Christie’s 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong Totals $73.3 M.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in our special Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter for Art Basel Hong Kong. Sign up here to receive it every day of the fair.

The first auction held by Christie’s at its new Asia headquarters in The Henderson building in Hong Kong last September was a buoyant affair, carried by excitement for the glitzy locale, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. That inaugural evening sale, for 20th- and 21st-century art, brought in $113.4 million (with buyer’s premium), a more subdued haul compared to past boom years, but still a solid result.

On Friday, the house held its second 20th/21st century auction in its new digs, the first aligned with this week’s Art Basel Hong Kong, which opened to VIPs Wednesday. According to a post-sale release, more than 7,000 people visited the headquarters to take in the lots ahead of the evening sale, many of them in town for Art Basel.

While the room was filled to capacity, the pace of Friday’s evening sales was a bit slower, totaling $73.3 million (including buyer’s premium), with few surprises. The sale was said and done in just over an hour. Though it carried a 95 percent sell-through rate on 43 lots, most hammered at the low-end of their pre-sale estimates, with the aggregate hammer price sitting 6 percent above the sale’s low estimate. 

Cristian Albu, Christie’s deputy chairman and head of contemporary art for Asia Pacific, said in a post-sale press conference that those figures indicated the works on offer were “responsibly priced for this market,” despite “some challenges in sourcing.”

That didn’t dissuade Christie’s Asia Pacific president Francis Belin from describing the sales at the conference as “robust.”

The star of the evening was the eighth lot, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1984 painting titled Sabado porla Noche (Saturday Night), which sold to an Asian collector for $14.5 million, near the high estimate of $16.1 million. (The work had last sold in 2019 at Christie’s London for $10 million.)

“This really shows the sustained appetite in Asia for top masterpieces,” Christie’s head of evening sales Ada Tsui said of the Basquiat’s sale.

The results for two Yayoi Kusama works, both titled Pumpkin, were mixed, with the first of the evening hammering at $5 million (above its high estimate) and the second at $1.8 million (just above the low estimate).

The sale also saw several works by European masters do well, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1892 landscape, LaPromenade au bord de la mer painted in 1892. Formerly owned by the Met, it sold for $4.5 million, comfortably above the $3.6 million high estimate. René Magritte’s La Clairvoyance (1962), from the artist’s signature “leaf-trees” body of work, sold for $3.7 million, well above its $3.2 million high estimate. A second Magritte, Reverie de Monsieur James (1943), depicting a rose bush in full bloom, went for $6.1 million, squarely with its estimate of $5.4 million and $7 million.

“The interest for these works among Asian collectors was a good surprise, proving that our specialists are doing things right: they knew what to include in the sale, and they could read the market and the taste of our collectors well,” Belin said. 

While these works did elicit some competitive bidding among collectors—Belin specified that the bidders were from Asia—the room was rather quiet, and bidding was not too competitive. A Taiwanese collector who was present at this week’s fair but did not wish to disclose his name commented that “there were some very interesting pieces” but nothing in particular that caught his eye.

“We are still in a market where supply is a little bit constrained,” Belin said, marking an even measure from his earlier optimism about the sale. “We have to look at the low estimate of this evening’s sale and tomorrow, and the Shanghai sales next week.” He noted that this week’s sale was comparable to last year’s spring evening sale. The fall sale, on the other hand, was “less comparable” because it had two masterpieces, one each by van Gogh and Monet. The novelty of The Henderson salesroom’s inauguration also added energy to the room.

Among the Asian masters that did particularly well there was a bronze sculpture by Taiwanese artist Ju Ming, who died in 2023. From his “Taichi Series” and titled Single Whip (1988), the work fetched $1.6 million, more than doubling its estimate. The staying power of Dansaekhwaartists was also confirmed, as three works from the Korean postwar movement did well. Lee Ufan’s East Winds (1983), with the artist’s characteristic blue-and-white abstract marks, hammered at $778,000, eeking just above its high estimate. Park Seo-bo’s Ecriture no. 60-73 and Lee Bae’s Issue du Feu White Line F-4 both sold close to their high estimates at $940,000 and $179,000, respectively. Simiarly, three works by late abstract painter Zao Wou-ki hammered at slightly less than their high estimates, proving a want for his work but at lower prices than have been previously achieved.

Mainland China collectors were the main presence on the floor, with most sales going to bidders from there, followed by Hong Kong bidders, “which was another surprise,” according to Belin.

The economic slowdown in China has been observed with equal measures of interest and concern in the past two years by the international art market. Buyers’ appetites have not diminished, but their taste for risky investments seems to have. In other words, based on the evening’s results, Chinese collectors now tend to buy fewer pieces, more oriented toward blue-chip artists and other safe buys.

“There was a passion for safe choices, so to say,” Belin said.

That takeaway mirrored the sales results at Art Basel Hong Kong during its VIP preview days. There, blue-chip and mega-galleries saw success with their priciest works, while small and medium-sized galleries described difficulties closing deals.

Collectors “are more conservative and more selective than previous years,” Wendy Xu, White Cube’s managing director for Asia, told ARTnews on Wednesday. “Before, they might buy two or three or four works. Now they just want to buy one and they want to make sure they are buying the best quality work.”

One can expect that phenomenon to continue through the weekend’s other auction sales.