Artists of colour, women soar at Christie's contemporary sale

There is a limited supply of blue chip works in the world and collectors — as well as auction houses — remain hungry for inventory. Because of that demand, artists’ typically long journey to the world stages of a Christie’s or Sotheby’s has increasingly been accelerated.

Just last year, for example, Hodges, a figurative painter, had his first New York solo show at the Karma gallery on the Lower East Side and only eight months later set an auction record when one of his paintings, estimated at about $40,000 to $70,000, sold for more than $600,000. At Christie’s on Tuesday, his “Intersection of Color: Experience,” which depicts a crowd of figures, sold for $706,000, having been estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.

In part, art experts say, this has to do with collectors’ attention to artists of color in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. “Everything shifted in 2020,” said Mashonda Tifrere, an art adviser. “Since December 2021, I’ve sold over maybe 60 works of emerging artists from Black and brown people to white collectors.”

Ouattara Watts, an artist from Ivory Coast, whose painting, “Afro Beat,” sold for $781,000 on an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000, has been around for some time — he had a solo at Gagosian in 1995 — and now has a show at Karma Gallery.

“Now you’re discovering artists that should have been in conversation,” said Gardy St. Fleur, an art adviser. “They’re finally getting their due.”

Works by artists of color soared over their estimates. Boafo’s “Yellow Dress” sold for $819,000 on an estimate at $250,000 to $350,000; a work by Pakistan-born artist Salman Toor, “Girl and Boy With Driver,” sold for $882,000, having been estimated at $150,000 to $200,000. A somber Glenn Ligon from the artist’s “Stranger” series sold for $1.6 million, over an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000.

A wide range of female artists also fared well. Weyant’s work, “Summertime” — featuring a prone young woman with bare skin — kicked off the evening at Christie’s Rockefeller Center showroom, selling to an unidentified buyer on the phone in Hong Kong for a staggering $1.5 million on an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000 after eight minutes of competition among 11 bidders. “What a way to start the sale,” said auctioneer Georgina Hilton.

A fantastical landscape by Hughes, who last year had a show at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, sold for $2.9 million on an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. And “Portrait of a Lady (After Louis Leopold Boilly)” by Juszkiewicz, who explores gender and class in European painting, went for $1.6 million, having been estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.

Sales of some of the more established artists were less buoyant. A deep red Gerhard Richter, the highest priced lot in the sale, sold for $36.5 million, just over the estimate of more than $35 million; Sigmar Polke tanked at $819,000, below the low estimate of $1.2 million.

Attesting to the mercurial nature of the art market — how an artist’s fortunes can droop — an abstract by Adrian Ghenie, recently all the rage at auction, sold for $2.2 million, below the low estimate of $2.5 million.

Two Basquiats, consigned by the same owner, were withdrawn from the sale — typically an indication that the reserve price would not be met. “It’s never an easy decision,” said Guillaume Cerutti, Christie’s chief executive. “We don’t want to sell at any price. We want to sell at a price that is relevant for the artwork and a price that the client wants.”

Anadol’s dynamic NFT, inspired by the facade of Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló in Barcelona, sold for $1.4 million, having been estimated at $1 million to $2 million. (The artist installed his “living NFT” outside the Christie’s headquarters in advance of the sale.)

Despite the froth that seemed to surround some artists in Christie’s sale, art world observers say it is heartening to see artists of color in the auction major leagues, commanding big prices.

“It’s great that a lot of these artists are being brought to light,” said Phyllis Hollis, the host of the podcast Cerebral Women Art Talks. “Auction is a way of solidifying the contributions of artists of color to the canon. People are recognizing the talent of underrepresented artists, and that’s promising.”