S. I. Newhouse Sale Nets $630.8 M., Bringing Cumulative Total to $1 B.

Christie’s kicked off its marquee evening auctions this May, with a 16-lot sale of works from the collection of media magnate S .I. Newhouse.

The sale, which featured top works by Constantin Brâncuși, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso, totaled a whopping $630.8 million with fees. It also re-set several records.

The sale brings the cumulative total of works sold from Newhouse’s collection to over $1 billion, after sales in 2018 for one work at $21.7 million, in 2019 for 11 works for $216 million, and in 2023 for 16 works at $178 million. The sale on Monday far outstripped those, no doubt due to the truly top material in the sale, including what Christie’s called the largest Pollock drip painting still in private hands.

The Pollock, titled Number 7A, 1948 (1948), drew the most bids, with over 60 placed across a 10-minute bidding war, with no less than five bidders involved. It eventually sold to a buyer represented by Christie’s global president Alex Rotter for $181.2 million, more than double Pollock’s previous record of $61 million, set at Sotheby’s New York in 2021. The painting is now one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction.

Also setting a record was the Brâncuși, titled Danaïde, a bronze head dating to ca. 1913. That work drew less feverish bidding, selling after only half a dozen bids. Still, with a starting bid of $82 million, above Brancusi’s previous record of $71.2 million, set at Christie’s New York in 2018, the sculpture was all but guaranteed to set a new high-water mark.

The other works in the sale did well, though did not generate quite the fireworks of the Pollock. The Picasso painting Tête de femme landed at $14.4 million, with fees, well above its $8 million high estimate, while the similarly named sculpture Tête de femme (Fernande) landed square in its $40 million–$60 million estimate, at $48.4 million with fees. The Joan Miró painting Portrait de Madame K. totaled $53.5 million on a $25 million–$35 million estimate, while Jasper Johns’s Gray Target netted $28.8 million on a $20 million–$30 million estimate.

All in all a bang-up start of the week for Christie’s.