This time it’s because several artworks in the show, which the museum claimed were by Pablo Picasso, are actually fakes. It turns out they were painted by artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, the wife of Mona’s wealthy owner, David Walsh.

Mona came clean to the Guardian Australia on Wednesday after suspicion was raised by the newspaper and the Picasso Administration.

Kaechele curated “Ladies Lounge,” which opened in 2020 and involved the female-only audience being pampered by performing male butlers and served champagne. The fake Picassos were moved from the lounge to a ladies’ toilet cubicle in the museum after a court ruled that the exhibition was discriminatory and must admit men. The case was brought by an Australian man who claimed that the show discriminated his gender because it violated Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act.

In court, Kaechele said the exhibition was “a response to the lived experience of women forbidden from entering certain spaces throughout history.” She also reportedly said she was “delighted” upon learning that Mona was being sued.

Before owning up to the forgeries, Mona said that Kaechele inherited the artworks from her great-grandmother, whom she claimed was once a lover of Picasso. One of the paintings is a replica of Luncheon on the Grass, After Manet (1961) by the Spanish painter.

Kaechele also admitted that other works displayed in “Ladies Lounge” were not genuine, including “antique” spears and a rug that the museum said belonged to Queen Mary of Denmark.

She wrote in a blog post that she forged the paintings when the installation was created because “it had to be as opulent and sumptuous as possible… if men were to feel as excluded as possible, the Lounge would need to display the most important artworks in the world – the very best.” Kaechele added that she “knew of a number of Picasso paintings [she] could borrow from friends, but none of them were green, and [she] wished for the Lounge to be monochrome.” She also wrote she didn’t want to pay for the insuring real Picassos.

At the end of her post, she apologizes to the Picasso Administration, which manages the late painter’s estate. “I am very very sorry for causing you this problem,” she wrote in French.

The bronze work, located next to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, is titled Pumpkin and stands at 19.5 feet tall and has a diameter of 18 feet. It is painted yellow with black polka dots in the artist’s signature style.

Kusama is known for her immersive installations, intricate paintings, and large-scale sculptures. Since 1946, pumpkins (known as kabocha in the artist’s native Japan) have featured regularly in her practice, and the new artwork is her tallest pumpkin sculpture to date.

“I am sending to London with love my giant pumpkin,” she said. “Since my childhood, pumpkins have been a great comfort to me, they are such tender things to touch, so appealing in color and form. They are humble and amusing at the same time and speak to me of the joy of living.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine’s artistic director, said it was an “honor” to present Kusama’s sculpture. “Her signature pumpkins have become a landmark motif for the artist, and this project is a reunion for Kusama and Serpentine.”

Kusama’s first retrospective in the UK was at the Serpentine in 2000. It explored her fascinations with polka dots, nets, food, and sex.

Kim was initially hired by Artsy in 2017 as vice president of galleries, fairs, and institutions. In her new role, she will continue to oversee all revenue lines while leading business and operations to support the company’s CEO, Jeffrey Yin, who was promoted from chief financial officer and general council earlier this month.

Artsy says that under Kim’s leadership, the platform has grown to support over 4,000 galleries, auctions houses, art fairs, and institutions in more than 100 countries. “She has been at the helm of strengthening Artsy’s secondary market offering, developing multiple new selling options for our collectors,” the company said in a statement. “Kim has also been integral to building the company’s reputation as the most trusted and secure online art marketplace.”

Kim told ARTnews, “I remain deeply committed to supporting our gallery, art fair, and auction partners—helping them increase their success on Artsy with new and expanded ways to develop collector relationships and drive sales. At the same time, you’ll see an increased focus from Artsy on making the collector experience of discovering, purchasing, and selling art even easier and more joyful.”

“If one is able to collect experiences, I can’t imagine anyone discussing this hefty topic better than these women,” she told the 90 or so people in attendance.

Prior to the event, Naveira told ARTnews that experiential art has “existed since the advent of installation art, ‘artist environments,’ ‘happenings’—a term coined by Allan Kaprow in the late ’50s—and time-based performance.” (Naveira and Sartogo were part of the founding team of Miami experiential art center Superblue).

