I know one secondary-market dealer who spent nine hours at Sotheby’s day sale on Friday and ended up bringing home nothing. That tells you a little bit about the state of the art market right now. The big-money, attention-soaked evening sales at Sotheby’s last week had plenty of strong performances, but a number of observers attending the live auction complained to me that the room felt dead. That dichotomy—strong performance on paper but mixed vibes in person—was likely the result of two different factors.

First, even though more market participants are attending the sales in person again, after so many began following online during the pandemic, there still isn’t that much bidding in the room. Fewer market stalwarts show up to bid, leaving those of us who attend to amuse ourselves with speculation about the identities of the new faces in the room. For example, a man in his 30s with long brown hair and a matching beard bid up to $10 million on one of the lots Thursday night. No one had ever seen him before. When the auctioneer queried him about bidding past $10 million, one observer suggested there was panic in his eyes, and another assured me he was only executing bids—that the decision-maker was the woman seated at his side.

The second reason for the low-energy saleroom on Thursday was the fact that most of the top lots had already been on the market, in one way or another, for some time. Buyers were familiar with the works, and the process of shopping irrevocable bids was essentially an auction before the auction.

In contrast, there were 350 lots on offer in the day sales, many of which had not been seen on the public or private markets in decades. At Sotheby’s on Friday, 93 percent of the lots found buyers. While some of those lots had guarantees and irrevocable bids, it was, by and large, a less managed market. With so many lots, it’s hard for the sales force to fully cover all potential buyers, so when we see near-record sales totals and a sell-through rate in the 90s, it’s worth taking notice. Those figures are usually a sign of a market boom.

In the past, the day sales have been where the discretionary selling has taken place. They provided a measure of what sellers believe is going to perform well. There was surely some of that on Friday, but the great wealth transfer isn’t only among lots worth seven figures and more. Ten different collections were represented in these sales, including lots from Robert Mnuchin and Jean and Terry de Gunzburg. Indeed, if the art media was worried that younger collectors would not be interested in art bought by their Baby Boomer and Silent Generation predecessors, these sales largely suggested otherwise.

The next set of buyers (who may still be Boomers) are not yet ready to pay prices well above what these works have cost in the past—at least not on an inflation-adjusted basis. The top lot in the day sale was Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl in Mirror, from 1964. Estimated at $5 million, the work is one of an edition of 10; one other of the edition was sold for a price close to $6.9 million. Given the overall rise in inflation, and enthusiasm for Lichtenstein’s work ahead of his upcoming retrospective, the $6.2 million selling price has to be a bit of a disappointment, even though the work was purchased for $3.7 million in 2012.

Adjusted for inflation, that comes out to $5.4 million in today’s dollars, which means the consignor got a little bit less back once Sotheby’s fees are subtracted. Another way to look at it is that someone was able to enjoy a great Lichtenstein image for 14 years—and it cost them less than $30,000 a year to rent.

The next-most-valuable lot was Wayne Thiebaud’s Various Cakes, from 1981. It sold at auction in 2011 for just under $3 million and returned to auction in 2023 to make under $2.7 million. On Friday, it sold again for under $2.7 million. Recently sold works rarely do well at auction, so the steady pricing is a good sign for the work and the Theibaud market as a whole.

There are also a lot of Helen Frankenthaler works on the market, and most of them are doing quite well. Perseus, from 1983—owned by one collector since 1984—sold for $2.8 million, a healthy bump from the $2 million estimate. And St. John, from 1971, which had been owned by architect Gerald Mallon McCue since 1980, made $2.1 million. It was backed by an irrevocable bid and estimated at $1.5 million.

Meanwhile, a group of six 5-by-5-inch Flowers, from Andy Warhol, was estimated just above the $1.1 million price they sold for in 2008 (which would be $1.75 million adjusted for inflation). On Friday, the assembled work sold for a little more than $2.2 million. Subtract Sotheby’s fees, and the consignor just got their money back after 18 years of ownership.

The seven Alexander Calder works from various consignors showed where the market could be very interesting. Sotheby’s got the consignors to accept unrealistically low estimates, and the tactic worked for all but one lot. Six Red Polygons, from circa 1950, made $2 million against an estimate of $800,000. One untitled tabletop work was estimated at $700,000 but sold for $2 million, and another estimated at $600,000 wound up selling for $1.2 million.

A group of Alma Thomas works all followed the success in the evening sale the night before. An untitled work from around 1972, estimated at $600,000, sold for nearly $1.8 million. Three other works estimated in the five figures all sold for solid six-figure numbers.

In my notebook, I scrawled a number of works estimated at prices in the $200,000 to $400,000 range that sold for prices in the high six figures. The margins on works by Grace Hartigan, Frank Stella, Alex Katz, Lee Bontecou, Ed Ruscha, Fernando Botero, Mark Tansey, George Condo, Elaine de Kooning, and Esteban Vicente, among others, were where Sotheby’s really made its money in this day sale. They’re also a measure of demand and interest for historical artists with good track records. Buyers are still seeking out value, but they’re willing to pay more for those works. To give it a high-concept slogan: $750,000 is the new $500,000.

One final lot to focus on: Enrico Donati’s collection contained a striking painting by Antonio López Garcia, a Spanish nonagenarian realist painter. Last year in London, a 1968 López Garcia painting of a woman in a bath sold for a surprising $650,000, even though it was estimated at $135,000. The artist’s trompe l’oeil El Cuarto de Bano, from 1966, showed very well at Sotheby’s exhibition, and the $200,000 estimate seemed conservative at best. Nevertheless, it sold for nearly $2 million, a price that more than doubles López Garcia’s previous auction record.

That does it for today. I hope you got some rest this weekend—we have a lot to get through in the next few days. Tomorrow night should be pivotal given the sales of the Newhouse collection and Agnes Gund’s sublime Rothko painting. I’ll be back on Tuesday with all of the action from Christie’s saleroom.

Until then,

M