15/11/2001

At the Rockefeller Center on November the 13th, Christie’s New York offered its Post-War (evening) auction of 56 lots. Of these, 39 found buyers to give the auction house a healthy 70% sold total and raise $ 25.2 million (€ 28.5 million). While flogging 56 lots is not a tall order when the works are of high quality and by established names, the satisfying results should help strengthen the conviction that the market is on the road to recovery after the recent tragic events in the Big Apple. Top seller was Andy Warhol's portrait of New York dealer Holly Solomon which fetched $ 1.9 million (€ 2.1 million) against an estimate of $ 1.5-2 million (€ 1.7-2.2 million). Woman in Landscape (1980) by Roy Lichtenstein sold for $ 1.3 million (€ 1.7 million) against an estimate of $ 1.4-1.8 million (€ 1.5-2 million), while Tom Wesselmann's Still Life 28 sold for $ 720,000 (€ 815,790) within estimate, though his Still Life 10 went unsold. As for non-US artists, Baselitz's Der Hirte made $ 1.1 million (€ 1.2 million) just over its pre-sale quote but key works by Richter and Polke went unsold. (Andrew Moore)