The spring auction season ended with a miss, as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips collectively fell short of even their most modest expectations.
The houses had estimated $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion in sales for the week’s evening sales, but together brought in just over $1 billion, including buyer’s premiums, with each auction failing to reach its pre-sale estimate. The hammer total of $837.5 million was even more disappointing. The total was down from $1.4 billion during the same week last year and $1.8 billion in 2022. Weighing on the results were a drop in the value of highest-priced works and the fading presence of emerging artists who had dominated the market in recent years.
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This month, the top ten artworks sold across the three houses brought in a combined $278.6 million with fees, led by Piet Mondrian’s 1922 painting Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue at $47.6 million. In May 2024, the top ten lots generated $312.4 million; in 2023, the figure was $403.3 million. The total for this year’s top ten lots is a dramatic 63 percent drop from 2022, when the equivalent works totalled $759.2 million.
Elsewhere during spring auction week, sales skewed more towards more established artists than in recent years. After a period of heavy emphasis on the “ultra-contemporary” category, interest in emerging and young artists has largely vanished. At Phillips—traditionally the most aggressive in that space—four of the 36 works featured in its evening sale were by artists under 45: Yu Nishimura, Ilana Savdie, Danielle Mckinney and Adam Pendleton. In the equivalent 2021 sale, there were eight. At Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale, just four artists under 45 were included, down from seven in May 2021. None of the under-45 artists who appeared in either house’s evening sales four years ago returned this season.
“There are a lot of artists that disappeared,” Elizabeth Fiore, a New York–based art adviser, told ARTnews.
To adviser Mary Hoeveler, also based in New York, the shaky performance this May appears to be a reflection of financial turmoil in other parts of the economy.
“There’s no doubt that a lack of urgency predominates now in terms of buying, especially with works that can be had in the future, like younger and mid-career artists,” Hoeveler told ARTnews. “That said, people are also reluctant to spend large sums, so there’s a sense of uncertainty that’s constraining people’s appetite to spend a lot on art.”
Mckinney was one of the few living artists to draw notable attention this season. Three of her works exceeded their high estimates last week, and since 2023, her auction prices have consistently increased, with her work hitting a new record of $340,000 in March. At Sotheby’s on Thursday, her 2023 painting Stand Still was among the most competitive lots, ultimately selling for seven times its $40,000 estimate with fees.
In March, Mckinney’s New York dealer Marianne Boesky told ARTnews that the artist has a long waiting list as institutional interest has increased. And, last week, New York art adviser Andrea Hazen told ARTnews that the Sotheby’s estimate was close to Mckinney’s primary market prices, indicating that bidding was likely to be fierce for the work.
But the pullback from “ultra-contemporary” appears to have created room for a different group to hit new highs: late-career women artists. At 93, Olga de Amaral set a new auction record when her 1996 metallic wall hanging Imagen Perdida 27 sold for just under $1.2 million at Phillips. The next day, 71-year-old Marlene Dumas reached $13.6 million—more than double her previous $6 million record from 2008. Both artists may have benefited from the rarity of their work in evening sales. Records were also set for several dead 20th-century women artists, including Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Grace Hartigan, and Kiki Kogelnik.
New York adviser Erica Samuels, who focuses on contemporary art, told ARTnews that the record for Amaral was an encouraging sign amid what she described as an undeniable slowdown in the market. “There’s no doubt things have been sluggish,” she said.
The shift may have contributed to some canonical postwar male artists landing in discount territory. Works by Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Alberto Giacometti sold at or below their low estimates, or failed to sell altogether. Many of the works that sold well were guaranteed, meaning they weren’t exposed financially. Giacometti’s 1955 work Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego), estimated at $70 million, was unusually offered without a guarantee or irrevocable bit—reportedly to maximize the consignor’s potential profit—and paid the price quite literally. It failed to sell.
Fiore, whose advisory firm manages around 20 clients, said that some of her collectors are pausing on bigger private transactions in the $1 million to $2 million range. She also indicated that she saw many works offered at auction last week for “a lot less” than their asking price when the works were offered up for private sale.
Phillips held one of its smallest evening sales in recent years, totaling $52 million—down 40 percent from the $86 million achieved in the equivalent May sale last year.
“There’s some resistance at the very high end with sellers,” Robert Manley, Phillips’s newly named chairman of modern and contemporary art, told ARTnews. Manley, who is based in New York, added that he feels the market is solid, given that most lots are still selling, and disputed that there is an actual downturn.
“There’s definitely less speculation for younger artists, but it’s quite healthy,” he said. “People are less willing to spend these stratospheric prices.”
The demographic shift isn’t limited to artists. In recent years, the major auction houses have emphasized the role of Asian bidders, each investing heavily in the region and opening new Hong Kong headquarters. Since 2020, clients from Asia have typically accounted for about 30 percent of auction activity—but their presence was noticeably diminished this season.
In a LinkedIn post after the sales, former Christie’s CEO and current board member Guillaume Cerutti cited the drop as a key factor in the results: “The participation of Asian bidders was lower than usual,” he wrote. Phillips and Christie’s did not disclose the countries where collectors are based, as they have in the past. Sotheby’s, however, reported that US buyers led its single-owner sales, while just 10 percent of clients came from Asia.
In the past, wealth from Russia, Asia, and the Gulf have helped buoy demand. But now, according to Hoeveler, it’s unclear where that kind of buying power might come from. “Given the economic duress in the rest of the world, it’s not known where the new money is going to emerge,” she said.
