The sale of Claude Lalanne’s ensemble of botanical bronze-and-copper mirrors at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday set an unprecedented auction record for the decorative arts. Hammering at $33.5 million with fees, more than double the high estimate of $15 million, the work set a new benchmark for the artist and, in doing so, surpassed the previous secondary market pinnacle for her late husband and frequent collaborator, François-Xavier Lalanne. Five bidders pursued the lot for over ten minutes. The room, by any account, was caught up in the frenzy.
The mirrors number 15 in total, each a leafy, Neo-Art-Nouveau botanical confection in bronze and copper, sitting somewhere between a decorative object and a serious sculpture. Their provenance is impeccable in the most literal sense. Commissioned by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, the French industrialist Pierre Bergé, the ensemble was originally installed in the music room of the couple’s Paris apartment, where it functioned as both furnishing and artwork, the distinction between those categories being precisely the kind of boundary that the Lalaannes spent their careers happily dissolving.
They first appeared at auction in 2009, during Christie’s landmark dispersal of the Saint Laurent and Bergé collection, one of the most culturally significant sales of the modern era, where they realised €1.8 million. The winning bidder that day was Terry de Gunzburg, the former creative director of Yves Saint Laurent Beauty and the mind behind Touche Éclat, one of the most commercially successful cosmetic products ever created. The mirrors were sold as part of a standalone design sale dedicated to the collection of De Gunzburg and her husband, Jean. In a detail that adds an unlikely note to the work’s biography, they were never installed in the De Gunzburg residence. They spent the intervening years largely in storage, emerging only for their inclusion in the Les Lalanne retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2010 before returning to obscurity and, eventually, to Sotheby’s.
An Important and Unique Ensemble of Mirrors for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berg by Claude Lalanne
The result invites reflection on the longstanding disparity between the market positions of Claude and François-Xavier, who collaborated under the collective name Les Lalanne while maintaining distinct individual practices.
Historically, François-Xavier’s work has commanded substantially higher prices, a pattern that critics and advisors have long attributed to the relative monumentality of his pieces compared to Claude’s, which are more intimate in scale. Until recently, that gap appeared entrenched. Claude’s previous auction record stood at €4.9 million, achieved in 2023 for one of her signature choupette bronzes. These cauliflower-and-chicken-leg sculptures have become among the most recognisable objects in her output. Last week, her monumental golden sculpture La Pomme de New York sold for €6 million at Christie’s in Paris. Then came Wednesday’s sale.
The result also eclipsed François-Xavier’s own record of $31.4 million, set in December for a hippopotamus-shaped bar. The symmetry is striking and probably not coincidental. The market appears to be reassessing not just individual works but the underlying logic by which it has valued the two practices relative to each other.
Edith Dicconson, founder of Dicconson Fine Art advisory and a former senior figure at Kasmin gallery in New York, where she played a significant role in building the Lalaannes’ American market, offered a characteristically measured reading of the moment. “I wouldn’t characterise this as a broader market shift so much as a levelling of the playing field,” she said. “Historically, François-Xavier has achieved higher prices largely due to the scale of his works, while Claude’s are often more intimate. In this case, we are looking at a truly monumental work by Claude, which naturally shifts the dynamic.” On the ensemble itself, she was less restrained. “Outside of Versailles, it is arguably the most important ensemble of mirrors ever conceived as a unified interior. The market is recognising the importance of that.”
That recognition, when it arrived, came decisively. Whether the result represents a permanent recalibration of Claude Lalanne’s market or a response to an unusually powerful confluence of factors, including the scale and coherence of the ensemble, the Saint Laurent provenance and the sustained competitive interest in Les Lalanne more broadly, remains to be seen. What is not in question is that the sale marks a significant moment in the posthumous reception of an artist whose full importance the market is, perhaps belatedly, beginning to measure.
Photo: The Claude Lalanne mirrors on display at Sotheby’s New York. Courtesy Sotheby’s