Before the speakers dissected the topic at hand, the room was quickly profiled via a quiz entered by scanning a QR code on a flyer to reveal each audience member’s “artistic persona.” Answering a series of multiple-choice questions led to one of four personality outcomes: “aesthetic enthusiast”; “modern maverick”; social collector”; or “experiences explorer.” When the results came in, a show of hands indicated most people were the latter. Things were off to a good start.

“We launched VIV Arts this year with a mission to support artists creating experiences, and what we mean by experiences is essentially putting audiences at the center of artistic experiences.” Naveira said. “Having them become active participants of the experience instead of being passive viewers of arts.”

Is being a “passive viewer of art” becoming passé or even unacceptable? Naveira would probably argue so, and not just in the field of art. In an email she sent ARTnews prior to the event, she wrote that numerous reports have pointed to the “growing importance of experiences in many luxury and consumer industries.” (A survey released Tuesday by Dotdash Meredith and market research firm Ipsos, for example, found that luxury consumers, particularly Gen Z, value “experience over product.”)

Naveira gave the floor to Ofak. She explained that Transmoderna, which she co-founded with DJ Steffen “Dixon” Berkhahn in 2018, is both an artistic collective based in Berlin and also a small studio comprised of a team of artists, “developers from the computational realm,” engineers, and sonographers. They “explore the possibilities that arise from merging electronic music with computational arts.”

“Transmoderna is moving away from our home in the digital realm into a hybrid of sound imaging and media setup,” Ofak said. “We have tried, uncommonly, to intervene in the scene of clubbing and dance music. When we started, we wanted to break with DJing and introduce something more involved in internet and digital art, meaning introducing VR and AR into dance experiences.”

Does Ofak think there’s a tangible shift in the art world towards more immersive, ambient experiences? “Absolutely,” she told ARTnews after the panel. She described seeing the crowd at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2021 pass by the traditional gallery booths “without taking much notice” of the art, when Transmoderna first showed an installation at the fair.

“In a smaller hall dedicated to digital and experiential art there were several queues meandering around the space, mostly for non-screen-based work, so larger scale installations or VR,” Ofak said. “It was a bit like at the onset on video art being shown in museums – it was a sign to all that the (not so new) domain of computational art had arrived and was here to stay. Museums are slowly exploring the possibilities of integrating experiential art into their exhibitions.”

But can you collect this stuff? In Transmoderna’s case, yes. This is where VIV Arts comes in. The first-ever artwork for sale on the platform is the Berlin-based collective’s Mycoforest, 35 editions of which are available privately for an unspecified price. Naveira told ARTnews that all works listed on the VIV Arts platform are somewhere between $100 and $30,000.

Naveira described Mycoforest as a “screen-based work derived from Transmoderna’s VR installation Terraforming CIR… it’s a digital artwork on a loop,” which was recently exhibited at Centre-Pompidou Metz in France. Post-panel discussion, VIV Arts sent me a link to a viewing room showing the trippy video, accompanied by an electronic soundtrack. Was I propelled to protagonist status in an artistic experience? Not really. It felt like I was watching a video on my laptop and – having been branded an “experiences explorer” – I reverted to type as a passive viewer. According to Ofak, Mycoforest is “about the underground world of mushrooms and how mushrooms, under the harshest conditions, are able to build new worlds.”

Founder of Studio INI, Inglessis, then spoke about physically engaging viewers in her work as a more abstract way for them to “collect” experiences. She showed the audience a video of her installation Disobedience, which was placed in Somerset House’s London courtyard in 2018, when Studio INI represented the Greek Pavilion at the London Design Biennale. It is a 17-meter-long wall fashioned from steel and recycled plastic that moves as people walk through it. Disobedience “challenges our perception of architecture as something static, or emotionally inert,” it reads on Studio INI’s website.

