Auction houses

The Gray Market: Our art market soothsayer looks back on his 2023 predictions

How did his forecasts weather the roughest turbulence the trade has experienced in years? Read on to find out

Christie's projects 26.1% decline in sales in 'paradoxical' 2023

An exceptional 2022 buoyed by the $1.6bn collection of Paul Allen has proved a tough act to follow—but private sales are on the rise

$4 thrift-store vase sells for $107,100 at auction

It turns out the glass vessel is a rare example of a 1940s Venini piece designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa

Cold feet? Why fewer investors are guaranteeing art at auction

According to a recent report, guarantees are down—what's happened?

Sotheby’s $306m The Now and Contemporary sales wrap up a mediocre New York auction season

Both sales persevered through a lukewarm atmosphere to break into the lower reaches of their estimate ranges

Christie’s 20th century evening sale in New York defies fears of a jittery market

Swan song of veteran auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen made $640.8m—the house's highest total for a non-single-owner sale in six years

Late American broadcaster Barbara Walters’s collection nets $5m at Bonhams

All of the proceeds from Walters’s art collection—along with her jewellery and home décor—will go toward charitable causes, according to her estate

Long-unseen Basquiat self-portrait could reach $60m at Sotheby’s New York

"Self Portrait as a Heel (Part Two)" (1982) hasn’t been displayed in public since its last appearance at auction, in 1999

Christie’s brokers restitution settlement with heirs of art dealer and Swiss museum to offer $35m Cézanne at auction next month

Fruits et pot de gingembre, one of three Cézanne paintings included in the sale, was found to have been sold under duress after the Nazis took power in Germany

Christie’s longtime global president Jussi Pylkkänen is stepping down

After nearly 40 years at the auction house, Pylkkänen will work as an independent art adviser

Grayson Perry and Cornelia Parker donate works to Freedom from Torture charity auctions

Ai Weiwei’s taxi window crank sculptures will also go on the block at the Sotheby's live sale

Lines redrawn: how artists and auction houses are shaking things up with new ways of working together

Phillips’s recent private selling exhibition of Damien Hirst works marked 15 years of artists collaborating with auction houses, with or without gallery cooperation

Jitters, few jolts at Phillips's 20th century & contemporary evening sale in London

Results offered at least modest reassurance at the house’s premier Frieze Week auction

Balthus painting deaccessioned by the Art Institute of Chicago could bring as much as $18m at auction

"La Patience" (1948), which was one of two Balthus paintings in the museum’s collection, will go up for auction at Sotheby’s New York in November

Phillips aims for $70m haul with New York sale of works from the Triton Collection Foundation

A double-sided Fernand Léger estimated between $15m to $20m leads the offering, amassed by a Dutch shipping and oil magnate and his wife

Collection of late California patron Chara Schreyer could net more than $70m at Sotheby’s in New York

In sales spanning this year and next, hundreds of works that once belonged to the SFMoMA trustee will be offered, including a box in a suitcase by Duchamp

Sotheby’s lands $400m Emily Fisher Landau collection for November sales

The auctions will include a 1932 Picasso painting with a $120m estimate

Constable sketch discovered in a suitcase heads for auction (again)

The drawing, which was first sold by the Yorkshire auction house in 2021, depicts Dover harbour from an East India company ship

Art marketanalysis

The art market is on a bumpy ride in 2023

Major auction houses have posted steep falls in turnover for the year so far—but some categories, such as luxury goods, are booming

Robert Colescott’s 1919 sells for $3.5m at Bonhams during special Armory Week auction

The painting, which featured prominently in a recent Colescott retrospective, hammered slightly below its estimate

A $20m Joan Mitchell will lead Sotheby's offering of works from the collection of New York dealer John Cheim

The late-career painting is expected to break the artist’s $16.6m auction record this November

Art, furniture and more from the Rothschild family’s private collection could fetch $30m in unprecedented New York sales at Christie’s

The autumn auctions will mark the first dedicated sales in North America tied to the powerful banking family

Sotheby’s to sell €11m collection from the Hydra home of Pauline Karpidas

The British patron’s annual meetings on the Greek Island were a “who’s who of the contemporary art world”

Christie’s calls off further sales of Heidi Horten’s controversial jewellery collection

Horten’s late husband became a billionaire during the “Aryanisation” of Nazi-era Germany

N.C. Wyeth painting purchased at a thrift shop for $4 could sell for $250,000 at auction

The painting's whereabouts were unknown for 80 years, but a Facebook post led to its rediscovery

Fresh ‘Avocado Salad’ painting by Wayne Thiebaud could fetch $1.8m at Hindman

The rare savoury still-life from 1962 will return to the market for the first time in at least 55 years

Hundreds of works from Los Angeles's infamous Ace Gallery to be liquidated via online auction

At least $230,000 worth of art and ephemera is being offered to repay creditors in the gallery's 2013 bankruptcy

Christie’s eyes Austin, Texas as a potential hotspot for millennial clients

The auction house will host its first outreach event in the rapidly growing Texan capital next month

Diaryblog

Killer Queue: Freddie Mercury fans go Ga Ga and line up round the block for Sotheby’s show

The masses are being drawn in by the chance to see objects both fine and personal