Feb 13, 2026

Welcome back to Wall Power. I’m Marion Maneker.

London’s auctions, which are less than three weeks away, aren’t just a gauge of the market’s direction and momentum—they’re also a chance for the city to rebuild its role in the global art market. Tonight, I’ll preview the upcoming sales for you. I’ve also got news about the Carnegie International, Michael Heizer’s steel-and concrete installation at Gagosian, and more evidence that Leon Black might like art more than money.

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Also mentioned in this issue: Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, Liz Park, John L. Loeb Jr., Joseph Lewis, Jerry Spiegel, René Magritte, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Emil Nolde, François Pinault, George Dyer, Dr. Paul Brass, Alberto Giacometti, and many more…

Let’s get started…

A Carnegie International preview: The Carnegie International, the quadrennial, Biennale-inspired global survey of art, is coming to Pittsburgh. It opens on May 2 across four museums, with works by 61 artists and collectives, including 36 works commissioned for the event. Curated by a team of three—Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park—the exhibition, titled If the word we, brings together “artistic practices that engage shared experience, circulation, and world in transition.” The promotional materials also note that “the exhibition approaches ‘we’ not as a unified subject but as a complex and porous position, attentive to contradiction and change.”

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Michael Heizer’s negative sculpture: On Tuesday night, I stopped by Gagosian’s 21st Street location, where the gallery has gone to great lengths to show two of Michael Heizer’s sculptures. Convoluted Line A and Convoluted Line B, both from 2024, are examples of his negative sculptures with lines “drawn” in the ground, but the reality is far more complicated than that simple description. Almost 90 feet long, they required raising the concrete floor of the gallery by two feet around the steel channels that define the negative space.

If you’re familiar with Heizer’s monumental work—huge boulders suspended over concrete channels, or 50-foot-deep cuts in opposing mesas in the Mojave desert—the extent of the “intervention” at Gagosian might not seem that impressive. In the context of deeply urban New York, however, the idea of pouring tons of concrete for a six-week exhibition seems, well, extravagant. But a little humbling, too.

While I was at the pre-opening for the exhibition, one of the Gagosian staff compared the installation to Walter De Maria’s Earth Room, installed not so far away in SoHo. De Maria’s work is a permanent installation; Heizer’s will only be up through the end of March. I know it will be hard, but try to find a time to go when the gallery isn’t crowded. Heizer’s work, like De Maria’s, is perhaps best experienced alone.
Leon Black’s love of art vs. money, cont’d: On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal went deep on Leon Black’s personal finances as they appear in the Epstein files. The piece noted that Black’s net worth at the time covered by the documents, more than a decade ago, was $5 billion, but that his art collection was valued at $2.8 billion, and his stake in Apollo, the alternative asset management firm he co-founded, was only $2.3 billion. (Of course, Black was smart not to sell his Apollo shares; they’ve increased in value 10x since then. The art, not so much.)

Another detail the WSJ uncovered was that Black’s Bank of America loan against his art and Apollo stock was for less than 2 percent interest. That’s pretty much free money! And, using two months of Black’s family expenditures, the paper also reported that Black spent $75,000 on art in the first two months of 2015. For context, that’s a little more than what he spent on wine and liquor, and about the same as what he spent on credit cards and medical expenses (including insurance), and landscaping at his seven homes. Though it’s less than what he spent on maintenance fees and property taxes on his residences.

Now, let’s take a quick gander at what’s coming up for sale in London…

Looking to London

A pocket guide to the most important works on sale next month in London, where major auctions by Christie’s and Sotheby’s could signal whether the market is truly on the road to recovery.

Marion Maneker

Last November, the auction world let out a sigh of relief after the strong sales in New York. And while the intervening months have been fairly tumultuous politically, an optimistic vibe remains. The recent American art and Old Master sales in the city were also solid, and validated the idea that collectors have turned toward historical art in a meaningful way. But the market won’t feel like it truly has momentum until the central categories—modern and postwar art—put up numbers that confirm a depth of demand.

Nevertheless, we don’t have to wait until the all-important May sales in New York to determine where things stand. From March 4 to 6, London will host a series of sales that emphasize historical artworks, which will give us another sign post on the road to a hoped-for art market recovery.

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There, Christie’s will feature important works by Gerhard Richter, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Wassily Kandinsky, John Singer Sargent, and Claude Monet—some of which were on view this week in New York for prospective buyers. Sotheby’s had works on view by Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Signac, and David Hockney ahead of their appearance in London. The house will also be selling four works owned by the noted collector Joseph Lewis—two by Lucian Freud, one by Francis Bacon, and an important Leon Kossoff work. And Phillips will have two Vilhelm Hammershøi paintings from the collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. on offer.

Christie’s Haul

Among the top lots at Christie’s is a bronze sculpture by Moore, King and Queen, from 1952-53, estimated at £10 million, that has been in the same collection for 70 years. Installed on the grounds of a Scottish farm, the work was eventually joined by five other Moore bronzes set in the landscape. It’s one of five from the initial casting, and all but this one are now in museum collections in Japan, Holland, and America. Two more were created for the Tate and the Henry Moore Foundation, and a small maquette of the statue in bronze sold for $4.2 million in 2021. Coming in at the £10.5 million estimate mark is Kandinsky’s Le rond rouge, a lyrical, strong abstract painting that features—you guessed it—a large red circle in the upper-right-hand corner. The work comes with a very good provenance and solid backing in the form of a third-party guarantee.

