are being sent back to the West, where they will likely find new buyers.

Now, there is news of at least two major paintings on the market that appear to come from China: a Warhol that, according to a source close to the gallery, is priced in excess of $100 million and a Basquiat that sold in 2013 for $29 million.

In mid-May—not coincidentally, during the major auctions in New York—Gagosian opened “Icons From a Half Century of Art,” an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Basquiat, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, and Warhol. It is open only to collectors, and can only be seen by appointment at Gagosian’s 24th Street gallery in New York. The image the gallery used to promote the exhibition on its website is of a Warhol “Mao.” Warhol famously created no fewer than 199 images of “Mao,” but this isn’t just any “Mao.” It is the only one of the four so-called “giant Maos”—they stand a full 15 feet high—that is not in a museum.

The last time the Gagosian “Mao” was publicly on the market was in 2008, when Christie’s, in collaboration with London dealer James Mayor, sent the painting to Hong Kong with a price tag of $120 million. As described in write-up at the time in the Wall Street Journal, that price would have set a record for the artist: the auction record for a Warhol then was the $71.7 million Christie’s got in May 2007 for the 1963 silkscreen Green Car Crash. (The record today is the $195 million that Larry Gagosian paid for a painting of Marilyn Monroe at Christie’s in 2022.) But the “Mao” didn’t sell in 2008 in Hong Kong, and then came the recession. According to a source with close knowledge of the painting, it did, however, sell around 2013 for a price within the range of $120 million.

The person involved in that transaction, dealers say, was Rosaline Wong, who has in the past reportedly worked on behalf of Henry Cheng, chairman of Hong Kong–based New World Development. According to Forbes, Cheng, who succeeded his own father at New World, is China’s third-richest person. New World’s shares dropped 60 percent between January 2023 and January 2024, and the Cheng family’s net worth dropped by nearly a fourth, to $22.1 billion.

Wong is a former Hong Kong barrister that Artnet News and the South China Morning Post previously linked to the purchase of a $150 million Gustav Klimt painting. The painting was previously owned by Oprah Winfrey, and the transaction was brokered by Gagosian, according to Bloomberg. More recently, Artnet News linked Wong with a Klimt that sold at Sotheby’s last year for $108.4 million. Dealers who worked with Wong between 2013 and 2015 say she appeared to be buying on behalf of a foundation that was in formation.

According to South China Morning Post, around 2015, Wong founded an investment advisory company, HomeArt, which matches individuals and companies with art for sale. The SCMP reported in 2022 that at that time Wong was “in the middle of setting up a US$1 billion ‘museum-grade’ art investment fund with Hong Kong- and Singapore-based asset management firm Zheng He Capital, which counts among its heavyweight advisers Gagosian and Wong’s close friend, the Hong Kong billionaire Henry Cheng Kar-shun,” head of New World Development and father of collector Adrian Cheng, executive vice chairman and CEO of New World Development and founder of the K11 , a venture that blends art, commerce, and development, and that has an associated foundation, the K11 Art Foundation. Artnet News reported last year that Wong was “launching a fractional ownership fund specializing in museum-quality works for a broader pool of investors.”

Wong has also been linked to Joseph Lau, whose purchase of a smaller Warhol “Mao” painting in 2006 for $17 million set the stage for Christie’s bringing the “giant Mao” to Hong Kong.

Since 2021, Homeart has since done several exhibitions in collaboration with Christie’s, among them an 11-work Basquiat show in Hong Kong. That exhibition, held in May 2021, included an untitled 1982 painting that was purchased at Christie’s London in 2013 for $29 million. (It’s worth noting that Christie’s made a point of telling the New York Times just after that sale that there was a large amount of bidding from Asia.) That Basquiat painting is also in the current Gagosian “Icons” exhibition, according to several sources who have seen the show.

A representative for Gagosian declined to comment on the identity of the consignor of the Warhol and Basquiat paintings. Wong did not return a request for comment submitted to Homeart.

The four “giant Mao” paintings are so big that Warhol had to make them in the Factory’s screening room rather than the painting studio. They were so expensive to produce that he needed backing from two galleries (Knoedler & Co. and Castelli) and an avid collector of his (Peter Brant). In return, each of those parties got a “giant Mao” painting. The one Christie’s sent to Hong Kong in 2008 went through Castelli to James Mayor, who placed it in a private collection in Europe. Another was sold by Knoedler in 1974 to the Art Institute of Chicago. The third, Brant gifted in 1977 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The fourth “Mao” Warhol kept, and eventually sold it to Charles Saatchi , who eventually sold the piece to the late German collector Erich Marx, who, in 2007, put it on long-term loan to the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin.

