Revealed: Which Collectors Are Offloading Art at the New York Auctions

New York semiannual auctions arrive next week, with some 1,200 works of art, estimated at $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion, up for grabs.

I know that folks are eager to turn the page, ready for all the doom-and-gloom talk to be over. They’ll have to wait—and bid, a lot. Heading into these bellwether sales, the estimates are down 42 percent from the same time last year, when the houses offered $1.9 billion to $2.6 billion of art. That, in itself, was roughly a 35 percent decline from the $3.2 billion achieved in 2022 thanks to the Paul Allen windfall.

Put simply: The art market’s biggest auctions have shrunk by 75 percent over the past two years. Let’s hope that this is the bottom.

Sourcing material for this auction cycle has been challenging. Trophy works, valued at more than $20 million, can be counted on one hand. Dealers, advisers, and collectors are looking for deals and preparing for opportunities should the house start slashing the reserves.

Stoking desire is the key to getting the market off its knees. Which is why the houses worked so hard to get the right material at the right price. We’ll find out next week whether they succeeded.

Helping them are the season’s two big estates, interior designer Mica Ertegun at Christie’s (with a $95 million Empire of Light by Magritte) and beauty industry mogul Sydell Miller at Sotheby’s (with a $60 million Water Lilies by Monet). There’s all the hype around the world’s most infamous banana, with some chatter that it may fetch $8 million if the crypto money and hedge-fund money go after it. Won’t that be just delish? With crypto rallying, nothing seems out of the realm of possibility. I can imagine the headlines: The banana that saved the art market.

The week will be a big test for Jeff Koons, whose auction totals have plummeted since 2019, when Si Newhouse’s estate sold Rabbit (1986) for $91 million, crowning Koons as the most expensive living artist in the world, a title he still holds. Now there are four major early Koons sculptures up for sale—each one very different. Only one seller is named: the Swiss Barbier-Mueller Collection consigned Woman in Tub (1988), estimated at $10 million to $15 million, to Sotheby’s. Read on to find out who’s selling them!

Most sellers remain anonymous—unless we figure out who they are. My friend Kelly Crow at the Wall Street Journal was the first to report that billionaire financier Sid Bass is the anonymous seller of Ed Ruscha’s 1964 Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (estimated at $50 million); Artnet’s Kenny Schachter revealed that Rashid Johnson’s monumental triptych is being sold by European investor Laurent Asscher.

The Art Detective has uncovered several other noteworthy sellers, who might have flown under the radar otherwise. Representatives for the auction houses declined to comment.

Peter Brant

The newsprint mogul is a major, anonymous consignor this season, selling at least 11 artworks across various auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, according to my calculations based on the regulatory UCC filings and people familiar with his collection. 

The priciest of the group is a large-scale, untitled work on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Estimated at $20 million to $30 million, the 1982 piece leads Christie’s 21st century evening sale on November 19. Prices for Basquiat’s works on paper have been rising in recent years to the high of $15.2 million in 2020 for a much smaller work.  

Brant acquired the piece in 1996 from the famous Basquiat dealer Enrico Navara and lent it to multiple exhibitions, including “Jean-Michel Basquiat” at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2018. The following year, it appeared at the Brant Foundation’s companion exhibition.

Brant is a frequent buyer and seller at auction. He is also the consignor of Jeff Koons’s iconic group of vacuum cleaners, New Hoover Celebrity IV, New Hoover Convertible, New Shelton 5 Gallon Wet/Dry, New Shelton 10 Gallon Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981-1986). The piece is estimated at $3.5 million to $5.5 million.  

Christie’s provenance states that Brant, who is not named, acquired the work in 1991 at Sotheby’s. According to the Artnet Price Database, it came to auction twice since then. In 2013, Sotheby’s estimated it at $10 million to $15 million, and failed to sell. In 2017, it returned to the auction block with a more modest estimate of $7 million to $10 million and fetched $6.4 million, including fees.

Christie’s makes no mention of either auction outing. People familiar with the 2017 situation told me that the buyer reneged, the sale got cancelled, and the work went back to Brant, who used it to borrow money from Sotheby’s Financial Services until last month, according to filings.

Brant has also consigned at least seven lower-value lots to Sotheby’s contemporary art day sale, taking place November 21, where they are designated as “Property from a Prominent American Collection.” The group includes a self-portrait by Richard Prince (est. $250,000–$350,000), a 2015 abstract painting by Christopher Wool (est. $1 million–$1.5 million), and a painting of the MetLife building by Enoc Perez (est. $40,000-$60,000).

There’s also a small sculpture of a head by Simone Leigh, titled Blue/Black, estimated at $300,000 to $400,000, a significantly reduced valuation compared to its purchase price of $750,000 just two years ago, when Brant scooped it up at Sotheby’s London’s summer sale. 

Brant tried selling the work last December in New York as part of “ROYÈRE X WARHOL: Art and Design from the Collections of Peter M. Brant and Stephanie Seymour” at Sotheby’s. Estimated at $500,000 to $700,000, it found no takers. 