Christie’s also has two very solid Richter works to offer in London, following the artist’s monumental retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. The hope is that the show will have stoked collectors’ appetites. The first work is a 1984 painting of a haybarn, which Christie’s is expecting to make £6 million or more. Unlike the German artist’s earlier, blurred figurative works, this landscape has a hazy nostalgia, achieved through elegantly applied brushstrokes—it was owned by Emily and Jerry Spiegel before being sold in 2017. The other work is a bright red 1991 abstract “squeegee” painting, with subtle undertones of green and yellow, estimated at £4.5 million and distinctive for its “domestic size.” Smaller Richter abstracts have attracted strong market interest in recent seasons, with one selling for $10 million in 2020 and another for $9 million in 2022, which is where this red abstract would end up if it sold for the £6 million plus fees Christie’s is seeking.

Christie’s evening sale in London will be slightly smaller this season because of the large number of works in the Vanthournout collection, which will have its own dedicated evening sale. Of course, it’s also March, which means that Christie’s will hold its surrealist sale. I’ve mentioned that René Magritte’s Les grâces naturelles is being offered with a £6.5 million estimate. Christie’s has also added a strong 1944 Paul Delvaux night scene, titled La ville lunaire, with a £2 million estimate, along with another Delvaux—they’re being offered after Christie’s success last year with three of the artist’s paintings that had been held in storage for decades. There are more Magrittes in the sale, but also a fantastic small Dorothea Tanning. And there’s a 1921 Max Ernst seascape that looks like a collaboration between Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and Yves Tanguy in the Vanthournout collection.

Before we leave Christie’s, it is worth mentioning that the various-owners evening sale will include a very nice Claude Monet view of Le Parc Monceau, painted in 1878 and offered with a £5.5 million estimate. The painting was once owned by influential collector Georges de Bellio, who bought it directly from the artist. John Singer Sargent’s Study for ‘Carnation, lily, lily, rose’, from 1885, will also appear in the London sales, with a £3 million estimate—one more work from the collection that did so well in New York last fall. And connoisseurs will take note of the Emil Nolde, Blumengarten (Bonde), from 1909, estimated at £1.5 million, which has not been on the market since 1988.

London School Artists

Sotheby’s will be displaying the works from Joseph Lewis’s collection in New York starting on February 17, ahead of the London sales. Lewis’s family owns the Tottenham Hotspurs, and he was Christie’s largest shareholder before selling his stake to François Pinault in 1998. He rarely acknowledges his ownership of works when they are sold, and he was somewhat notorious for keeping his favorite artworks on his beloved yacht, where he spent much of his time. (When in New York on business, he was known to take meetings on his boat while moored in the Hudson river.) But in this case, he’s supporting his cherished School of London with the sale of four paintings by three prominent School of London artists.

The Francis Bacon work is a self-portrait painted in 1972, when the artist painted a dozen small self-portraits after the success of his retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris and the suicide of his partner, George Dyer. This selfie was a gift to Dr. Paul Brass, who treated Bacon after a fight left the artist with a significant facial wound. It was most recently shown at the National Portrait Gallery in 2024, and is estimated at £8 million.

Lucian Freud’s Blond Girl on a Bed, from 1987, is estimated at £6 million. This is one of Freud’s “naked paintings,” a contorted nude of 19-year-old Sophie de Stempel, an art student he met in a pub. An earlier portrait of a young painter, from 1957-58, depicts Ken Brazier close up with an impastoed surface. It’s estimated at £4 million. Finally, by adding Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 O’Clock Saturday Morning, August, Lewis is trying to raise the profile of other School of London artists who have not achieved the same degree of international fame as Freud and Bacon. Kossoff’s pool scene, estimated at £600,000, is one of the artist’s five major works depicting this particular public pool; three of the other works are in institutional collections.

The sales also include Hockney’s English Garden, from 1965, estimated at £2.5 million, which is the first of the artist’s fully realized landscape paintings. Hockney would go on to paint huge landscapes of California and his native Yorkshire that would become some of his most valued works. This painting is from the beginning of that arc. Meanwhile, another Monet, Maison de jardinier, from 1884, is on offer with a £6.5 million estimate. A large Andy Warhol painting from 1976, Hammer and Sickle, is estimated at £3 million. An Edvard Munch landscape from 1912 is estimated at £1.5 million. A small Alberto Giacometti bronze, Femme Debout, cast in 1964, is estimated at £2.5 million. And Vilhelm Hammershøi’s The Balcony, Spurveskjul, from 1911, is estimated at £1.5 million.

Finally, Phillips’ two Hammershøi on offer in London are Interior of Woman Placing Branches in Vase on Table, from 1900, which carries a £1.5 million estimate; and The Church of St. Peter, Copenhagen, painted in 1906, estimated at £600,000. The bulk of Ambassador Loeb’s collection of 150 works of Danish art, which includes these two works, will be sold in New York this May.

That’s it for tonight. On Sunday, we’re going to hear from Glenn Adamson about a design exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt.

Let’s speak then,
M

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