Coincidentally, the Hamburger Bahnhof “Mao” was in the news this week. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ran an op-ed by art historian Von Hubertus Butin, who speculated that the painting might soon hit the market. Marx died in 2020; three paintings from the Marx collection—two Warhols and a Twombly —that previously appeared at the Hamburger Bahnhof have been removed from the museum by his heirs. Butin writes that those paintings, which he claims are collectively worth some $170 million, have been consigned to Gagosian and that some may have sold. (Gagosian declined to comment on this; the museum said only that the paintings have been removed.) The Marx collection’s “Mao” could be next to go, Butin claimed, writing that there had at one point been a $155 million offer made for that “Mao.” The museum said it had no knowledge of this, and dealers told ARTnews that the figure seemed unrealistic. One dealer even called the sum “aspirational,” particularly in the current art market conditions.

As for whether the “Mao” at Gagosian has found a buyer, the gallery isn’t saying. The “Icons” show is up through July 19.

The federal department’s press statement said the agreement was with Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, along with members of his family and trust entities that he established. The agreement resolves two civil forfeiture cases.

These cases were brought against assets that Low and his family gained, allegedly by embezzling from 1MDB. The complaints, which spanned 2009 to 2015, alleged that more than $4.5 billion in funds belonging to 1MDB were misappropriated by senior officials at the organization and their associates, including Low. The misappropriation was allegedly done through international money laundering and bribery.

The DOJ said in a statement that the Warhol and the Monet were collectively worth $35 million. He and his associates will now turn over $67 million in cash and real estate properties.

A document filed in the United States District Court in the Central District of California on June 24 identified the Warhol was Colored Campbell’s Soup Can (Emerald Green), 1965, and the Monet as Vétheuil au Soleil (1901).

1MDB was established by Malaysia’s government to promote economic development in the country through foreign direct investment and international partnerships.

Last August, the US government filed a forfeiture complaint alleging that former 1MDB lawyer “Jasmine” Loo Ai Swan purchased the Pablo Picasso pencil drawing Trois femmes nues et buste d’homme (1969) from Christie’s in May 2014 for $1.38 million. To do so, the government said, she used misappropriated funds from a bond sale underwritten by Goldman Sachs.

Low was once known for placing high-profile winning bids on artworks at auction. Those works included Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Dustheads (1982), which he bought at Christie’s New York in 2013 for a then record $43.5 million, and Monet’s Nymphéas (1906), which he won at Sotheby’s London in 2014 for the equivalent of $53.9 million.

Other cases the US government has filed linked to the 1MDB scandal involving art include van Gogh’s La Maison à Arles, the €25.3 million in proceeds from the sale of Nymphéas, the Picasso painting Nature morte au crâne de taureau, Basquiat’s Redman One and Self-Portrait, Warhol’s Round Jackie, Diane Arbus’s Boy with the Toy Hand Grenade, and the Monet painting Saint-Georges majeur.

A document filed by the US Justice Department on June 14 said that Low, his family members, and his entities waived their rights and consented to the forfeiture of van Gogh’s La Maison à Arles, Picasso’s Nature morte au crâne de taureau, Basquiat’s Redman One, Diane Arbus’s Boy with the Toy Hand Grenade, Monet’s Saint-Georges majeur, and the €25.3 million in proceeds from the sale of Nymphéas held in an escrow account at UBS, through a settlement agreement and consent judgment of forfeiture.

Update on June 27, 2024: Additional information from Justice Department court filing on June 14 added regarding waiving of rights and consent to forfeiture of five artworks and the proceeds of a Monet painting won at auction.

The seven-foot-wide work seems to have significantly declined in value. When Christie’s brought the work to auction in 2022, that house gave it a $30 million estimate; just before the sale, the work was quietly withdrawn. This time, Sotheby’s has awarded the work an approximately $20 million–$25 million estimate.

