The China Mail - New York auction records expected for a Magritte... and a banana

The sale of Magritte's "Empire of Light" ("L'Empire des lumieres"), which will go under the hammer Tuesday night at Christie's, will surely be one of the high points of the autumn season, which will see hundreds of works sold -- and hundreds of millions of dollars spent.

The seminal 1954 work is one of a series of paintings from the Surrealist master depicting the interplay of shadow and light. Its estimated price is $95 million, which would easily shatter the previous record for a Magritte, $79 million in 2022.

Christie's is hoping that with the Magritte and a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by the 86-year-old American pop artist Ed Ruscha, it can reinvigorate an art market that has slowed since 2023.

The auction house -- which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family -- said sales totalled $2.1 billion in the first half of 2024.

That is down for the second straight year, after a peak of $4.1 billion in 2022, as the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.

- 'Correction' -

"The current market correction, which began in 2023 with global geopolitical unrest, high inflation and interest rates affecting collectors, has spilled into 2024," Bank of America said in a note.

"Less marquee estate property in the May sales potentially also dampened bidders' confidence and enthusiasm."

For Max Carter, the vice chairman for 20th and 21st century art at Christie's, "our market is very much defined, certainly now, by supply more than demand."

"And this season, we happen to have all of the great estate material, all the great discretionary sales, and we feel very optimistic," Carter said.

Sotheby's is hoping to make a tidy profit from the sale of private collections, like that of Sydell Miller, a beauty industry mogul who died this year and whose Florida home reputedly looked like a museum.

The auction house is hoping the collection will generate $170-205 million in sales, including one of Claude Monet's celebrated paintings of "Water Lilies" ("Nympheas"), which is expected to rake in more than $60 million alone.

Sotheby's, owned by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, is also selling a series of 31 crayon drawings done by Haring in the 1980s in blank advertising spaces in the New York City subway system.

And one of the highlights of the week will be a fresh banana taped to a wall, a provocative work by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

The debut of "Comedian" at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019 sparked controversy. This is its third iteration -- the first two were eaten, according to Sotheby's website.

This time, the auction house believes the work, a commentary on what qualifies as art, could go for $1-1.5 million. The buyer will receive a certificate of authenticity and instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.

Q.Yam--ThChM