The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the art world’s jetsetters to largely forgo foreign travel. Nevertheless, auction houses have been deploying new strategies and partnerships to foster cross-border buying, striving to keep sales both safe and profitable.
MULTI-CITY
Following the success of their first collaboration in November 2020, Phillips and Poly Auction held their second joint 20th Century & Contemporary Art and Design day and evening sales at the JW Marriott Hotel in Hong Kong (June 7–8), with a live feed to Poly’s Beijing saleroom. The whiteglove sales transacted 189 lots—many of them new to auction—for a combined USD 90.4 million haul. The evening event was headlined by Yoshitomo Nara’s canvas (2000), of his characteristically disgruntled girl against a peach background. The lot (2015) went for USD 12.26 million, eking past the USD 12.18 high estimate. Demand remains high for the late painter Matthew Wong, whose mysterious (2017) soared past its USD 1.03 million high estimate to reach USD 4.71 million. Yayoi Kusama’s bluehued, acrylic-on-canvas (2004), showcasing her famed mesh motif, attained USD 3.31 million, surpassing the USD 1.92 million high estimate. Around the sale’s halfway mark, however, lots by auction darlings started to miss the top ends of their price brackets. Among these works, George Condo’s black-and-white oil portrait (2006), a large-scale exemplar of the sought-after American artist’s warped figures, was purchased for USD 1.75 million, below a USD 1.92 million high estimate. Zhang Xiaogang’s oil-on-canvas (1998), one of the few square canvases from the Chinese painter’s iconic series, hammered at USD 1.36 million, under the USD 1.54 million high estimate.
