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Christie’s $1.1 Billion Night Confirms the Health of the Market’s Upper End

Led by record-setting results for Jackson Pollock and Brancusi, the two-part marathon session showcased a top tier rife with competition.

Following the euphoric start of New York’s spring auctions last week with Sotheby’s $433 million result, Christie’s topped $1 billion in a single evening with the historic blockbuster S.I. Newhouse sale and the house’s 20th Century Evening Sale in rapid succession. The night closed with a 97 percent sell-through rate, as deep bidding, prearranged guarantees and irrevocable bids kept the rhythm going over a two-hour marathon session.

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Leading the night were three eight-to-nine-figure results, all from media mogul S.I. Newhouse’s art collection. Pollock’s Number 7A (1948) achieved $181.2 million, while Brancusi’s iconic museum-grade Danaïde sold for $107.6 million, both setting records for the artists. Similar Brancusi works are held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou, while the monumental 131.5-inch composition was the largest drip painting by Pollock in private hands. The other top lot came from the collection of another defining and legendary patron, Agnes Gund: Mark Rothko’s monumental No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), which, from a $60 million starting bid, hammered around the same level as the Mnuchin Rothko sold just days before, at $85 million ($98.4 million with fees).

Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse

The 16-trophy Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse sale achieved $631 million against a presale estimate of $462 million. The results bring the cumulative value of the collection to just over $1 billion with previous sales in 2018, 2019 and 2023 totaling $415.7 million—a cumulative value just short of the late Paul Allen’s $1.7 billion blockbuster result in 2022.

Adrian Meyer kicked off the session with a seminal painting by Picasso, Tête de femme (1907), which, from its starting bid of $4 million, initially seemed to stall around its estimate at $6.5 million. Suddenly, however, bidding reactivated, leading it to a $12 million hammer on the phone with Maria C. Los, deputy chairman and head of client advisory, Americas, closing at $14.4 million after fees, against a $6-8 million estimate. The Picasso bronze sculpture Tête de femme (Fernande) then rapidly climbed from its $28 million starting bid to hammer just above its low estimate at $41 million, or $48.4 million after fees. Homme à la guitare, a signature example of Picasso’s Synthetic Cubism, then rapidly hammered at its low estimate of $35 million, likely to its guarantor, reaching $40.9 million after fees.

After Brancusi’s Danaïde hammered at $93 million ($107.6 million after fees), becoming the second most expensive sculpture sold at auction, an equally iconic Piet Mondrian, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow, hammered at only $34 million, just shy of its $35-55 million estimate. More heated bidding accompanied Joan Miró’s Portrait de Madame K., previously........

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