In advance of Phillips’ New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art sale today, I wanted to briefly review a few lots that have my attention. As appraisers, so much of our work lies in making sense of sales and analysis after the fact, that it can be downright fun to look at inventory in advance of a sale with the intention of forming some hypotheses and then squaring those with the results when they come in. Heck, if I’m wrong, I may even admit it. I’ll follow up tomorrow or in the coming days with a “told ya so” or an “I’m eating my hat” post to process the results. It’s not pilates, but it is a decent work out for the educated guess muscle.
Lot 33, Christo, Surrounded Islands (Project for Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, FL), 1981, 32 7/8 x 27 7/8 in. Estimate: $70,000-100,000.
The first lot to grab my attention (going numerically in order from the beginning), was this mixed media work by Christo made in conjunction with the Surrounded Islands installation in Miami in the early 80s. 2025 would have been Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 90th birthdays (they were actually both born on the same day). Earlier in the year, Phillips had offered 20-30 Christos like this in celebration of that fact. Many (or maybe all?) of those works had appeared in a museum retrospective in Japan. The present work’s estimate seems to me to be right on, assuming the appetite is still the same for Christo. I expect this work to sell comfortably within range, likely towards the bottom end. The top performing Surrounded Island works historically all tend to be ones that include a healthy dose of the vibrant pink color that reflects the saturated hue of the original installation in Biscayne Bay. The pink present in this lot is not quite as far up on that vibrancy scale as some of those other Surrounded Island works, but to my thinking, the estimate reflects this.
Lot 46, Kennedy Yanko, Don’t take my truth for ignorance, 2023, 16 x 12 1/4 x 7 in. Estimate: $30,000-40,000.
Lot 46 is a smaller work by Kennedy Yanko, who had had some very visible (and large) work at the Armory Show just a few weeks ago courtesy of dealer James Cohan. Yanko’s work has appeared in a handful of fairly high-profile auctions over the past three years and has consistently performed pretty well. The results of the sale today will be an interesting indication of where things stand in her market.
Lot 78, Corydon Cowansage, Red, Peach, Purple, 2022, 70 x 60 in. Estimate: $8,000-12,000
This modestly estimated, but strong, work by Corydon Cowansage is among the array of works in the sale carrying a relatively low estimate. So much attention gets paid in the art market press to the tippy top blockbuster part of the market as the ultimate barometer that I think it’s absolutely necessary, especially for appraisers, to have a grip on the vast middle and lower tiers of the art market as well. To be honest, I am not familiar with Cowansage, but this work stikes me as a quality example (despite the bottom left corner of the canvas stretcher seeming slightly warped, really only possible to see in person), so it will be interesting to witness the appetite for good, “affordable” painting that is in the present mix.
Lot 86, Larry Poons, Backup and Push, 2004, 66 1/4 x 129 3/4 in. Estimate: $60,000-80,000