“My research explores the future of our physical world and what it might look like,” Inglessis said. “How might we interact with it as individuals and as a collective in a manner that can converge rather than diverge from our expanded intelligence? In this process emerged new ways of sculpting matter and structures, with a vision that we can look as our physical bodies and architecture as more of an interface and less of a boundary. Disobedience is a wall that’s not actually functioning as a boundary because you can walk through it.”

Inglessis also spoke about Urban Imprint, another kinetic outdoor installation Studio INI made in New York in response to the question, “How do you make an urban environment feel more natural?” The work is a low-hanging ceiling that creates an indent to accommodate the height of the person walking beneath it.

“VIV Arts is paving the way in anticipating and negotiating the forms of our artworks in Studio INI that manifest in the embodied experience across scale and contexts,” Inglessis told ARTnews. “They are raising awareness and understanding of the radically different creative process that governs my practice and explores the capacity of meaningful audience engagement throughout the journey that is integral to the realization of my works.”

VIV Arts told ARTnews it is focused on its first Transmoderna sales but would be “thrilled” to sell works by Studio INI “in the future as the platform develops.” What form Inglessis’ large-scale architectural projects would take on VIV Arts remains to be seen.

Experiential art is gaining traction and immersive experiences are drawing in the crowds around the world, with The Art Newspaper reporting that 100-plus “immersive institutions” have emerged over the last five years. There is obviously a public thirst for a more enveloping style of participation.

“We have been noticing this trend very actively since 2019, when teamLab in Tokyo became the most visited single-artist museum in the world, and when the world saw the explosion of pseudo-artistic experiences like The Museum of Ice Cream, and later the Van Gogh experiences that garnered a lot of attention pre- and post-pandemic,” Naveira told ARTnews.

“Locally in London, Tate Modern is a great example of a major institution that is increasingly betting on experiential art, with Yayoi Kusama – a sell-out experiential art show which has been extended several times over – their recent Yoko Ono exhibit, the Anthony McCall exhibition that just opened, as well as ‘Electric Dreams’ which is due to open in November.”

The show – titled “Korean Treasures from the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection” – ran for four months and ended on Sunday. Suspicion about the authenticity of some of the artworks, including two paintings apiece by Lee and Park, was apparently rife from the onset. Ceramics from the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) were also exhibited.

Last week, LACMA held an official appraisal session at the museum, where four Korean art experts examined the suspected forgeries, South Korean national daily newspaper JoongAng reported Tuesday. They were Hong Sun-pyo, professor emeritus from Ewha University; Lee Dong-kook, director of the Gyeonggi Province Museum; Kim Sun-hee, former director of the Busan Museum of Art; and Tae Hyun-seon, curator at the Leeum Museum of Art.

The experts concluded that Lee’s A Bull and a Child and Crawling Children, and Park’s Waikiki and Three Women and Chile are counterfeits. The experts criticized LACMA’s due diligence process and also said the museum lacked an understanding of Korean art.

In a statement emailed to ARTnews, the museum said, “LACMA has confidence in the scientific findings that our research has produced to date, and we are committed to continuing to conduct additional research on works in the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection. Further contextualization of these works and their art historical significance will appear in future LACMA publications, both online and in print. As is longstanding practice, the works in LACMA’s permanent collection are continuously studied as new discoveries are made and research progresses.”

“Korean Treasures from the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection” comprised 35 artworks and objects once owned by Korean collectors Dr. Chester Chang and his son Dr. Cameron Chang that were acquired by the museum in 2021.

Questions about the artworks’ authenticity were first raised by JoongAng in February, which compelled the Galleries Association of Korea to contact LACMA.

Correction, July 6, 17:33: A previous version of this article misstated that LACMA’s director Michael Govan said the museum would cancel the publication of the catalogue for the exhibition.

It was eventually inherited by Ceawilin Thynn, the 8th Marquess of Bath, who resides in Longleat House in Wiltshire, UK. Together with the Longleat Trustees, he offered it to Christie’s as part of “their long-term investment strategy.”

