YES OR NO? In The Guardian, Dalya Alberge wrote about Bonhams clarifying how it conducts its charity auctions, after complaints that it was taking a “buyer’s premium”—the charge added to the hammer price—from a good cause. At a sale in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust charity, that took place last month, art dealer John Bradley asked if the auction house included the buyer’s premium in “all [the] proceeds” mentioned in its catalogue. Bonhams’ sale coordinator replied “Buyer’s premium will be payable and 20% VAT.” On Friday, the auction house announced the opposite: “We will donate the buyer’s premium to the Teenage Cancer Trust”. Brandler said he was “thrilled” that the charity would receive all the money paid for the charity lots. He added: “Will other salesrooms follow suit and be more [transparent] in their descriptions?”

SAY CHEESE! The photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles is doing well, despite the hectic context of France’s parliamentary elections, reports Le Quotidien de l’art. It’s 55th edition, titled “Beneath the Surface”, consists of 30 exhibitions (10 certified by the artistic direction). The event is always presented as an opportunity to discover Arles’s heritage in a new light, as well as unusual spaces, such as the second floor of the city’s Monoprix (the French equivalent of Target), which currently features the seven finalists of Fondation Roederer’s Découverte prize. The Henri-Comte gallery, adjacent to the town hall, is home to still lifes by Ishiuchi Miyako (winner of Kering’s 2024 Women in Motion prize) depicting objects that belonged to her late mother. The Chapelle de la Charité houses a spectacular cabinet of curiosities by Michel Medinger. Sophie Calle took over a damp underground space, called Cryptoportiques, to showcase a series of decomposing photographs. The idea is to speed up the decomposition process and help them disappear “on a high note”. The festival runs through September 29.

THE DIGEST

Tanzanian portrait artist Shadrack Chaula was arrested for recording a viral video, showing him burning a photo of President Samia Suluhu Hassan while verbally insulting her. The 24-year-old painter has been sentenced to two years in prison or a fine of $2,000 (£1,600) after being found guilty of cybercrimes. Some social media users have started an online drive to raise money to pay Chaula’s fine so he can be freed from jail. [BBC]

In an interview with The Asia Pivot, Artnet Pro’s biweekly members-only newsletter about Asia’s art markets, Alice Lung, who overseeing the Perrotin gallery’s operations in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, and Los Angeles stated: “From what I observed at the recently concluded Hong Kong auction sales, the Chinese contemporary art market appears particularly weak. Buyers in mainland China are not as active right now. […] When the market was strong, each artwork generated more interest. That has declined, but overall business activity remains similar. […] Meanwhile, collectors are becoming more careful, discerning, and selective about their purchases.” [Artnet Pro]

Worried that they would not have enough space to keep collecting, the Los Angeles-based couple Candace and Charles Nelson found a two-fold solution to their problem. One, learn to appreciate smaller, more intimate works. Two, team up with interior designer Sara Story to complete their modernist Beverly Hills home. Their walls boast works by contemporary artists with ties to California, including Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood, and Brenna Youngblood. [Cultured]

The Lourdes Bishop Jean-Marc Micas has put off any decision on whether to remove mosaics by Reverend Marko Rupnik, who is accused of abusing women. The shrine will remain intact until a satisfying solution can be found for the victims. The art work was created while some abuses were going on. The ex-Jesuit artist was expelled last year, and the Vatican has been looking into him since last October.[Abc]

French lawyer and politician Roland Dumas has died at age 101. He was France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the President of the Constitutional Council, but also accused of defrauding the Giacometti estate. Lastly, he was known for playing a central role in the handover of Guernica to Spain after Franco‘s death. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

THE KICKER

OLYMPIC SNEAK PEEK. The Olympics and Paralympics are right around the corner. One of the host city’s selling points was that it would primarily rely on existing or temporary structures for sporting competitions, such as the Grand Palais for fencing and taekwondo, the Stade Roland-Garros for tennis and boxing, and the Stade de France, the country’s national stadium, for athletics, rugby, and closing ceremonies. Only the Aquatics Center in the suburb of Saint-Denis has been built specifically for the Games. The new permanent sports facility has been co-designed by the Amsterdam-based firm VenhoevenCS and the French architects Ateliers 2/3/4. Here is a glimpse of it.  [AD]

In the fall, when the house debuted its London-to-Paris format, the series brought in a lower total of $118 million. Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th/21st century, said this week’s result is the highest in the region since 2017, describing it as “a sign of relief for us” in a press conference following the sale. The auctions were staged in the afternoon, as has become common practice in marquee auctions post-pandemic, though they were still labeled evening sales, in keeping with Christie’s tradition of hosting its biggest sales at night.

In the London session, Banksy’s Love Is In The Air (with stars), from 2003, was withdrawn because the auction house’s failure to find a buyer for it. Twenty-one lots were secured with guarantees, bringing in a collective $118.5 million with buyer’s premium and accounting for 56 percent of the total sum made across the three sales.

