Overview
- Back-to-back evening sales at Christie’s totaled $690 million with fees, surpassing the combined low estimate and drawing a packed room of active bidders.
- Christie’s reported a 97 percent sell-through by value and 96 percent by lot, with 16 works hammering at or above their high estimates after lengthy contests.
- Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958) led the night at $62.2 million with fees, while many other lots traded within estimate ranges.
- Selectivity was evident as 21 works hammered below estimate, one Toulouse-Lautrec was withdrawn, and three lots failed to sell.
- Attention now turns to Sotheby’s, where Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer is estimated above $150 million and Maurizio Cattelan’s gold toilet America is guided at about $10.2 million.