“This sublime early masterpiece by Titian is one of the most poetic products of his youth,” Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK, said. “Of impeccable provenance and having passed through the hands of dukes, archdukes, and holy Roman emperors, this magical devotional painting has the rare notoriety of having been stolen not once but twice – firstly by Napoleon and secondly in the late mid-1990s.”

After being stolen from the Longleat Estate in 1995, the painting was found without its frame in a plastic bag in London seven years later.

Titian’s previous auction record was $16.9 million for A Sacra Conversazione (c.1560), which was sold in 2011 by Sotheby’s New York.

“This work is first and foremost an experiment,” Gerrard told ARTnews. “In a virtual world on a pontoon in the Arctic North Pole, a robot—which I call a prismatic robot because its surface changes color every millisecond—is creating 24 works every day, from summer solstice 2024 to summer solstice 2025. The artworks are derived from a JavaScript ice generation algorithm I found online 20 years ago.”

Gerrard describes the project as a “global data performance.” When asked what this means exactly, he explained that it is “a work of public art that can be accessed by anyone on earth via the browser.”

A link on Feral File’s website leads to a video of the digital robot diligently enacting the algorithm in real time, to create “crystal bar lattices.” Once completed, these lattices are added to the Feral File gallery as “unique, dynamic, tokenized 3D Web Graphic Library (WebGL) art pieces,” per the platform’s announcement.

By the time next year’s summer’s solstice rolls around, 8,760 artworks will have been created, each tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain and available to buy for $100 a piece, or 0.026 ETH. “The works can be strung together by collectors to create longer performances using the Feral File app,” the platform noted in its announcement.

Digital artists including Refik Anadol, Lu Yang, Rick Silva, and 0xDEAFBEEF have in the past exhibited with Feral File, which aspires to offer “a new kind of collecting experience, connecting otherwise unaffiliated, previously disconnected artists, curators, and collectors.”

Twenty-five percent of the profits from “crystalline work” will go to Hometree, a charity devoted to restoring a lost 4,000-acre rainforest in Connemara, Ireland.  

“John’s commitment to supporting the natural world is significant and will definitely be remembered in time,” Matt Smith, Hometree’s CEO, told ARTnews. “We’ve been working together for three years, and every time he brings a new strategy that often goes beyond my understanding of the digital art space. This time, as always, his approach is ambitious, but he delivers. He is an amazing man with a unique mind, and I personally love his art. Working with someone who has such an intimate knowledge of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss is a pleasure.”

Every day, the robot will create enough artworks to fund the planting of 33 trees in Ireland.

Each artwork comes with an “annual generative soundtrack” created in collaboration with Tone.js, a company helping people to create interactive music in the browser. “The influence for the soundtracks is a sound bath, like a Tibetan sound bath. In the summer, the sounds are higher, while in the winter, the pitch is lower,” Gerrard explained. Moreover, he said, “this is not a media work—it has nothing to do with media. It is a data work. There are no recorded elements whatsoever, and the sounds are from a choral piece derived from code.”

A 4,000-pixel image file of the generated crystal bar lattices, which Gerrard refers to as “archetypes,” is embedded in every work, and can be exported and pigment printed on paper. Also embedded in each work is a 3D model of the unique crystal arrangement, “which can be exported for usage in 3D prints or virtual world-building.”

“John has been pushing the boundaries of art for decades and ‘crystalline work’ is his most ambitious and thought-provoking artwork to date,” Feral File cofounder Casey Reas said in a statement. “It’s an exquisite work, from the ideas to the finished simulation to the direct impact on the temperate Irish rainforest restoration.”

“The exhibition gives a flavor of what the art world was like 50 years ago when artists and their gallerists were friends and worked together,” gallery owner Lyndsay Ingram told ARTnews. “The intimacy between them is immediately apparent in these photographs. You really have the sense that they were living their lives on the same team. These images reveal a shared sense of purpose, which perhaps has been lost by many artists and galleries in our current landscape, but it is reassuring to see that it is possible. Indeed, as many of these artists went on to be among the most important artists of their generation, this shared sense of purpose may not just be possible but preferable, even a necessary ingredient for lasting success.”

