Welcome back to Wall Power. I’m Marion Maneker. In
tonight’s issue, Julie Davich has a midseason sales update on the postwar and contemporary art offerings at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips in New York. Plus, a gallery report on Michelangelo Pistoletto at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, and Stephanie Shih at Alexander Berggruen.
Before I toss the keys to the newsletter over to her, I want to do a quick follow-up on
Los Angeles, where I caught a few more gallery shows on my way out of town. (I’ll share at least one of them with you on Tuesday.) While I was in the tent at Frieze on Thursday, I ran into Pace’s Marc Glimcher and the gallery’s president, Samanthe Rubell, who commented that art fairs had taken on a new dynamic, with more and more of the sales coming through at the end of day two.
True
to their word, I got these day two sales from them, after we sent out Friday’s newsletter:
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- A 1966 sculpture by Robert Indiana for $600,000.
- A new ceramic sculpture by Arlene Shechet for $100,000.
- A nearly 8-foot-tall sculpture for $80,000 by Elmgreen & Dragset.
- A 2024 painting by Kylie Manning for $35,000 ahead of her first major solo exhibition in New York.
- A new work on
paper for $22,000 by Tara Donovan.
- A large-scale charcoal drawing, Untitled (White Wing), 2023, by Robert Longo, who is presenting a solo exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum through February 23.
- Two works on paper by David Hockney.
- A work on paper, Happy New Age, 2022, by Yoshitomo Nara.
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Julie Brener Davich
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Gallery Hopping With Julie
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- Michelangelo
Pistoletto at Lévy Gorvy Dayan: “It’s rare to get a second bite at the apple,” said Lévy Gorvy Dayan senior partner Xan Serafin of the gallery’s current show of works by Michelangelo Pistoletto—especially since the artist is now 91. In the fall of 2020, when the gallery staged its first exhibition dedicated to the northern Italian artist, almost nobody saw it due to the pandemic. So they mounted a second show, Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step
Beyond, in collaboration with Galleria Continua. It’s on view in their New York location through the end of March.
Pistoletto’s work can’t be easily categorized, though he’s sometimes referred to as an “object and action” artist, since he’s known for both assemblages and performances. He explores themes of reflection, consumption, and technology, and is most closely associated with the Mirror Paintings he’s been making for more than six decades (though technically they are
screenprints, except for the earliest examples). The reflective surface makes the viewer a participant in the work just by looking at it. Some show people in various configurations and poses; others feature objects, like a ladder or a curtain. When Pistoletto started making them in 1962, they brought him almost immediate international commercial success, thanks to legendary dealer Ileana Sonnabend. Based on Pistoletto’s auction record, his 1960s figural Mirror Paintings
are by far the most desired by collectors.
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Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.
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- Mirrors continue to form the core of Pistoletto’s practice, and the Lévy Gorvy Dayan show features prime examples, including the largest (and also his final) contribution to his Color and Light series, begun a decade ago. The site-specific installation comprises 24 mirrors hand-cut in camouflage-like patterns and filled in with brightly painted jute. Each work has its own hue; taken together, they form a rainbow around the room. They are all being sold separately—at $200,000 each,
that’s a cool $4.8 million for the group.
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Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.
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- As an originator of the Arte Povera, or “poor art,” movement, Pistoletto used everyday objects like rags and bricks to question “high art.” He is at his best, in the current show, in the four works that combine Arte Povera and mirrors, such as the one with a protruding iron semicircle that becomes a full circle when reflected.
After the nonagenarian Pistoletto traveled to New York to oversee the installation and celebrate the opening of his show, he went home to his Cittadellarte, or
“city of art,” foundation in Biella, Italy. He’s developing an on-site hotel there, scheduled to open next summer, to add to the various educational and hospitality spaces already housed in the former mill he’s lived in for nearly 35 years. He’s also working on an A.I. project, he told the Financial Times, as a way to “transform the visual infinity that is in my
mirror paintings.”
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- Stephanie Shih at Alexander Berggruen: After my visit to Lévy Gorvy Dayan, I walked up Madison Avenue to Alexander Berggruen gallery, where Alex Berggruen—the third generation of his family to deal art—has a solo presentation of ceramics by the young Taiwanese-American artist Stephanie Shih. The works are nostalgic depictions of classic 1990s foodstuffs, consumer products, and cultural staples, like Hot Pockets, Solo laundry
detergent, and an Alanis Morissette CD, all rendered in exquisite detail in clay.
The show, titled Domestic Bliss, speaks to a certain middle-class suburban lifestyle riddled with unease and malaise. Her work Nuclear Family is a ceramic microwave with Stouffer’s and Kid Cuisine boxes on top and a Hungry-Man meal spinning inside. The VHS set Buns of Steel and box of Viagra speak to men’s and women’s insecurities and desires. There’s a dustpan
with a broken wine glass and remnants of red wine, perhaps the artifacts of a marital spat.