Any Basquiat coming to auction is deemed an event, largely due to the phenomenally high prices his work typically commands. Although the recent secondary market prices are still high, Basquiats used to more regularly outpace their high estimates by large sums at auction. The dip in prices could be explained by collectors being more thoughtful about how many millions they are willing to spend at auction, and by auction houses adjusting estimates to better fit those new, high interest rate–driven buying habits.

In May, Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, led a modern and contemporary art sale at Philips, selling for $46.5 million. That painting had been estimated to sell for $60 million. The other two Basquiats sold by the house in evening sales that month—Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer), from 1981, and Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982)—headed to auction at lower values, selling for $7.8 million and $12.6 million, respectively. Those figures, which all include buyer’s premium, were squarely within the works’ estimates.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, too, had Basquiats for sale in May. An untitled 1984 collaboration between Basquiat and Andy Warhol went to Sotheby’s with an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It sold for $19.3 million. Meanwhile, yet another 1982 work, The Italian Version of Popeye Has no Pork in His Diet, sold at Christie’s for $32 million on an estimate of around $30 million.

Earlier this year, Phillips’s Americas president Jean-Paul Engelen told Puck’s Marion Maneker that Basquiat was “the new Picasso,” a euphemism for the fact that the artist has now achieved legendary status on the market. According to Maneker, roughly $125 million worth of Basquiat’s work sold in May. Look back to the last four years, and that figure crosses the billion-dollar mark.

There’s no question that Basquiat’s market has juice at the moment, a trend that it likely to continue. The only question is whether Sotheby’s priced the work low enough to get collectors interested. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. The work, according to Sotheby’s website, has a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, which means it has effectively already sold. The question, now, is who’s taking it home.

The sales included plenty of guarantees and several works by artists whose momentum has cooled amid higher interest rates, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and concerns over the upcoming US national election.

While Phillips’ spring evening sale in Hong Kong had only 24 lots, the auction house managed to ride the ongoing wave of demand for Jean-Michel Basquiat by selling Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari for HK$99 million or U$12.6 million, the highest amount for the season across all the auction houses and categories in Hong Kong. The work carried an estimate of HK$90 million to HK$120 million.

Phillips was also the only auction house to consign a work by Banksy. The popular street artist was absent from this past New York spring auction season but The Leopard and Lamb sold at Phillips Hong Kong on May 31 for HK$36.8 million or $4.7 million on an estimate of HK$18 million to $28 million.

Phillips said its Modern and Contemporary art spring sales in Hong were 22 percent higher compared to last season, with works by Zao Wou-Ki, Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, and Andy Warhol accounting for six out of the top ten lots.

Christie’s said in a press release that its Asia Spring auctions on May 28 and 29 generated a total of HK$963 million ($124 million), with “close to 90% sold by lot and by value and over 40% of lots sold over high estimate.” However, last year Christie’s spring auctions in Hong Kong generated HK$1.24 billion ($159 million), indicating a drop of 22 percent in sales including fees.

Other declines included the number of works which sold for above HK$10 million ($1.3 million) compared to last year (22 for 2024, versus 36 for 2023). There were also fewer lots (81 in 2024; 88 in 2023) in this year’s 20th and 21st Century evening sales compared to the 20th/21st Century and Post-Millennium evening sales, as well as more works that did not sell (14 in 2024; 12 in 2023).

A bright yellow acrylic and silkscreen Flowers painting from 1965 by Andy Warhol was the top lot, at HK$66.625 million with fees ($8.5million USD), on an estimate of (HK $62.8 million – HK $92.8 million). Other top sellers included Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 for HK $63.175 million, or approximately $8.13 million (estimate of HK$68 million to HK$ 98 million), Yayoi Kusama’s 83-inch tall sculpture Pumpkin (2012) for HK $48.775 million, or $6.28 million (estimate of HK$40 million to HK$60 million), and Rene Magritte’s 1944 painting of a rose L’Invitation au voyage for HK $42.725 million or just under $5.5 million (estimate of HK$28 million to HK$38 million).

Eight of the top ten lots across Christie’s four sales on May 28 and May 29 had guarantees, with the exception of Yoshitomo Nara’s Portrait of AE (2009) and Rock You! (2006).

It’s worth noting that Paul Cezanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves (circa 1902-1906) sold for HK$22.16 million or $4.5 million, on an estimate of HK$20 million to HK$30 million. That figure was a drop from when the consignor purchased the work in June 2014 from Christie’s in London for £3.55 million or about $6 million.