Hockney’s unmistakable shock of blonde hair illuminates the majority of the photos in the show. The bond between him and Kasmin is clearly strong and trusting. Hockney is sometimes photographed asleep, weary from cavaliering jaunts to India.

“I sent [Hockney] a letter at the Royal College of Art, where he was a student, inviting him to tea,” Kasmin wrote in The Telegraph in 2013. “He had black crew-cut hair and National Health glasses and was frightfully shy and very poor. I liked what he was doing so I tried to get him represented by the gallery where I worked, the Marlborough. They found the work a bit sloppy and silly, so I started selling the odd drawing on his behalf for seven or eight pounds and not taking a cut. When I set up my own gallery in 1963, Hockney was one of the first people I arranged to represent.”

Kasmin’s Camera runs until August 23 at Lyndsay Ingram gallery.

It turns out there’s room in collectors’ bellies for artists born in the eighties and nineties. The auction’s 133 lots (six were withdrawn before bidding started) totaled $13.1 million, shy of its $16.6 million high estimate, and 92.7 percent of lots sold by value.

Katharine Arnold, Christie’s head of post-war and contemporary art, told ARTnews after the auction that she was “very happy” with the result and that it justified the house’s move to scrap its evening sale. “We all said after the pandemic, let’s do everything with more purpose, let’s be more strategic, let’s not have as many fairs and auctions, and now we’re actually trying to do that with purpose and this week’s results tell me we’re right,” she said.

Arnold was alluding to Sotheby’s middling evening auction on Tuesday. When I said that Sotheby’s chairman of Europe and co-head of impressionist and modern art worldwide Helena Newman told ARTnews she was “pleased” with the sale, Arnold added wryly, “Pleased it was over.”

Post-War to Present got off to an electric start with the first three lots blowing their estimates out of the water. Daisy Parris’ (b.1993) Pink At Night realized over $40,000 (high estimate $10,000), Alia Ahmad’s (b.1996) Windflower hammered just south of $60,000 (high estimate $20,000), and Icon by Clementine Keith-Roach (b.1984) sold for more than double its high estimate at $36,500. Things were looking up. When Lot 6, Ben Sledsens’ (b.1991) Girl in a Tree, went for $290,000 (high estimate $150,000), the art market correction narrative’s grip loosened, just a little.

“Some of the contemporary pictures did extremely well today,” Arnold said. “[The sale included] several contemporary artists who have huge followings, and usually it’s the combination of really good estimates and something exciting happening in each artist’s market, like a show or new dealership, that propels bidding.”

The pace faded somewhat after that, but Lot 18 – I Rest Through Your Peace by Sophia Loeb’s (b.1997) – sold for ten-times its high estimate, sending a ripple of excitement through the room.

During the action, Isaac Simon, the founder and director of South Parade gallery in central London, which deals in emerging artists, told ARTnews via WhatsApp that he’s “seen a continued hunger from the market to engage with early and emerging artists.” 

There was no question on Thursday that the younger artists showed up the more seasoned names. Antony Gormley (SMALL VISE III) hammered for $415,000, a David Hockney iPad drawing sold well for $200,000 (The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire), and an untitled Yoshitomo Nara went for almost $320,000. All three artworks flew past their estimates, while Gerard Richter, Philip Guston, and Christo were all pretty quiet.

Faring less well was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose 5am, Cadiz (2009) netted a shade under its low estimate at $716,000 at Christie’s. At Phillips, her 2022 work Minotaur to Matador sold for $1.2 million, a bit above its 1.14 million low estimate.

“The auction performed incredibly strongly,” Christie’s head of impressionist and modern art Keith Gill told ARTnews after the gavel came down for the final time. When asked about the reasoning for erasing the house’s evening sale, he replied, “We now see June as a moment in the calendar that is uniquely British and has crossover appeal. The Vivienne Westwood auction on Tuesday was an extremely strong result and we just closed our Marc Chagall sale, which achieved quadruple its estimate, so it shows we are thinking about June in the right way. Post-War to Present definitely benefited from the Westwood footfall.”