Bidding from Asia continues to be a driving force in marquee auctions. Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti said that, in the first six months of the year, bidding from Asian collectors across all categories at the auction house has surged to “historic levels,” above its usual 30–35 percent share. But in yesterday’s sales, bidding coming from clients registered with Hong Kong specialists was nothing out of the ordinary, with much of these buyers’ attention focused on a few lots by George Condo, Yayoi Kusama and Edgar Degas.

René Magritte, La Vengeance, 1936.

Leading the first portion of the series on Wednesday was Picasso’s L’étreinte (1969), depicting the artist and his third wife Jacqueline Roque in an embrace. It sold for £14.7 million ($20.3 million) in its auction debut. Two bidders from New York and London competed for the guaranteed work. The hammer eventually fell at £12.6 million ($17.4 million), putting the final sum just above its £11 million high estimate. It went to a collector bidding on the phone with Alex Rotter, chairman of 20th/21st century Christie’s worldwide.

Alongside Basquiat, Picasso leads by market share in the top auction sales. “Picasso continues to be a very attractive global brand,” Bertazzoni said after the sale.

Also among the top lots was Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculpture Falling Man (ca. 1950–51). It attracted three bidders, two on the phone from New York and London and another from a man in the salesroom. It realized a hammer price of £11.7 million ($16.2 million), meeting its low estimate of $16 million.

When the action moved on to Paris for a sale led by Cécile Verdier, a technical glitch interrupted the livestream during bidding on the Gross collection’s cover lot, René Magritte La Vengeance (1936). After a several-minute-long pause, the Magritte had drawn bidding from six clients, who drove the final price to £12.5 million ($17.3 million). It was bought by a private collector bidding on the phone with Christie’s Paris specialist Fleur de Nicolay.

Another Giacommetti that sold in the Paris session from the Gross sale was Giacometti’s Buste d’homme (Lotar II), depicting the photographer Eli Lotar. The hammer fell at made €3.3 million ($3.5 million), nearly three times the low estimate of €1.2 million ($1.4 million).

Salman Toor, The Palm Reader III, 2019.

Just one record was set during the series. The auction’s opening lot, Stanley Whitney’s Light a New Wilderness (2016), sold for £525,000 ($726,600), three times the low estimate. It went to a buyer on the phone with Christie’s Hong Kong director Elaine Kwok.

Salman Toor’s The Palm Reader III (2019) was likewise meant to drum up excitement among bidders. The work sold for £337,500 ($467,100), three times the £150,000 ($206,465) low estimate, going to a buyer on the phone with London specialist Joanna Hattab. The result was still below the record price of $881,700 set at evening sale in Hong Kong held earlier this month by Phillips and Poly.

Eight bidders competed for a geometric painting by British artist Bridget Riley. Zing 2 (1971) sold for a triple-estimate price of £3.2 million ($4.5 million). The result was the second-highest price for Riley at auction.

Christie’s offered Keith Haring’s 1984 untitled yellow tarpaulin work at an estimate of £3.9 million ($5.3 million). In a bid to attract crypto-wealthy buyers, the house said it would accept cryptocurrency from the winning bidder. It made £4.3 million ($5.9 million), marking a solid return from its last sale at auction in 2018 from the collection of the German dealer Paul Maenz. The current seller, who went unnamed by Christie’s, purchased it there for £3.9 million.

George Condo’s grandly sized painting Large Figure Composition (2008) did not generate the same kind of success. It had last sold for $852,500 at Christie’s in 2017, when it came to auction from the collection of late Whitney Museum trustee Melva Bucksbaum. On Wednesday, it sold at a loss, finding a new owner for £500,000 ($688,400).

Works by Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly and Winston Churchill were among the few lots that failed to place with new owners.

Christie’s executives said that the house will continue to think on a global scale, making moves to unite regions that have long been kept commercially separate, likely through virtual means. “Our sales are now less site-specific,” Pylkkänen said in the post-sale conference. According to Pylkkänen, salesrooms included 800 participants pre-pandemic. Now, several thousand people watch the proceedings, with most of them doing so from behind a screen. Cerutti, meanwhile, described the dual-city auction as a “relevant format post-Brexit.”

Cerutti added that further expanding sales in Hong Kong, where sale venues are relatively limited, remains a key focus for the auction house, saying, “I think the main question is: How do we integrate the Asia sales in a better way, knowing that the activity there and the number of clients there is so important?”

Adding to the pre-sale excitement, Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker announced from the rostrum that the auction house had sold Ronald Perelman Alberto Giacometti’s nine-foot-tall Grande Femme I, which carried a $90 million reserve, privately. At the beginning of the impressionist and modern portion of the sale, Sotheby’s announced that a similar, but smaller sculpture by Giacometti was also sold via private sale. Those transactions, along with the BMA’s withdrawn lots would have added a substantial amount to the public totals announced for the auctions.