The selling price for Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 was also lower than when it previously appeared at auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November 2018, when it sold for HK$68.9 million or $8.8 million, as the lead lot for a sale of Abstract artworks in the house’s Brushwork series.

Breakout results included a Salvo for HK$3.2 million (estimate HK$1 million to HK$1.5 million), a Marina Perez Simao painting for HK$2.1 million (estimate of HK$700,000 to HK$1.2 million), and a Ben Sledsen work for HK$1.6 million (estimate of HK$200,000 to HK$400,000). Works by Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Miriam Cahn, Lee Bae, Xia Yu, Katherine Bernhardt, and Sholto Blissett also sold above high estimates.

Christie’s said world auctions records were also set for Rhee Seundja, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Skygolpe, Ay-o, Sholto Blissett, Jeong Young-do, Son Dong-Hyun, Daniel Correa Mejia, Jeon Hyun-Sun and Kim Su-Yeon.

Notably, two works by Nicholas Party did not sell (one had an estimate of HK$22 million to HK$28 million, or $2.8 million to $3.6 million), as well as a Wayne Thiebaud (estimate of HK$30 million to HK$40 million, or $3.8 million to $5.1 million), which had the third highest estimate of the house’s 21st Century sale.

Christie’s also officially announced at the end of its sales that it would hold its inaugural auctions at its new Asia Pacific headquarters at The Henderson building in Central district on September 26 and September 27, starting with sales of 20th and 21st Century art.

Anne Imhof, who won the Golden Lion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, is set to take over Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz with her latest creations while Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie is mounting an Andy Warhol blockbuster. I. M. Pei will get a retrospective at Hong Kong’s M+ museum, and Zanele Muholi is doing a rebooted version of their lockdown-era Tate Modern retrospective at that institution.

Well-established figures are getting fresh looks: the Art Institute of Chicago will explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York, Paul Gauguin is coming under the microscope at the National Gallery of Australia, and Lawrence Weiner is getting a Chinese museum survey. Meanwhile, new artists will be added to the canon: Neoclassicist painter Guillaume Lethière, German modernist Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Argentine-German abstractionist Gyula Kosice are all getting their due this summer.

Below, a look at 44 museum shows to see this summer.

During the hearing the judge considered three motions in the lawsuit filed by Perelman, through a holding company called AGP Holdings, against a group of insurers that includes underwriters at Lloyd’s of London and AIG.

In court filings, Perelman claimed that the insurers have refused to honor his 2020 claim for coverage on five paintings—two by Andy Warhol, two by Ed Ruscha, and one by Cy Twombly—that were in his East Hampton home known as the Creeks during a 2018 fire that robbed the works of their “oomph.” “All of the pictures lost their luster, lost their depth, lost some of their definition and lost a lot of their character,” Perelman said in the complaint. The insurance companies, meanwhile, have argued in their filings that the works had “not sustained any detectable damages” as a result of the fire.

The most important summary judgment motion considered the question of whether or not the works were actually damaged in the fire. The lack of clarity over that question, Judge Cohen said, is what ultimately swayed him to move forward with a bench trial.

Perelman’s attorneys, and the experts he hired during the years-long insurance investigation, have long asserted that while damage might not be visible, the simple fact that they were in a fire means they were damaged. During the hearing, his attorneys presented testimony from Jennifer Mass, president of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, who was hired to scientifically analyze the works. In her testimony, she said all the works sustained fire-related damage despite being in protective cases. but she can’t exactly prove what that damage is. Instead, she claimed that “the conditions of the fire would necessarily have shortened the lifetime trajectory” of the paintings. When Judge Cohen asked how the paintings could be damaged if there was no visible damage, Perelman’s lawyers referenced Mass’s testimony that the fire and the water used to extinguish it would accelerate the formation of compounds that otherwise occur naturally, shortening the paintings’ lifespan by an as yet imperceptible and incalculable degree.

This is evidence, the judge said, that he wants to hear from expert witnesses from both the plaintiff and the defense themselves at trial before he can decide whether the works have been truly damaged. 