I put the same question to Gill as I did Sotheby’s senior specialist of contemporary art, Tom Eddison, on Tuesday night – does he think London’s power status is at risk as the big three houses look increasingly towards Asia? 

“It’s fear-mongering and it’s a very easy narrative,” he said. “People have been trying to think about London negatively since Brexit, to be frank, but the reality is that we have had stronger European buying and bidding than ever before recently, and we feel that what we’re doing will actually make the London sales appear even stronger globally. By changing the emphasis to two very strong seasons with very good quality, it will deliver the right understanding and perception of London’s place in the global art market. We are investing in Hong Kong, but this is not at the expense of London, it is complimenting London.”

A ten-minute walk across Mayfair towards Grosvenor Square, Phillips was hosting its modern and contemporary art day and evening sale. Before proceedings kicked off, the house’s head of 20th century and contemporary art, Europe, Olivia Thornton, told ARTnews, “We made a strategic decision to align with Hong Kong and New York and hold two marquee sales a year in London, in March and October. However, June is still very much an important time in the cultural calendar and we are pleased to hold a new format sale.”

Was she concerned given Sotheby’s tepid evening result going into Thursday? “We are experiencing a considered market that is becoming more selective in its acquisitions,” she said. “Yet the appetite for exceptional quality and exciting contemporary artists remains as strong as ever.”

A “considered market” is rhetoric for more frugal collectors and this was evident at close of play when the sale crossed the line at $16.5 million, which was near its low estimate of $14.5 million (high estimate $21.5 million). Ninety-four of 132 lots sold. George Condo’s Green and Purple Head Composition hammered for $1,284,122 (just south of its high estimate) and Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup edged past $1 million (high estimate $820,000).

At close of play, Thornton said, “The enthusiasm we have seen over the past few weeks in London carried into the saleroom today, which included participation from nearly 50 countries spanning four continents.”

Before Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale in London on Tuesday, the omens weren’t good. There was a stuttering UK economy, an impending election, and a cooling art market. Plus, the headline lot, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, was listed with a $20 million–$25 million estimate, a noticeable drop from the $30 million estimate Christie’s gave the piece in 2022 before it was withdrawn. Very few were holding out for a blockbuster auction. The result, a shade over $105 million (including buyer’s premium) and $20 million short of the high estimate, was received with determined sanguinity by the top brass.

Were they relieved? Probably a little. 

The outcome—similar to that of Sotheby’s last London contemporary evening sale, in March—won’t send the house spiraling into despair amid ongoing talk of the art market “correction.” Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman of global fine arts, told ARTnews that the result was “solid” but said the auction was “difficult to put together” because “people are short on reasons to sell at the moment.” People were short on impetus to spend big as well, relatively speaking. 

The hot, humid weather—about 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the British capital—didn’t exactly fry the bidding. Several lots edged past their low estimate, largely thanks to the patience of auctioneers Oliver Barker and Helen Newman. By the time Lot 27, a landscape by Vilhelm Hammershøi that eventually hammered for $834,669, came up for sale, a heckler (reportedly veteran columnist Danny Katz of the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald) shouted, “Put the hammer down!” Newman implored, “But she came all the way from Asia!”

Ninety percent of the lots sold, a figure that’s on par with what Sotheby’s saw in New York during its marquee sales. The aforementioned Basquiat triptych prevailed, selling for $20.2 million and making it the evening’s top lot. Three works by Tamara de Lempicka, Loie Hollowell, and Emily Kam Kngwarray were withdrawn, while five passed after failing to meet their reserve, including an untitled 1958 Robert Rauschenberg piece, estimated at $440,000 to $570,000. 

Works owned by the late Chicago collector Ralph I. Goldenberg injected more than $16 million into the total. Cy Twombly’s Formian Dreams + Actuality (1983) doubled its estimate, at $3.11 million. Meanwhile, his By the Ionian Sea (1988) went for $2.73 million, nearly double its high estimate of $1.5 million.

