Christie’s 21st-century evening sale fetched a rather decent $96.4 million and an auction record for a living female artist.
The highlight of the evening was Miss January (1997) by Marlene Dumas. The portrait features a nude, blonde woman partially covered in glitter. Coming in with a pre-sale estimate of $12 million to $18 million, it ended up being sold for $13.6 million (with fees). This set a new record for the most expensive work ever sold by a living female artist. The record was previously held by Jenny Saville, whose painting was sold for $12.4 million in 2018.
Apart from this moment, the overall evening was rather uneventful. The auction house garnered a total of $96.4 million against a low presale estimate of $79.5 million. Despite this, the numbers were lower than the similar auction in May of 2024, which totaled $114.7 million. However, it must be noted that, unlike last year, this year’s auction only had 39 lots on the listing. Four of them were unsold while three others were withdrawn. Fourteen works came from the collection of Ago Demirdjian and Tiqui Atencio.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Baby Boom (1982) was the top seller of the night, fetching $20 million, exactly matching its low estimate. Combined with the Phillips auction a day before, it is clear that Basquiat is in high demand in the blue-chip market. A tall sculpture, Sentinel (2020) by Simone Leigh, grabbed quite a few eyeballs and was sold for $5.7 million (above its $5.5 million high estimate). Cecily Brown’s Bedtime Story and Ed Ruscha‘s Blast Curtain both came with a high estimate of $6 million; Brown crossed it with $6.2 million while Ruscha fell short at $5.6 million.
