*Sale prices include the buyer’s premium; pre-sale estimates do not. 

A pair of new Asia headquarters for the major international auction houses in 2024 led to their swapping traditional sale weeks in Hong Kong. With Christie’s holding its auctions in late  September [link], and finding a jolt of energy in a lackluster year, Sotheby’s held the first live auction series in the new Sotheby’s Maison on November 11–12 with much less success.

The star of the evening sale was a painting with an infamous past, Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow and Blue) (1954). Once owned by the Malaysian fugitive Jho Low, who embezzled USD 4.5 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, the canvas was sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2015 for USD 46.5 million. Nine years later it sold for HKD 252.5 million (USD 32.5 million), marking a 30-percent decrease in value for a blue-chip postwar modernist icon. Elsewhere in the sale, Yayoi Kusama’s painting Hat (1980) sold for HKD 43.8 million (USD 5.6 million), evidence of continued interest in the nonagenarian Japanese artist. Giving added allure, the work came from the collection of psychologist Ryutaro Takahashi, a mega collector and pivotal patron of Kusama. 

Among fresher names to the secondary market several fared well. The late Shi Hu (1942–2023)’s expressionistic triptych on paper Heaven (2017) embodies his interest in Cubist and African art combined with his experiences living in a Hakka village in Guangdong province. The sale price hit HKD 7.8 million (USD 1 million) above the high estimate of HKD 220,000 (USD). Among emerging artists—some of the lone bright spots in the market to date—Maria Kreyn’s tempestuous seascape Gravity (2023) topped the HKD 1.5 million (USD 193,000 ) to reach HKD 4 million (USD 515,000). 

Overall, however, Sotheby’s sale floundered. Out of 35 lots, seven were withdrawn before the auction began including Zao Wou-Ki’s two-meter-wide tempest 02.01.65 (1965). Five artworks went unsold—among them a canvas from Zao’s “Bone Oracle” period of the mid-1950s and Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup II (1969) set of ten silkscreen prints. 

The sale brought in HKD 409.5 million (USD 52.7 million), toward the low end of the presale estimates. The tally marked a 25-percent decline compared with Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Sales in September 2023, not including the additional HKD 544.5 million (USD 69.5 million) from the Long Museum founders’ collection that Sotheby’s had offered separately in a dedicated sale one year prior. 

Including the Modern and Contemporary Day Sale on November 12, Sotheby’s earned a total of HKD 497.5 million (USD 63.9 million), down nearly 40 percent from HKD 1.26 billion (USD 161.4 million) from the same sales series 13 months prior. While the sale brought bidders into the newly designed showroom of Sotheby’s Maison, it was a much less radiant result than the house would have wanted. 

HG Masters is deputy editor and deputy publisher of ArtAsiaPacific.