“Some very solid, efficient results, and some great surprises,” Tom Eddison, Sotheby’s senior specialist of contemporary art, told ARTnews. “There was a depth of bidding on the Goldenberg collection that truly captivated us internally and UK dealers and collectors alike.”

In view of the softer market and the big three houses’ tilt toward Asia, did Eddison think London’s status was at risk? “No, I don’t agree with that notion. We are very passionate about London being a great platform. We had 35 different countries bidding tonight. Certainly, for Sotheby’s, London still remains the global hub for people coming to buy. We are resolute.”

Contemporary specialist Antonia Gardner echoed his sentiment. “Given that we just had a $100 million plus sale here tonight, it doesn’t feel like we are losing our way,” she said.

London dealers at both ends of the game, meanwhile, were generally upbeat. Elliot McDonald, Pace Gallery London’s senior vice president, told ARTnews in an email before the auction, “We’re experiencing a market that’s becoming more selective in its acquisitions, yet the appetite for exceptional quality and exciting contemporary artists remains as strong as ever.” He pointed out that Pace sold major works by Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Agnes Martin, and Kngwarray at Art Basel earlier this month. “Going in [to Basel], there were some uncertainties, but the very strong sales at our booth demonstrated the enduring vigor and enthusiasm in today’s art market.”

McDonald was optimistic for the future too, adding, “The ongoing stability we’ve observed in the auctions offers reassuring evidence that the broader ecosystem is thriving.”

Will Hainsworth, the cofounder and director of recently opened Palmer Gallery, located near London’s Edgware Road and dealing in emerging artists, told ARTnews that at his end of the market, “things seem strong.” 

“There’s a lot of doom-mongering going on, perhaps some of it justified by poor auction results. When you’re working with emerging artists the price points are accessible for a range of collectors and the enthusiasm to collect is definitely there,” he said in an email pre-sale. “London’s emerging gallery scene is a very exciting place at the moment—there are people doing interesting, risky things and, as ever, there are people on hand to support that.”

Back at the auction, a trio of lots by Alberto Giacometti incited a flurry of bidding, with the penultimate lot, Figure, dite cubiste I (ca. 1926), going for $2.28 million on a $884,000–$1.26 million estimate. Lot 37, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Bouquet de Iilas (1878), sparked a 10-minute bidding war. When it hammered for double its high estimate at $8.7 million, the crowd cheered and whistled, perhaps a little sardonically. Aside from Giacometti’s bronze sculpture, the excitement faded soon after. When Lot 38 rolled around, the Baer Faxt’s Josh Baer walked past and said the night “wasn’t exactly a home run” for Sotheby’s. Melanie Gerlis, the Financial Times’ art market columnist, also said she felt the sale was “flat.”

In the press room at the end of the evening, Newman, the chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and co-head of Impressionist and modern art worldwide, said she was far from disappointed. “I’m actually pleased with the result,” she told ARTnews enthusiastically. “We saw a depth of bidding on such a complete range of works, including the red Lucio Fontana [Concetto spaziale, Attese, from 1966, which sold for $4.3 million] to Zdeněk Sýkora’s first appearance at an evening sale [Linie Nr.94, from 1992, which sold for $950,000].”

Sotheby’s modern and contemporary art day sales follow on Wednesday, the latter featuring another tranche of works from the Goldenberg collection. Alex Katz’s Danielle (2020) and Peter Doig’s Border Country (1999) are both estimated at $630,000–$880,000, and Andy Warhol’s 1980 portrait of Joseph Beuys is valued at $500,000–$750,000.

Contemporary sales at Phillips and Christie’s are set for Thursday, with top lots at the former including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2022 painting Minotaur To Matador (estimate $1.1–$1.9 million) and George Condo’s Green and Purple Head Composition (estimate $884,000–$1.1 million). The Christie’s sale is also led by a Yiadom-Boakye work, 5am Cadiz, with an estimate of  $758,000-$1 million.