Sotheby’s wrapped its marathon week of New York autumn sales on Thursday night with the kind of back-to-back performance the house likes to wheel out when the market needs a bit of cheer. Three evening auctions, all sold out—”white glove,” the house reported—pulled in $252.9m, or $304.5m with fees included. Not a record, not a rout, but a solid mid-range hit squarely inside the presale estimate of $211.3m to $289.3m. After the last two years of jittery buyers and sellers watching each other from opposite corners of the room, solidity isn’t something to shrug at.
If the evening had a proper shot of drama, it came from the Surrealists—unexpected only if you’ve been ignoring the movement’s museum-fuelled resurgence. And at the centre of it all sat Frida Kahlo, as she tends to do. El sueño (La cama), su hermosa 1940 self-portrait—cama, canapé, un bedfellow esquelético que flota sobre—ignitó una larga, ligeramente combativa subasta. Two bidders locked in, neither blinking. Once the price sailed past its $40 million low estimate, you could feel the room lean forward a little. Hammer at $47m, $54.6m with fees, and with that: a new auction record for Kahlo, a new record for any Latin American artist, and a new record for any female artist.
Frida Kahlo, as she tends to do. El sueño (La cama), su hermosa 1940 self-portrait—cama, canapé, un bedfellow esquelético que flota sobre—ignitó una larga, ligeramente combativa subasta. Photo Courtesy Sotheby’s
“Frida Kahlo is a global icon, a brand,” Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice-chair and head of Impressionist and Modern, said earlier in the week, and you could hear the slight fatigue in his voice—the word “brand” having swallowed half the art market whole. But he wasn’t wrong. The painting had been shown in Abu Dhabi, where queues stretched around the block. “She made her own world so surreal she barely had to invent anything,” he added. And the painting bears that out—dream logic rendered with the sort of plain, lived-in specificity that only comes from someone painting the room they know.
The night opened with a group of 13 works from the estate of Cindy and Jay Pritzker—a quiet masterclass in wealthy Midwestern restraint—which clocked $91.7m ($109.5m with fees), just above the top estimate. Then came Exquisite Corpus, a 24-lot parade of Surrealist essentials from a mystery seller. It landed neatly inside expectations: $81.9m ($98m with premiums). The final act, a multi-owner Modern sale trimmed by three late withdrawals, added another $78.9m to the hammer total.
Helena Newman, Sotheby’s global Impressionist and Modern chief (and the evening’s third auctioneer), summed it up afterwards with a diplomat’s precision: single-owner collections are still where buyers loosen their shoulders. “The surge of interest in Surrealism has been building for years,” she said, pointing to last year’s centenary exhibitions. And she’s right—Surrealism has become the movement collectors chase when the rest of the market feels a bit too predictable.
Vincent Van Gogh Parisian Novels (1887) Photo Courtesy Sotheby’s
If Kahlo delivered the evening’s theatrics, Van Gogh delivered the money. Parisian Novels (1887), a modest, book-filled domestic scene that had hung for years in the Pritzkers’ library, drew a seven-minute wrestling match among three phone bidders and two in the room. Auctioneer Oliver Barker—ever the genial cajoler—kept pushing: “Madam, can we have another one?” Eventually, Patti Wong, who was once Sotheby’s royalty and is now an adviser bidding on behalf of a client, won it for $54m ($63m with fees).
Ten of the Pritzker works sold within or above estimate—a second Van Gogh drawing sold to an online bidder for $2.9m, including fees. And an arresting Matisse, Léda et le cygne, painted across wood panels with a sort of stripped-down architectural severity, hit $10.4m. Even Max Beckmann got his moment: Der Wels—a significant, slippery, brilliantly unpleasant 1929 canvas—jumped past its high estimate to $9.2m.
Over in the Surrealist section, the records tumbled. Hans Bellmer smashed his own ceiling twice: first with Mains et bras, a ghostly gouache that hit $508,000, then Les Bas rayés, a disquieting cluster of torsos and striped stockings, which climbed to $942,000. Dorothea Tanning finally cracked $3m with Interior with Sudden Joy. Wolfgang Paalen—long beloved by specialists but rarely a star attraction—hit $1m with Fata Alaska, a chilly, almost sci-fi scene from 1937.
The final sale of the night—Modern works from multiple owners—settled into a steady, unshowy rhythm. Magritte’s top lot, Le Jockey perdu (1942), a larger version of a drawing sold earlier, fetched $12.3m with fees. A group of works deaccessioned from the Phillips Collection in Washington reminded everyone of the ongoing game American museums must play: sell a little now to afford growth later. The standout there was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Large Dark Red Leaves on White, which hammered at $6.4m ($7.9m with fees). A Seurat drawing followed at $4.8m all-in; an Arthur Dove canvas made $681,000—half its low estimate, drawing murmurs from the diehards still in their seats.
And still, the room held its energy. It was nearing the third hour when Barker brought down his final gavel, and the totals landed: $252.9m across 66 lots. A proper rebound from last spring’s $152m hammer equivalent, which had been hamstrung by a Giacometti bust expected to fetch north of $70m but that, in the end, failed to sell—a ghost still occasionally mentioned in anxious dealer whispers.
Christie’s equivalent sale hit $574.7m ($690m with fees). But stitched together with Phillips’s respectable $54.7m ($67.3m with fees) outing on Wednesday, the week delivered something the market hasn’t felt in a while: cautious optimism. Not a boom. Not exuberance. Something quieter, steadier—buyers nibbling again, sellers testing the water, and auctioneers remembering what it feels like to call a sale that isn’t sliding downhill.
Sotheby’s finished the week with its day sales today (Friday). Now it’s over to Miami, where Art Basel and its constellation of satellite fairs, hotel bars, and late-night negotiations will absorb the market’s collective attention. New York has done what it needed to do: reminded everyone that the engine still runs, even if it sputters now and then.