Another flip is Eric Fischl’s The Old Man’s Boat and the Old Man’s Dog at Christie’s. Brant bought it for $4.1 million in 2022, setting an auction record for the figurative painter. It’s now estimated at $3 million to $4 million.

Dakis Joannou 

The Greek collector, known for his long friendship with and deep holdings of Koons, consigned a carved wooden sculpture, Large Vase of Flowers (1991) to Christie’s 21st Century evening auction on November 21. It carries an estimate of between $6 million and $8 million.

The four-foot-tall work, which depicts a ravishing bouquet, graced the cover of the catalog for the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2014. Earlier this year, the work appeared in a Koons exhibition in Hong Kong, organized by Amy Cappellazzo and Yuki Terase of Art Intelligence Global.

Another version from the edition of three (plus one artist’s proof) fetched $5.7 million at Christie’s in 2009, in the middle of the $4 million-to-$6 million estimate. 

Barbara Goldfarb

Old-school, Miami-based contemporary art collector Barbara Goldfarb chose Phillips to sell one of the most iconic early sculptures by Koons, the 1985 Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series), depicting two suspended basketballs in a fish tank. She acquired it from Gagosian in the mid-1990s, according to Phillips’s provenance.

The sculpture, which is the first in the edition of two, is estimated at $4 million to $6 million. The second piece from the edition had traded 10 years ago for $6.9 million at Christie’s. 

”I’ve always been a collector,” Goldfarb told the New York Times in 2002, when she lent works from her collection to an exhibition at the Nassau County Museum of Art. ”At 15, it was antique picture frames, then antique furniture, and in the ’70’s I became interested in contemporary art.”

Ron Perelman

The embattled investor, whose empire crumbled since the pandemic, is parting with two paintings from his once-storied collection, much of which had been sold off to pay creditors. With his most coveted art gone, Perelman consigned a 1967 Cy Twombly painting, estimated at $2 million to $3 million, to Sotheby’s for its contemporary evening sale on November 20. He purchased it from Gagosian gallery in 1993, according to Sotheby’s provenance.

 

At Christie’s, the mogul consigned Willem De Kooning’s Abstraction, a moody, 1948 canvas that had been included in the artist’s acclaimed retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s estimated at $3 million to $5 million.

Larry Warsh

The consummate art collector, trader, and publisher made news this season as the named seller of a group of 31 “subway” drawings by Keith Haring to Sotheby’s. The works, which were originally drawn on black paper covering ads on subway stations, are presented in a fabulous, theatrical installation that includes a video simulation of speeding trains, turnstiles, wooden benches, and subway entrances. The group will highlight Sotheby’s contemporary day sale on November 21 with a combined estimate of $6.3 million to $9 million.

At the same time, Warsh is the anonymous consignor of another Haring work at Phillips, where his untitled 1982 painting is estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million. The painting was included in the artist’s breakout exhibition at Tony Shafrazi gallery that year. 

The painting appeared at Sotheby’s auction in 2006, selling for $380,000, according to Artnet Price Database. Warsh bought it from Sotheby’s S|2 Gallery in 2012 in a private transaction, according to the provenance. 

“Time to give back to the world,” Warsh told me when I reached out for a comment. “It’s a perfect painting.”

Lisa Schiff

The sale of art from the bankruptcy estate of the alleged fraudster begins this week. Bankruptcy trustees have retained Phillips to sell some 220 pieces and the first three works will appear in a day sale on November 20. 

Ivy Haldeman’s 2018 painting Colossus, Knee to Elbow, Wrist Bent, Four Fingers Edge Out is estimated at $40,000 to $60,000. Wolfgang Tillmans’s 2015 print, Fire Island, is valued at $15,000 to $20,000. Richard Prince 1988 joke painting, featuring the words “Are You Kidding?” is pegged at $250,000 to $350,000.

Howard Rachofsky  

Yu Nishimura’s portrait of a black-haired Asian girl in red will open Sotheby’s “The Now” auction of ultra-contemporary art (which will be combined with the contemporary sale this year). Estimated at $50,000 to $70,000, it comes from Dallas-based art patron Howard Rachofsky. Titled Pause, the dreamy 2020 painting was included in “Open Storage: 25 Years Of Collecting,” a 2023 exhibition at the Rachofsky private space, the Warehouse. 

The up-and-coming Japanese painter made his auction debut in March and six works have traded for as much as $58,148, according to Artnet Price Database. The artist, who was born in 1982, is represented by Galerie Crèvecœur in Paris and Sadie Coles HQ in London. 

Donald L. Bryant

The St. Louis-based insurance executive, consigned three paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, which are designated as “Ellsworth Kelly Across Decades: Property from a Private Collection” at Christie’s evening sale of 20th-century art on November 19. 

Palm Relief, a carved 1958 work on an oak surface, is estimated at $400,000 to $600,000. Blue Tablet (1962) is estimated at $4 million to $6 million, and the red Two Curves (2004) is valued at $3 million to $5 million. All three had been bought from Matthew Marks gallery, which long represented the revered minimalist artist. Kelly’s auction record of $9.8 million was set at Christie’s in 2019.

The gavel is up! Let the games begin! 

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