november '25 nyc marquee art auction week recap & highlights
Highlights from the week's stunning art auctions from Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips.
Hi artsies,
As a supplement to my regular weekly newsletter, I thought I’d do my first deep (ish) dive into the world of art auctions. I combed through dozens of last week’s auction recaps, scrolled endlessly through the auction house lots, and watched many of the auctions online. Here are the highlights and a play-by-play. It’s long and a bit messy, but I hope you enjoy, nonetheless!
The week brought in around $2 billion!
Overall Hammer Outcomes:
Christie’s: $690M (Monday) + $124M (Wednesday) + $89M (Thursday day) = ~$903M
Sotheby’s: $706M (Tuesday) + $305M (Thursday) = ~$1.01 billion
Phillips: $67M (Wednesday evening) + $10M (Thursday day) = ~$77M
Major Trends:
Single-owner collections dominated: Lauder, Weis, Pritzker, and Edlis-Neeson lots were certainly the stars. Did pre-auction marketing/press help?
Records for women artists: Kahlo, Martin, Brown, Báez, Drexler, Tanning, Amaral, Sherald, and many others brought in solid numbers.
Blue-chip focus: The headline-makers showed a shift away from emerging/ultra-contemporary to established names. But if you dig in, contemporary artists did really well!
Sotheby’s
The undisputed star of the week: Sotheby’s had a record-breaking evening on Tuesday at its newly inaugurated) Breuer Building HQ, achieving $706 million across two sales. That is the highest total ever recorded in a single night in the auction house’s 281-year history.
The night started out strong with the Leonard A. Lauder’s collection which generated $527.5 million. The star? Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” sold for $236.4 million, becoming the highest price ever paid for a work of modern art at auction (#2 overall after Salvator Mundi).
But wait, there’s more! Two other Klimt works raked in the dough:
Blumenwiese brought in $86 million, marking the artist’s second most expensive landscape
Waldabhang in Unterach, Klimt’s final Attersee landscape, sold for $68.3 million
Much to my pleasure, Maurizio Cattelan’s (fully functional yet completely passé) 18-karat gold toilet, America, sold for $12.1 million to a single bidder, just over the value of its weight in gold alone. The buyer? Ripley’s Believe It or Not! which feels perfectly on-brand (i.e. tacky, more spectacle than art).
Sotheby’s evening continued with “The Now” and Contemporary Evening Sale, bringing in $178.5 million.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto) (1981) topped the auction at $48.3 million.
Thursday brought another spectacular night. The Pritzker Collection surpassed estimates with $109.5 million (including fees), followed by “Exquisite Corpus,” a stellar group of Surrealist works that generated $98 million.
The crown jewel? Vincent van Gogh’s Parisian Novels (1887) sold for $62.7 million, nearly doubling its $40M estimate and coming after 7 minutes of bidding with multiple phone bidders. This shattered the record for a Van Gogh Paris-period work and set a new benchmark for his still lifes.
In a historic moment for Latin American art and female artists, Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) commanded $54.7 million, breaking her auction record and record for any female artist. It surpassed the existing record held by Georgia O’Keeffe for her Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, which had previously hung in the White House, and sold for $44.4 million in 2014.
Lastly, one of my favorites: from the Lauder sale, Agnes Martin’s The Garden (1964) set a new auction record at $17.6 million after a 10-minute bidding war. And, boy, is that worth it!!!
Christie’s
Christie’s proved the market’s appetite extends well beyond household names. Monday night’s Post-War and Contemporary Art sale brought in $690 million across 79 lots—a 41% increase over its November 2024 auctions.
The Robert and Patricia Ross Weis sale, composed of 18 lots, set the tone. The 21st-Century Evening Sale rang up $124 million, 16% above last year, with Christopher Wool’s Untitled (RIOT) (1990) leading at $19.8 million.
Christie’s notched new auction records for historically under-recognized women artists, signaling a meaningful market correction:
Olga de Amaral’s gold-laced fiber work Pueblo H (2011) soared to $3.125 million, more than double her previous record
Amy Sherald’s A Clear Unspoken Granted Magic (2017) hit $4.1 million, becoming her second-highest auction price
Firelei Báez’s monumental 2021 painting sold for $1.1 million, a new record for the Dominican-born artist
Joan Brown’s After the Alcatraz Swim #2 achieved $597k.
Lynne Drexler’s Keller Fair II (1960) shattered her previous record at $2 million
Although not record-setting for the artist, Joan Mitchell’s Sunflower V (1969) sold for $16.7 million, a 578% appreciation since it sold for $1.5 million in 2005. Shows the long-term value story.
The day sale brought $88.7 million, with Tom Wesselmann’s Great American Nude #41 (1962) drawing seven bidders and trouncing its estimate by selling for $1.2 million.
And to keep us on our toes? One of the longest bidding wars wasn’t for artwork at all. It was for a Diego Giacometti coffee table. Seven minutes of bidding pushed it to $3.65 million, far surpassing its $1.5-2.5 million estimate.
Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #13 (1978) made $2.2 million with fees—a staggering appreciation from its $150,000 hammer price in May 2000.
Phillips
Phillips pulled off a $67.3 million haul, 24.4% higher than last November, with a stellar 94% sell-through rate across 33 lots. Yes, some of that was made of a $5.4M triceratops fossil, but some household and less familiar names exceeded estimates on the block.
Francis Bacon’s Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer (1967) sold for $16 million.
Ruth Asawa’s market showed strength with two works selling for $1.01 million and $900,000.
Basquiat’s Exercise (1984) fetched $3.8 million.
Thursday’s day sale added another $10 million, with Sigmar Polke’s Untitled (2000) selling for $612,700.
The real overperformer? Edmund de Waal’s The rest of the way to Egypt (2011) sold for $219,300—631% above its low estimate.
And one of my personal favorite contemporary artists, Alexis Ralaivao, fetched far above the $40,000 - 60,000 estimate for his stunning work Milano that sold for ~$84k.
My Takeaways
The week’s total haul—about $2 billion—does support a major rebound in the art market. My own takeaways from the week:
Single-owner collections are so hot right now
Museum shows and major exhibitions sure don’t hurt
I hope this is the beginning of many more records broken!