After several sleepy and disappointing auction seasons in recent years, the market seems to have finally woken up. Following lively, if mixed, sales at Christie’s on Monday and a rousing Sotheby’s marathon on Tuesday—led by a Gustav Klimt portrait from the collection of the recently deceased cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder that reached the second‐highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction—all eyes moved to the day sales on Wednesday.
Sotheby’s kicked off the day with another trove of 30 works from Lauder’s collection that generated $3.84 million on an estimate of $2.22 million to $3.29 million, marking a solid result for the house. While there was of course nothing approaching the quality of the Klimt, the house leaned heavily on sculpture and paintings that moved into the third dimension, an approach that mostly worked. (All prices are with buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.)
The most outsized results, compared to their estimates, were Dorothea Rockburne’s 1973 drawing Drawing Which Makes Itself (B) and Elizabeth Murray’s 1982 pastel work Black Tree, both of which more than quintupled their high estimate of $7,000. The works sold for $44,450 and $44,490 respectively. Four other works more than tripled their high estimates, including Joel Shapiro’s untitled charcoal work from 1981 (high estimate: $7,000, sale price: $21,590), Lyonel Feininger’s 1910-1911 drawing Die grüne Brücke (high estimate: $30,000, sale price: $95,250), George Segal’s 1987 work Braque Still Life with Guitar and Pitcher (high estimate: $40,000, sale price: $139,700), Mary Bauermeister’s 1967 box sculpture Self Portrait Series (high estimate: $12,000, sale price: $44,450), and Beverly Pepper’s 2012 sculpture Curvae in Curvae (high estimate: $18,000, sale price: $69,850).
The top price of the sale went to Claes Oldenburg, whose iconic Typewriter Eraser (1977) sold under its high estimate for $444,500 on a $350,000–$550,000 estimate. Other editions of the work are on view at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, and the Seattle Center. Lauder’s Typewriter Eraser was exhibited extensively.
That work was just one of eight lots by Oldenburg and his wife, Coosje van Bruggen. Several other of their sculptures fared worse: three works from the “Paradise Pies” series—Lots 104, 105 and 106—all landed well below their low estimate. All three carried a $80,000 low estimate; the results for each were $25,400, $44,450, and $31,750, respectively.
A group of Oldenburg colored-pencil drawings that hit the block toward the end of the sale fared far better. Both Perfume Bottle, Fallen (1992) works landed at or above the high estimate of $18,000. The first landed at $24,130, while the second ended at the high estimate. The other work, Proposal for a Sculpture in the Form of a Saw, Sawing (1994), more than doubled its $30,000 high estimate, selling for $76,200.
