François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar sold today for a staggering $31.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York, shattering every precedent in the market for design and setting a new auction record for the artist by a wide margin. Estimated at $7 million–$10 million, the hand-wrought copper bar more than tripled its high estimate after a 26-minute bidding contest among seven bidders.
Not only does the result confirm Lalanne’s commercial star power, it also redraws the topography of the design category altogether. No work of design has ever fetched a higher price at auction.
The hammer also caps a year in which the French sculptor’s hybrid creatures—somewhere between Surrealism, furniture, and expensive whimsy—have reliably outperformed even bullish expectations.
Sotheby’s primed the pump last night at the inaugural Creators & Collectors dinner at its new Breuer headquarters, a gathering that sat somewhere between a cultural symposium and a form of strategic networking. Honorees included Amway CEO Jen Rubio, multihyphenate Jon Batiste, painter Julian Schnabel, Studio Museum in Harlem director and chief curator Thelma Golden, and architect Peter Marino, while a cross-section of New York’s art, fashion, and philanthropy circuits—Anna Weyant, Antwaun Sargent, Jean Pigozzi, Gabriela Hearst, Jeffrey Deitch, Tory Burch, and others—circulated among architectural showpieces and strategically placed Lalannes.
Batiste delivered a surprise performance; the singer Lily Allen was also in attendance. Dinner was served beneath Poul Henningsen lighting and beside Dale Chihuly glasswork. In hindsight, the evening had the air of a house unveiling itself to the city’s cultural stewards on the night before of a market-defining sale.
Commissioned in 1976 by patron Anne Schlumberger and unique in its copper execution, the Hippopotame Bar is regarded as the prototype for later bronze editions and an early expression of Lalanne’s fascination with functional animals. Its hidden bar mechanics—a revolving bottle rack, ice bucket, hors-d’oeuvre tray, and glassware storage tucked inside the hippo’s body—lend it a certain charm, but charm alone doesn’t explain the $31 million it brought in.
The deeper story is the market’s long, steady escalation. As ARTnews reported earlier this year, works by Lalanne and his wife Claude have become a rare bright spot in a tougher art market, with top examples drawing frenzied competition and routinely exceeding estimates by multiples. Recent benchmarks include Grand Rhinocrétaire II, which tripled expectations and made $16.4 million in June, and Bar aux Autruches, which fetched €11.1 million in Paris.
The Schlumberger Collection, now being dispersed across Sotheby’s inaugural design sale at the Breuer, has only intensified that energy. Alongside the hippo, a set of Claude Lalanne’s “Anémone” balustrade elements—estimated at $80,000–$120,000—climbed to $431,800, reflecting the same appetite for early or unique commissions.