Last week, the newsletter Baer Faxt announced that Berggruen is now representing the Brooklyn-based Shih, with works available for $3,500 to $45,000. If you want to see the work, you’ll need to act fast. Domestic Bliss is on view only through this Wednesday.
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And now, on to the main event…
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Fewer lots define the auction houses’ in-between season of postwar and
contemporary art. But, as always, a handful of standout works—by Mitchell, Condo, Dubuffet, Ruscha, Haring and others—raise the stakes.
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The midseason sales of postwar and contemporary art at Sotheby’s, Christie’s,
and Phillips in New York are modest this week—there are only 534 lots on offer between the three houses, with a combined presale estimate of $42.5 million. That’s down from the past two years, when they sold between 650 and 800 lots per season, totaling between $53 million and $63.5 million. It’s no secret that the secondary market for ultra-contemporary art has shrunk substantially. Consignors seem to be holding on to those works until the market rebounds.
Sotheby’s sale, Contemporary Curated, is somewhat of a misnomer since much of the material is postwar art. It’s the smallest of the three, with only 99 lots at a combined presale estimate of $15.9 million. In the equivalent sale a year ago, Sotheby’s sold a whopping 339 lots, but the average price per lot was less than half of what it is this season. This year, in fact, fully one-third of the total presale estimate is in the top
four lots. The very top lot is a recently rediscovered 1985 Joan Mitchell painting, estimated at $3 million, that has been in the same French collection for 40 years. The other top lots are a 2015 George Condo double portrait estimated at $1 million; a 1971 Jean Dubuffet wall piece from his Hourloupe cycle, which had been in the collection of Atlanta architect
John Portman since 1985, for $800,000; and a Jean-Michel Basquiat work on paper that has changed hands multiple times in the past few years, estimated at $800,000.
Christie’s, for its part, has 216 lots—more than twice as many as Sotheby’s—but the
combined presale estimate is only $1.1 million higher. The top lot is a fresh-to-the-market 1967 Ed Ruscha painting, Pressures, from the Mel and Martha Horowitz collection, estimated at $1 million. Over at Phillips, the New Now has its highest presale estimate for a midseason sale ever at $9.6 million for 219
lots. During the past two seasons, the auction house did not have any works estimated above $200,000, but this year there are four. The top lot is a 1983 Basquiat work on paper stuck to a primed white canvas (so neither a work on paper nor a painting, strictly speaking), estimated at $700,000. The consignor acquired it in 2019 from Sotheby’s in Asia via private sale.
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It’s rare to have two identical works come up for auction at the same time,
but this season, Sotheby’s and Phillips both have a William Kentridge Learning the Flute—a multimedia work produced in an edition of eight. Both works were acquired from a gallery in 2004 and are coming to auction for the first time this year. Two other works from the edition previously sold at Phillips—one in 2011 for $195,000, against an estimate of $200,000, and another in 2012 for $181,000, against an estimate of $100,000.
Sotheby’s estimated their Kentridge work this season at $100,000—the same as the 2012 estimate. Phillips estimated their work even more conservatively at just $30,000. With the
higher-estimated lot coming two days before the lower one, Sotheby’s consignor might be willing to lower the reserve, then Phillips will scoop up the underbidders.
All three houses have several works by Keith Haring, building on Sotheby’s runaway success with his subway drawings this past November. The highest-estimated Haring is at Phillips: a monumental
work on paper, estimated at $400,000. Both Phillips and Sotheby’s also have works by Rashid Johnson, as he gears up for his retrospective at the Guggenheim in April. The provenance of the monumental mirror collage on offer
at Sotheby’s, estimated at $80,000, does not explicitly say that it belonged to the de la Cruz family, but it was displayed at their Miami museum in 2012-2013 in an exhibition called Selections from the de la Cruz Collection. They sold it at Sotheby’s in 2023 for $114,000, and now the buyer is flipping it—no small thing, given it is composed of seven pieces, and it took Sotheby’s art handlers four and a half hours to install it.
Both Phillips and Christie’s have homages to California artists in their previews. Phillips has an Alex Israel backdrop painting, estimated at $60,000; a Richard Pettibon work on paper, estimated at
$150,000; and a Paul and Damon McCarthy upside-down Hollywood sign, estimated at $15,000. Christie’s has an extraordinary trio of fresh-to-the-market works on paper: a Wayne Thiebaud, estimated at
$180,000, and a Richard Diebenkorn and a David Hockney, both estimated at $400,000.