The remaining two motions dealt with the insurance investigation. The defendants have claimed in court filings that Perelman hid the fact that he was trying to sell a number of the paintings after the fire, but before he made filed an insurance claim, which, they argue would have nulled the policy because he was lying during the investigation. The insurers’ attorneys showed evidence that power collector Ken Griffin and dealer Larry Gagosian, who works with both collectors, paid a visit to the Creeks in 2020 before the claim was filed on the five works. That visit, the insurance companies have argued, is proof that Perelman lied during the investigation. After that visit, Griffin did in fact buy paintings from Perelman, one of which, Brice Marden’s Letter about Rocks #2, for $30 million, was in the same room as the Twombly and the two Warhols during the fire. That summary judgment motion was denied.

In the third motion, Perelman’s lawyers argued that the insurance companies showed bad faith during the investigation, prolonged the investigation well past the contractual 30 days it normally takes to approve a claim, and had predetermined the outcome of their investigation and ultimate denial of that claim. “But don’t you think, counselor, that this situation is complicated and warranted extra consideration?” the judge said to Perelman’s attorney. Judge Cohen then reminded him that Perelman waited two years before filing a claim on the five works in question. The judge ruled to grant the summary judgment, effectively ruling that the insurers did not act in bad faith.

The key to these proceedings is the bespoke nature of Perelman’s contract with the insurance companies. With most such contracts, a damaged painting is simply repaired by conservators at the expense of the insurance agency. If that repair affects the value of the painting, insurance pays the difference. Perelman’s agreement has an added clause stipulating that he can choose to hand a damaged painting over to the insurance company in exchange for the full amount of the insurance evaluation price, which can be four to five times more than the painting is worth. 

One of the works, a Warhol “Campbell’s Soup Can” has a fair market value of $12.5 million, but is insured at $100 million. Another, Twombly’s Untitled (1971) was valued at $50 million on the fair market and is insured for $125 million. The remaining works are Warhol’s Elvis 21 Times (1962), insured for $75 million, and Ruscha’s Box Smashed Flat, Vicksburg (1960–61) and Standard Station (1966), insured for $50 million and $60 million, respectively.

The Covid pandemic significantly depreciated shares of Perelman’s company Revlon Inc. He bought the company for $1.74 billion in 1985 through a holding company. In 2023 Revlon went bankrupt. Since 2020 Perelman has sold 71 blue-chip works for $963 million through Sotheby’s auctions and private sales, works that he had been using as collateral for loans. 

According to a Bloomberg report from last June, “at least nine banks had claims against Perelman’s assets, including his art collection, house in the Hamptons and various aircraft.” Following sales in 2020 of a large number of works, a private jet, and stakes in several companies, a spokesperson for Perelman said the sales “weren’t forced.”

A Perelman biographer put it more bluntly to Bloomberg: “He needs cash.”

Loosely, the pair has been brought together the shed light on the darkness of their oeuvres. But KAWS and Warhol share commonalities beyond that: works by both have infiltrated the public consciousness, and collaboration with big brands is also responsible for some of their art.

ARTnews recently spoke with KAWS about the exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum, his thoughts on selling out, and his favorite pieces by Warhol. This interview has been edited and condensed.

ARTnews: The new show at the Warhol Museum features works from his “Death and Disaster” series, silkscreened paintings from the 1960s that feature appropriated pictures of car crashes and other violent imagery that Warhol repeated many times over. What relation does your work have to those paintings?

KAWS: The “darker themes” angle was something that [outgoing Warhol Museum director] Patrick Moore really wanted to explore. It’s funny how putting pieces in proximity to each other can really kind of shift the context. Companion (2020) was a sculpture I created thinking that it was just really representative of that year and exhaustion. But when placed under the Warhol’s Ambulance Disaster (1963–64), it suddenly feels much more tragic.

Could you expand on that a little bit in terms of how it feels tragic?

Ambulance Disaster is a much more horrific image. For me, doing this show was a great way to explore even further an artist that I’ve always appreciated. And I felt like there were so many things that Warhol had done that kind of opened doorways for my thinking. So, I wouldn’t pass it up the opportunity to do this show.

Warhol expanded the way people thought about the business of art and the the notion of selling out. But he also faced a negativity about that during his lifetime, especially because he did so with the explicit goal of making money. What do you make of the allegations that Warhol unashamedly sold out?

I mean, I don’t really think about the term “selling out.” I focus on what I want or don’t want to make, and what outlets I can explore. There’s tons of opportunities these days to get the work out in ways that just aren’t possible in a traditional gallery setting, if you were just doing painting and sculpture. I’ve always been inclined to make products. I’ve always thought about the stuff that came to me through objects, through products, when I was younger, whether learning about artists through skate graphics, through magazines, or through T-shirt graphics. It all felt very natural to me. I don’t see any reason to deprive myself from having opportunities to make the stuff that I want to make.

