While sales at the big three auction houses, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips, declined 23 percent from 2022 to 2023, Artnet reported that revenue gained from the highest-end artworks  (more than USD 10 million) has dropped 40 percent. Recent sales found more traction away from the headliners of recent years.

New York

Interest in South Asian art surged during Asia Week in New York. At the South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art auction on March 20, Christie’s New York brought in just under USD 20 million from 93 lots, a 79-percent increase from its USD 12 million performance in 2023. The sale included many paintings and works on paper by the late Indian modernist FN Souza from the US-based collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur. One of Souza’s tribalist-style paintings, The Lovers (1960), the top seller of the night, set a new record for the artist of USD 4.9 million, exceeding the USD 4.1 million paid in 2015 at Christie’s New York for Birth (1955). The auction’s other seven-figure lots included Souza’s Priest with Chalice (1955), a depiction of a clergyman in black, at USD 3.9 million, and Gujarat-born Gulammohammed Sheikh’s scenic landscape, Portrait of a Tree (1975), at just under 1.4 million, five times above its high estimate.