(Expect your IG feeds to fill up with Hockney when his show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton opens in April.)
Other highlights at Christie’s include a black Louise Nevelson wall piece, estimated at $70,000, that has been in the same collection since it was made in
the early 1970s. (A 1960 gold Nevelson sculpture, estimated at $60,000, was withdrawn from Sotheby’s sale.) Christie’s also has a 1994 photorealist oil by Richard Estes, estimated at $500,000, of the
Williamsburg Bridge and the riverfront beyond. A new record for Estes of $1.3 million was set two years ago.
There are more lots worth noting at Phillips. The sale opens with a 2021 painting by Eleanor Swordy, estimated at $50,000, acquired at Moskowitz Bayse gallery in
Los Angeles right after the artist’s auction debut at $97,000. There is an oil by Marina Perez Simão, estimated at $100,000—a slightly smaller work than her $422,000 world record at Sotheby’s in November 2023—and, lastly, a jewel of a
painting, Sea-Shells by Ida O’Keeffe from 1927, estimated at just $4,000, from disgraced art advisor Lisa Schiff’s holdings. A slightly smaller floral still life, which more closely resembled the work of the artist’s sister, Georgia, set a world record of $302,000 at Christie’s last April.
In addition to the extraordinary Mitchell painting, highlights at Sotheby’s include a fresh-to-the-market Mitchell pastel, estimated at $200,000, and a striking citron-yellow Roni Horn glass
sculpture, estimated at $400,000. After a blue version of the sculpture sold at Christie’s Evening Sale this past November for $1.8 million, Sotheby’s head of sale, Haleigh Stoddard, told me the sculpture was “at the top of our sourcing list.”
Sotheby’s is also offering a
single-owner collection of nine works by midcentury Italian artists not usually offered in the Contemporary Curated context, estimated at $50,000 to $350,000 each. And last but not least, there’s a dynamic 2022
painting estimated at $30,000, by Austyn Weiner, who is about to have a small solo presentation at Lévy Gorvy Dayan.
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There were some great buying opportunities last week at Heritage Auctions’
Contemporary Art Within sale. A little floral still life painting by the late Betty Parsons, who has a show up right now at Alexander Gray Associates, sold for $6,000. Four watercolors by the late Paul Jenkins, who has a show opening at Timothy Taylor Gallery in New York next week, sold for between $3,750 and $5,500 each. Lastly, three paintings by the late Robert Natkin, who is repped by Sundaram Tagore Gallery, sold for $17,500,
$11,250, and $8,750, respectively. (There’s also a Natkin painting from the Horowitz collection in Christie’s Post-War to Present sale this week, estimated at $3,000.)
The four works by Gertrude Abercrombie that we
told you about in Wright and Toomey & Co.’s Elevated: Art Via Chicago sale all exceeded estimates. Owl with Eggs sold for $228,600, almost four times its estimate of $60,000. Chicken with Eggs sold for $222,500, more than three times its estimate of $70,000. The smaller, more atypical Keyhole and Eye, estimated at $40,000,
sold for $152,400. Lastly, her petite terra-cotta nude, which had no market precedent and was estimated at $30,000, sold for $57,150. More Abercrombie works are coming up at Freeman’s Hindman in May.
Rago/Wright’s Postwar & Contemporary Ceramics sale that we also told you about outperformed expectations last week. The monumental sculpture by Jun Kaneko sold for $198,000 against an estimate of $60,000; a smaller (but still sizable) one sold for $50,160 against an estimate of $20,000. Peter Voulkos’s Bulerias Scratch, estimated at $15,000, sold for $48,260. The five Kathy Butterly works from the Kalodner collection all sold above their estimates. The 17 works by
Toshiko Takaezu all found buyers; the top price of $35,560 was for a Tall Closed Form, estimated at $15,000.
One final endnote…: Larry Gagosian appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning today in a segment that was actually filmed last fall, during his
Basquiat exhibition. It repeated a lot of content from Patrick Radden-Keefe’s New Yorker profile. There’s been much discussion in the media and the art world about Gagosian’s succession plans, since he doesn’t have kids. When asked by CBS correspondent Anthony Mason whether there could ever be a Gagosian empire without
Gagosian, he answered, “I don’t know; that’s the question. I don’t want to think it’s an impossibility. I think it’s a serious challenge. But I’m not ready to pass the reins. I enjoy it too much.” Mason followed up, “Are you ever going to be, do you think?” And Gagosian answered, “No.”
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Thanks, Julie. This was great. I’ll be back on Tuesday.
M
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_01JMT2GFA6EF1TJSBX38DD1HS8.jpg "Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York, 2025. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.")
_01JMT2GFRZANBFZBTWJ4KF7NPT.jpg "Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York, 2025. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.")