You’ve previously said you’ve turned down a lot of opportunities.

I don’t want to do anything that I’m not going to be able to stand by. Yeah, there are a lot of projects that we’re presented with, but it’s just not interesting, often. If I feel like it’s not additive, I’ve just tried to stay away from it.

Warhol was making a lot of art in response to ads, TV shows, and news photography, all at a time when this was somewhat taboo in the art world. Nowadays, it’s far less the case. What is your relationship to mass media? What do you think about that shift among artists about making work in response to mass media?

My interested in this started in the ’90s, when I was doing graffiti. Then I transitioned to painting over billboards. I started to think a lot about the parallels between graffiti and advertising, and that need for communication.

I don’t see these things as taboo. I feel like things have shifted a lot. And I think it’s because a lot of artists are just more open-minded these days to working with corporations and even institutions. The landscape has changed so much, and artists are looking to collaborate with different corporations. whether it’s Dior sponsoring a show or something of that sort. Those opportunities are out there, and they can be done in good ways. And if you can find that right balance, I think it’s worth exploring.

When it comes to remixing pop culture, what aspects of Warhol’s process do you draw on?

I think I benefited from his openness to different mediums, whether it’s film or fashion. The Warhol Museum had a show years ago [in 1997] called “The Warhol Look.” It focused on all the collaborative dresses that he printed and the different sort of works in that realm. I feel like I’m in a very different time, in 2024, with social media and everything. I tried to be aware of: how I can create work that could disseminate in the right ways for today?

Are there specific pieces of Warhol’s that really stand out to you?

The first pairing we did for the exhibition was Ambulance Disaster and Companion [2020]. Then we kind of built the show out from around that. I’ve always been interested are the toy package paintings that he did—just the scale and intimacy of them. Cming off of all his previous work, to stop and focus on a series like that: I just thought it was very clever.

There’s a series of paintings I did, which are close-ups of SpongeBob faces. And we paired it with the film Blow Job [1964]. I thought it was important have this humor in the exhibition, and also to bring his movie work into the show.

If there was one work of Warhol’s that you could have on loan from the Warhol Museum to your home, which one would it be?

There’s a painting of a volcano on canvas [Vesuvius, from 1985]. It’s just black ink on white canvas—it’s a startling image that I love. I didn’t put it in the show, but I do always love seeing when I visit.

Leading the sale will be Alexej Jawlensky’s Spanische Tänzerin (1909) with an estimate of €7 million – €10 million ($7.57 million – $10.81 million). The picture has been out of the public eye for more than 90 years and has only ever been photographed in black and white, robbing afficionados of German Expressionism that opportunity to admire its rich blue and vibrant red hues.

The sale with also feature Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1911 work Tanz im Varieté, which has been held by the same family for 80 years and carries an estimate of €2 million – €3 million ($2.16 million – $3.24 million).

The German artists in the sale will also include Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Konrad Klapheck, Georg Baselitz, and Gerhard Richter.

The sale will also highlight works by American Pop Art masters James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg. A rare full set of 10 brightly colored screenprints from Andy Warhol’s Flowers series from 1970 will be included in the sale with an estimate of €800,000 – €1.2 million ($865,000 – $1.3 million), as will Rosenquist’s risqué large-format picture Playmate (1966), which carries an estimate of € 1,000,000 – €1.5 million ($1.08 million – $1.62 million).

An additional highlight of the auction is the outdoor sculpture Working Model for Sheep Piece (1971) by the British artist Henry Moore. The sculpture has an estimate of €600,000–€800,000 ($650,000–$866,00) and comes from the collection of Dr. Theo Maier-Mohr, who bought the work directly from Fischer Fine Art Ltd., London in 1977.

The anniversary auction will continue with a day sale on June 8. 

Of the 64 lots, three were withdrawn before the auction began. Just over 37 percent of the lots came with a guarantee, a sign that there was at least some collectors were interested in the works on offer at Christie’s. Despite being filled with pieces by tried-and-true, blue-chip artists like Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, Claude Monet, and Andy Warhol, a number of art advisers told ARTnews that the sale felt cobbled together. 

