New York’s November auctions, the three nights each year that tell the art trade how much money is really out there, start on November 16. This year the headline lots include a van Gogh tipped to sell for around $180 million, a Klimt lake view and a Kandinsky that is already guaranteed to set a record.
Here is what is coming up, night by night. All estimates are pre-sale figures and exclude the buyer’s premium, so final prices will be higher.
Monday, November 16: Sotheby’s Now & Contemporary
Sotheby’s opens the week at 7pm at its Breuer building headquarters on Madison Avenue. The top lot is Roy Lichtenstein’s Reflections on “Painter and Model”, estimated at $20 million to $30 million, according to Sotheby’s sale listing.
Francis Bacon’s Self-Portrait and Yayoi Kusama’s No. 3P.B. are each estimated at $10 million to $15 million. Also on offer are Cecily Brown’s Untitled (Shipwreck) ($7 million to $10 million), Yoshitomo Nara’s Candy Blue Night ($5 million to $7 million), an untitled Willem de Kooning ($4.5 million to $6.5 million) and Andy Warhol’s Flowers ($2.5 million to $3.5 million).
Tuesday, November 17: Christie’s and Phillips
Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale at Rockefeller Center carries the week’s two biggest published estimates, each $60 million to $80 million.
The first is Wassily Kandinsky’s Betonte Ecken (Emphasized Corners), painted over the winter of 1922–23. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation sold it at auction in London in 1964 for £22,000, about $62,000 at the time, the Associated Press reported. Christie’s says a guarantor has already committed to a bid above the artist’s current record of £37.2 million, set in 2023, so a new Kandinsky high is all but certain.
The second is Gustav Klimt’s Litzlbergkeller (1915–16), a square view across the Attersee, the Austrian lake where Klimt spent his summers. It last appeared at auction in 1997 and has stayed in the same private collection since. Demand for Klimt is running hot: a Klimt portrait sold at Sotheby’s for $236.4 million last November.
Across town the same evening, Phillips offers Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête (1911–12), a limestone head carved from a single block, at $28 million to $35 million. It is one of about 28 surviving stone sculptures by Modigliani, most of them in museums, and it has never been to auction before, according to Phillips.
Wednesday, November 18: the Blaquier-Arrieta collection
The week closes at Sotheby’s with Legendary: The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, 12 paintings from an Argentine collection expected to total around $450 million. The star is van Gogh’s Châtaigniers en fleurs (1890), which could set a new auction record for the artist. Paul Cézanne’s Arlequin (1888–90), expected to bring around $120 million, could do the same for Cézanne.
Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction follows the same night.
What to watch
The real test is depth. Guaranteed lots can make a sale look healthy even when bidding is thin, so the number of bidders fighting over the van Gogh, the Klimt and the Kandinsky will say more about the state of the market than the hammer prices on their own.