Most of the headlines from Christie’s blockbuster evening sales of the S.I. Newhouse collection and 20th-century art on Monday will likely focus on the 8- and 9-figure prices: the $181.2 million Pollock, the $107.6 million Brâncuși, and the $98.4 million Rothko. Those are mind-blowing sums, to be sure, but those works were always going to do well. The sale actually revealed more about the market below $20 million, which experienced a depth of bidding that has been missing from the highly choreographed and overestimated auctions of recent years.
The double-header, which generated $1.1 billion across 64 lots, demonstrated the growing strength of the US art-buying public, especially in the western region, as evidenced by Christie’s representatives bidding on the phones. By comparison, European and Asian representatives barely got into the action, and only at the lower price points. As always, works fresh to the market outperformed those that have been passed around in recent years.
(All prices include buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.)
The evening kicked off with the 16-lot sale of works from the collection of the late media mogul S.I. Newhouse Jr., known as “Si,” who helmed Condé Nast from 1975 to 2015. He worked closely with former Sotheby’s rainmaker Tobias Meyer to form the collection over several decades, repeatedly trading out works to acquire better examples, resulting in one of the finest troves ever assembled. Newhouse and his wife Victoria, who both appeared regularly on ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors list, were reputed to have spent as much as $700 million on their collection.
This Newhouse tranche is the fourth that Meyer has brought to auction at Christie’s on behalf of the family. The sale made $630.8 million, against an estimate of $462 million without fees, bringing the cumulative tally of the collection to just over $1 billion, after three previous sales in 2018, 2019, and 2023 totaled $415.7 million. That makes it likely the most expensive collection ever sold at auction after the late Paul Allen’s $1.7 billion blockbuster in 2022. Though, of course, that total was generated almost completely in just one sales season.
Christie’s 20th-century evening sale also exceeded expectations, totaling $490.3 million, against an estimate of $361.6 million without fees. (An Amadeo Modigliani portrait estimated at $30 million was withdrawn at the last possible moment.) The sale featured property from the estates of philanthropist Marilyn Arison of the Carnival Cruise Line Arisons, Lorinda de Roulet Payson, daughter of New York Mets founder Joan Whitney Payson, and revered arts philanthropist Agnes Gund, among several others.
The top lot of the night was Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, from the Newhouse collection, which, at $181.2 million, became the fourth most expensive painting ever sold at auction. Conservatively estimated at $100 million, the 11-foot-wide canvas drew 60 bids over 10 minutes, with no fewer than five bidders in the mix.
Constantin Brâncuși, Danaïde, ca. 1913.
Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026
Christie’s global president Alex Rotter ping-ponged bids up to $152 million with dealer Iwan Wirth in the room, who was presumably representing Laurene Powell Jobs. The pace was so brisk that auctioneer Adrien Meyer was practically rattling off $1 million increments like he was counting time. Then Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art Ana Maria Celis, who hails from Venezuela, jumped into the fray, and she and Rotter volleyed until he placed the winning hammer bid of $157 million. The buyer of the Pollock also purchased the previous lot, Henri Matisse’s Robe noire et robe violette, 1938, for $34.6 million against an estimate of $30 million.
Newhouse acquired the Pollock in 2000 for an undisclosed sum from then-Sotheby’s owner Alfred Taubman, who was facing hefty legal fees from his price-fixing scandal. The previous record for the artist was $61.2 million for a smaller black drip painting on raw canvas from the Macklowe collection at Sotheby’s in 2021, also once owned by Newhouse.
All 16 works in the Newhouse sale carried irrevocable bids, meaning they were pre-sold to guarantors who agreed to buy the work for a minimum sum. In return, they received a percentage of the buyer’s premium if the work sold above that price.
The second-highest price in the Newhouse collection was $107.6 million for Constantin Brâncuși’s gilt-bronze bust Danaïde, which sold on just one bid to the guarantor against an unpublished estimate of $100 million. This makes it the second most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction after Alberto Giacometti’s $141 million Pointing Man. Newhouse bought the bust in 2002 at Christie’s for a then-record $18.2 million.
Another highlight of the night was Joan Miró’s Portrait de Madame K., 1924, which sold for an artist record of $53.5 million against an estimate of $25 million. (The artist’s previous record was $37 million, set at Sotheby’s in 2012.) Newhouse acquired the painting in 2001 at Christie’s from the collection of René Gaffé for $12.7 million.
But not all the works in the Newhouse collection were a slam dunk. Robert Rauschenberg’s 1955 combine Levee barely squeaked past its estimate of $7 million to make $7.2 million. Jasper Johns’s Figure 2, 1955, and Alley Oop, 1958, both sold below their estimates of $10 million and $6 million, respectively, as did Roy Lichtenstein’s Voodoo Lily, 1961, estimated at $6 million.
The top lot of the 20th-century sale was the monumental Mark Rothko painting that Gund bought directly from his studio in 1967 and gave pride of place in her living room for nearly six decades. It sold for a record $98.4 million against an unpublished estimate of $80 million. Three bidders competed for the work, with Christie’s managing director in San Francisco Kathryn Lasater jumping in at $74 million and volleying with senior postwar and contemporary art specialist Rachael White Young, who is known to work with clients in Texas. Young’s client won the painting at a hammer price of $85 million.
Another work from the Gund collection, Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (Medici Princess), ca. 1948, more than doubled its estimate to sell for $6.9 million. Comparatively, the artist’s Untitled (Medici series, Pinturicchio Boy), ca. 1950, failed to find a buyer at an estimate of $3 million. It last sold at Sotheby’s in 2017 for $4.2 million.
“The market for great examples of historic material is just so strong,” Evan Beard of Evan Beard & Co. told ARTnews after the sale. “An example tonight were the two Cornell boxes: the great Princess soars and the slightly lesser Prince passes.”
Alice Neel, Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia), 1982.
Another example that Beard cited was Alice Neel’s Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia), 1967, depicting her daughter-in-law and first grandchild. Conservatively estimated at $1.2 million, it sold for $5.7 million, smashing the artist record of $3 million set at Christie’s in 2021. Christie’s co-head of the sale Emily Kaplan won it after a bidding war with Los Angeles managing director Sonya Roth.
The work had been in the same collection since 1984 and was featured in the 2021-2022 touring exhibition “Alice Neel: People Come First” at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Guggenheim in Bilbao, and de Young Museum in San Francisco. Beard described it as a “quintessential” example by the artist, compared to the 1971 portrait, Timothy Collins, that was withdrawn from Sotheby’s evening sale last week at an estimate of $1.5 million.
Classic Impressionism performed surprisingly well. Among the runaway successes of the night in that category was Claude Monet’s Pommiers, Vétheuil, 1878, which once belonged to Gustave Caillebotte and had been in the same Illinois collection since 1969. It more than tripled its estimate to sell for $19.6 million.
Advisor Ralph DeLuca, who works in both New York and Las Vegas, won at least four works on behalf of three clients for relative bargains: Miró’s Portrait de Ramon Sunyer (L’Orfèvre), 1918, for $9.2 million; René Magritte’s L’Embellie, 1941, for $6.8 million; and Picasso’s Baigneuse au pouf rouge, 1930, for $2.6 million, and Deux femmes, 1930.
“Collectors have a lot of capital to play with,” summed up Beard in a text to ARTnews. “They’ve psychologically adjusted to higher interest rates. The stock market is at record highs and feeling frothy, and the art market has reset to more inviting levels the past few years. The bullish art market is back (but not for young, emerging artists).”
