Christie’s two-day sales of Latin American Art totaled $14,150,963/ £9,433,975/ €11,230,923, and was 70% sold by lot. Combined with the $33.8 million fetched in the Spring auctions, Christie’s grand total for Latin American Art in 2008 is $48,012,313, representing the second highest annual total for Christie’s.

In its second Evening Sale of the week, Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, achieved $147 million for paintings and sculpture with top lots from Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and Wassily Kandinsky commanding the highest prices. The sale follows Wednesday’s Evening Sale of two single-owner collections, The Modern Age: The Hillman Family Collection and [...]

“Dancer in Repose’’ (1879) by Edgar Degas
Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis bought this painting at Sotheby’s in London in 1999 for $27.9 million. This year they were given a guaranteed price that experts say is over $40 million by Sotheby’s.

Everyone’s trying to make a little extra cash in these tough economic times. If only we were all rock stars with rare paintings on our hands!

A Sotheby’s assistant holding the Jean-Michel Basquiat U2 bassist Adam Clayton auctioned off over the summer.

Christie’s International PLC said it sold $3.5 billion of fine and decorative art in the first half, up 7.7% from the same period last year and up 56% from two years ago, indicating that the art market is healthy even as collectors of new art pull back after a five-year shopping spree.
Sotheby’s won’t release its [...]

A recently rediscovered masterpiece by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) sold at Christie’s auction of Important Old Master and British Pictures this evening for £12,361,250 / $24,376,385 / €15,513,369, a world record price for any French Old Master painting sold at auction. La Surprise had been missing for almost 200 years, presumed to have been destroyed, and [...]

Works by Francis Bacon have been big sellers at auction recently, and Christie’s sale of postwar and contemporary art here on Monday was no different. Four tenacious bidders vied for his “Three Studies for Self-Portrait” from 1975 in what became the evening’s longest bidding war, with two would-be buyers on the phone still running up [...]