As auctioneer Adrien Meyer rattled off the protracted list of guaranteed lots before the sale commenced, the sales floor burst into a restrained laughter. “Don’t worry, it’s a good sign,” he said, with a raised eyebrow and wry smile. Interestingly, only one of those 24 lots, Frank Stella’s Untitled (Concentric Squares), was guaranteed by the house. Despite the artist’s death earlier this month, the work hammered after very little fanfare for $5 million ($6.1 million, with fees) against an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, going to a bidder in the sales room. (All prices are reported with buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.)

The sale, which lasted about two hours, was filled with highs and lows. A record was set for André Kertész after a print of his photograph Satiric Dancer (1926) hammered for $450,000, or $567,000 with fees; that was just above its pre-sale estimate of $500,000–$700,000. The success of that picture, of an exquisite 1920s beauty contorting herself on a small sofa next to a similarly twisted sculpture, provides further evidence that early 20th-century photography has assumed its place in the marquee evening sales. That trend arguably began two years ago when Christie’s sold Man Ray’s picture of Kiki de Montparnasse for a record-breaking $12.4 million in 2022. 

Another record was set for a work by Alexander Archipenko after his sculpture Woman Comber Her Hair (conceived in 1915, cast in 1965) hammered for a stunning $4.2 million ($5.1 million with fees), more than double its $2 million high estimate.

As for the lows, only three lots were passed on: Isamu Noguchi’s jasper stone sculpture Untitled (1980), Richard Diebenkorn’s 1968 picture Ocean Park #12, and Joan Mitchell’s Crow Hill (1966). The evening’s 13th lot, Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (Medici Prince Variant), painted around 1952, was also passed on despite a bid of $480,000 on an estimate of $700,000 to $1 million. By the end of the sale, however, the consignor must have had a change of heart. The lot was brought back to the screen and swiftly went to a bidder on the phone with Emily Kaplan, the house’s co-head of the 20th-century evening sale, for $320,000 ($403,200 with fees). Interesting what a little time and post-sale perspective can do.

One of the first lots to receive bidding in depth (and a round of applause after it sold) was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Red Poppy (1928), which carried an estimate of $10 million–$15 million. Meyer noted that the work was the largest of O’Keeffe’s poppy paintings still in private hands. He started the bidding at $8 million. The low estimate was reached in less than 15 seconds and, after a back and forth bids between specialists Paige Kestenman and Katharine Arnold, went to Kestenman’s phone bidder for $14 million ($16.5 million with fees).

Hockney’s A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967) was the first of the evening’s high-value lots to be offered up. With an estimate of $25 million–$35 million it was among the most expensive works in the sale, matched only by van Gogh’s Coin de Jardin avec papillons (1887). Considering that it had never before come to auction and had been given the primo cover of the sale’s auction catalogue, one would have thought that the picture would have drawn more attention, especially given its provenance in the Lear collection. 

But bidding lasted just over a minute with only two or three parties interested. The work sold to a bidder on the phone with Arnold for a hammer price of $24.5 million ($28.6 million with fees), just scraping by its low estimate.

The van Gogh work had a similar fate: a decent showing but one drained of the excitement that has become expected at an evening sale. (Both the van Gogh and the Hockney were among the evening’s guaranteed lots.) Meyer opened the bidding at $20 million then jumped to $22 million, after which he stalled for a moment, repeating the figure three times to an unresponsive room. The first phone bid came in at $24 million and again, for a few seconds the room was silent enough to be empty. After two more bids, to $28 million, a bidder on the phone with Alex Rotter, chairman of the house’s 20th- and 21st-century art department, offered not another $2 million but rather only $500,000. Surprisingly that was enough to scare off the other interested parties, and Rotter’s buyer took the picture for a hammer price of $28.8 million ($33.2 million with fees), just sliding past the low estimate of $28 million.

The health of the market has been called into question for the majority of the past year, and rightly so. Economically speaking the art market, and the country, exists in a different world that it did in 2021 or 2022. “People are spending money, perhaps not in the amounts they used to a few years ago, but money is being spent,” adviser Elizabeth Fiore told ARTnews. 

