Christie's London contemporary sale held
on March 6, 2019 only totaled 79.3 million GBP with 93 percent of lots sold,
far less from last year's 137.5 million. 50% of the sales were either on or
below the low estimates, indicating poor competition.
A 1961 Joan Mitchell
work sold for 2.9 million GBP; and a 2009 painting, The Collector by Adrian
Ghenie, which was back having sold only 18 months ago for 2 million GBP at
Phillips, went, at 2.7 million GBP.
Bought in 1992 for 1.1 million USD, David
Hockney's 1969 large double portrait of Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott
sold for 37,7 million GBP with premiumwhile a portrait of Grayson Perry by Jonathan
Yeo fetched a record 125,000 pounds.
A record 1.45 million GBP
was set for a bronze hare by Barry Flanagan while Cecily Brown's Night Passage sold 468,000 GBP in October 2007, fetched 3.1
million GBP , one of the best results in the sale, and David Salle's Bigger Rack
(1998) painting culminated at a record 515,200 GBP.
Nicolas de Staël's still
life of bottles sold above estimate at 4.5 million GBP, Gerhard Richter's small
abstraction went below estimate at 3.1 million, a Cy Twombly work on paper only
recorded 611,500 GBP and an alphabet painting by Janis Kounellis soared beyond
its high estimate at 539,250 GBP. Finally, the sale was rather disappointing
with many lots sold under estimate.