On Thursday night, Sotheby’s staged a set of evening auctions dedicated to works from the estate of music executive Mo Ostin and another to modern art. Together, the back-to-back sales, held during the marquee sale week in New York, brought in a collective $427 million with buyer’s fees.
Fifteen works from the Ostin collection were offered, including works by blue-chip figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Joan Mitchell. 14 of those works sold, generating a sum of $123 million, outpacing the $103 million designated to the sale by specialists. Four lots in the Ostin sale, among them works by Mark Tansey, Joan Mitchell and Pablo Picasso, were backed with third-party guarantees or irrevocable bids. In the second portion of the night, works by artists active during the 20th century like Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso were among the 40 lots solds. By the night’s end, that sale raked in $303 million with fees after a total of five lots were withdrawn.
The total hammer price for both sales (before fees were added) came to $362 million, which was below the pre-sale estimate of $375.4 million-$534 million.
Sotheby’s UK-based auctioneer Oliver Barker took to the auction podium on Tuesday night to lead the event from the house’s upper Manhattan headquarters. The sales were anchored by auction debuts for works by René Magritte from Ostin’s holdings, among others long held in private collections, as well as new records for Vilhelm Hammershøi and Isamu Noguchi.
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