“There’s just no sense of urgency,” adviser Maria Brito said in a phone interview before the sale. “There are cute things, and beautiful things, but not many works that really give a collector that sense of urgency that makes you throw your hand up at an auction. Bidders will be looking for a bargain because, let’s face it, there’s not Carrington–level work at this sale,” she added, referring to the recording-breaking Leonora Carrington picture that sold for $28.5 million at Sotheby’s the previous evening.

And deals there were on Thursday. Picasso’s 1971 Femme au chapeau assise by Pablo Picasso was scooped up for a hammer price of $17 million ($19.9 million with fees) against an estimate of $20 million to $30 million. The picture is not one of his greatest portraits, but it’s dynamic and punchy, especially considering Picasso was 90 years old when he painted it.

“This season, the posture of all the auction houses has been more defensive than offensive,” Alex Glauber, president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, told ARTnews before Christie’s Thursday evening sale. “If they can’t show strength, they can at least show that the market is healthy and functional.”

THE HEADLINES

MOROCCO PAVILION CANCELED. After the surprise, last-minute replacement of Morocco’s exhibitors at what would have been the country’s first Venice Biennale pavilion, Morocco has now fully canceled their participation in the exhibition set to open in April, and it’s unclear why, according to The Art Newspaper . In January, the artists Safaa Erruas, Majida Khattari, and Fatiha Zemmouri, as well as curator Mahi Binebine, learned in what they called a “nightmare” situation, that the artworks they had spent months completing for Venice would no longer be exhibited, and that a new program would replace theirs, helmed by Paris-based Moroccan curator Mouna Mekouar. Erruas has reportedly said the Moroccan government promised to reimburse them for their production costs, and that their works would be exhibited some time in the future.

LAVA TREASURE CONVICTION. A French court in Marseille has convicted two men of smuggling sunken gold treasure found off the west coast of Corsica, from the Golf de Lava. The so-called “Lava treasure saga” began in 1985, when three men discovered a mysterious hoard of rare Roman gold coins from the third century, while fishing. One of them, Félix Biancamaria , was found guilty of trying to sell a golden plate worth several millions, which the court said was from the same stash, and now faces a 12-month suspended prison sentence. His friend Jean-Michel Richaud was handed an eight-month suspended sentence, and both face a 100,000-euro fine. Their lawyers said they were appealing the decision.

THE DIGEST

An Andy Warhol screen print of Chinese leader Mao Zedong has gone missing from the Orange Coast College (OCC) in California, where it was stored in the vault of the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion. The 1972-signed print, measuring 36 by 36 inches is worth an estimated $50,000, and has not been publicly displayed since it was gifted to the school in 2020. The Costa Mesa Police Department is investigating the case. [Hyperallergic]

In preparation for the building of a fine arts museum, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a medieval castle under an 18th century mansion in Vannes, northwest France. Researchers for the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) have discovered two stories of the castle’s defensive wall and a moat located beneath street level on the property of a private mansion. [Heritage Daily]

Xue Tan, curator and founder of Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary art center, will lead the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich beginning this summer. She succeeds Emma Enderby. [Art Review]

The NFT Factory, considered the first international art gallery dedicated to NFT’s, which opened in October, 2022 near the Pompidou Centre in Paris, has had to close shop, because it can’t make rent. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi has a rare retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, featuring 120 sculptures, on view until July 1. [The Times]

Robert Moskowitz, a painter of the New York City skyline, has died at 88. [The New York Times]

THE KICKER

PROTECTING DAVID’S DERRIERE. It may become harder to bring home certain, cheeky souvenirs from Italy, like the colorful magnets shaped in the chiseled buttocks of Michelangelo’s David. The Accademia Gallery, which houses the Renaissance masterpiece, has been successfully waging a legal battle against souvenir shops and other commercial brands and even media, which have reproduced “debasing” depictions of the sculpture, according to the institution’s director, Cecilie Hollberg. She sees these renditions, which zoom in on David ’s genitalia and are found on everything from T-shirts to keychains, as a form of disparaging and unauthorized commercial use, which she has been working to stop. The institution’s legal success has even influenced other museums, who are increasingly seeking to protect the images of Leonardo’s Vetruvian Man, and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. “I am sorry that there is so much ignorance and so little respect in the use of a work that for centuries has been praised for its beauty, for its purity, for its meanings, it’s symbols, to make products in bad taste, out of plastic,” Hollberg told The Associated Press. Would Michelangelo’s sense of humor have allowed it? Alas, we’ll never know.