The price was nonetheless a new auction high for Kandinsky.
“It’s not quite at the point of orchestral abstraction,” said Richard Nagy, a London-based dealer who specializes in early 20th-century German art. “But it’s one of the best pictures to be seen in London for a long time,” he said, referring to the city’s recent dearth of trophy-level modern and contemporary auction lots.
Sotheby’s and Christie’s no longer hold separate evening sales of high-value Impressionist or modern and contemporary art. In both New York and London, the categories are now mashed into evenings of works spanning three centuries, with most excitement generated by the latest of-the-moment names.
In London on Wednesday, Sotheby’s kick-started its evening with 21 works in its new “The Now” format for the sale of young art. First up was the large, enigmatic interior “Family Issues I,” from 2019, by Mohammed Sami, a London-based Iraqi exile whose paintings are currently the subject of an enthusiastically reviewed show at Camden Art Center. Estimated to sell for at least $60,000, this work rose to $428,996, setting a benchmark price for Sami on his auction debut.
Last month, the London-based analysts ArtTactic published a report gauging confidence in the contemporary art market. The 124 respondents took a negative view of its prospects in the first half of 2023, citing “economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” but the report added that a majority expected the market for “on-the-rise” artists to grow.
If demand for a fashionable name peaks, the auction houses simply replace it with another. The previous evening at Christie’s, for instance, the young British painter Michaela Yearwood-Dan suddenly became a name to watch after her highly decorative floral abstract “Love me nots” (2021) was contested by at least six telephone bidders to $880,614, some 16 times the low estimate. This month, Yearwood-Dan will feature in “Rites of Passage,” a themed group show at Gagosian in London.