As it was the contemporary sale generated a total of $142.9 million, landing at the low end of the pre-sale estimate of $128.2 and $184.3 Million, across 39 lots. (Sale totals include the house’s buyer’s premium; pre-sale totals do not.) Five lots were withdrawn before the sale. 19 works total from the contemporary sale were guaranteed, the low estimated total of which was $46.8 million. The impressionist sale brought in $141 million across 38 lots, also toward the low end of the estimate of $112.7 million-$162.3 million. 17 works were guaranteed, the low estimated total of which was a collective $58.3 million. Three works were withdrawn before the sale. Together, the sale’s realized a 97% sell-through rate.

Barker led the two auctions from London, fielding bids from remote colleagues in Hong Kong and New York, with the auction also broadcast on social media channels, and streaming services like Museum TV and Cheddar. According to Barker’s comments in the post-sale press conference, Sotheby’s estimates more than 1 million viewers watched the auctions.

The top lot of the contemporary sale was a Calder sculpture that sold for $8.3 million. “A proper global battle,” exclaimed Barker during competition for the Calder lot, which drew bids from London, New York, Hong Kong and online. A mix-media work by Jean-Michel Basquiat titled Black (1986), from the estate of dealer Enrico Navarra hammered above the high estimate of $6 million to Sotheby’s chairman of the Fine Art division Amy Cappellazzo’s bidder for a total of $8.1 million. It’s counterpart, Jazz  (1986) sold slightly lower to another bidder for $6.9 million. Ruth Asawa’s hanging sculpture made circa 1952 saw bidding from Hong Kong with Yuki Terase, Sotheby’s Asia head of contemporary art. It eventually went to a bidder with Brooke Lampley for $4.3 million with buyer’s fees, still under the record price of $5.4 million set at Christie’s in July.

Works of design were among the most prominent sales in contemporary segment of the auction. Three vintage Alfa Romeo concept cars made a price of $14.8 million; a Carlo Mollino mid-century dining table deaccessioned from the Brooklyn Museum collection fully outpaced its estimate to sell for $6.2 million.

The sale opened with Jordan Casteel’s Barbershop (2015) which did not see the usual early-lot bidding frenzy. It hammered just above the low estimate at $450,000 to make 564,500 with buyer’s fees. The fireworks came with the second lot, Matthew Wong’s Dialogue (2018), a forest scene, which sold for $1.7 million, against an estimate of $200,000-$30,000. It sold to a bidder on the phone with Liz Sterling, a Sotheby’s chairman and director of private sales. The late artist has seen a rapid market ascent following his debut in Sotheby’s June contemporary evening sale. Most recently, Wong’s record moved up to $4.5 million for Shangri-La (2017) sold during a Christie’s contemporary day sale in October.

British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s single-figure painting Figure of Eight (2015) was offered twice during the sale. First, it hammered at $700,000, and the second time went for $650,000 to make $806,5000 with buyer’s premium, against an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. The first sale involved a misunderstanding over the bid made by Sotheby’s Nicholas Chow. When the auction was re-run at the end of the sale, Chow’s bidder would not advance and the work went to another buyer. The price comes below the artist’s record of $1.6 million set at in November 2017 at Sotheby’s New York for the sale of The Hours Behind You (2011).

Jean Dubuffet’s Rue Tournique Bourlique (1963), also deaccessioned from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, sold for $3.2 million with buyer’s fees, against a low estimate of $2.5 million; another work by the artist from the museum, Le Messager, went for $3.3 million. Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1989) sold for $5 million with buyer’s premium. Alex Katz’s double portrait of twin face-to-face women The Red Band (1978) sold for $3.2 million after protracted bidding in New York and London, against an estimate of $1.8 million to $2.5 million.

Helen Frankenthaler, Carousel (1975). Gift of Steve Chase.

“Another great market moment for us tonight was continuing the well-deserved recalibration of the markets for legendary female postwar artists,” said David Galperin, head of Sotheby’s New York contemporary art evening sale in a post-sale press conference.

Among the other museum deaccessions in the auction was from the The Palm Springs Art Museum, which sold a monumental maroon-wash Helen Frankenthaler gifted to the museum in 1994 to support its acquisition fund. After drawn-out bidding between Lampley and Courtney Kremers, Sotheby’s head of contemporary day sales, Carousel (1979) hammered at $3.9 million with Lampley’s phone bidder, making $4.7 million with buyer’s fees. The result follows Sotheby’s record-breaking sale of Royal Fireworks (1975) in June for $7.9 million. Among the other second generation female abstract expressionists represented in the sale was Lee Krasner. Her orange canvas Camouflage from 1963 sold for $3.8 million. The low estimate was $2.5 million.

In a pre-auction video with author and former radio-show host Kurt Andersen, Amy Cappellazzo discussed Mark Rothko’s black and maroon canvas from 1958, made in tandem with his Seagram murals. “For every corner of the globe,” she said, “there could be a buyer for Rothko.” Yet, there wasn’t tonight as the work once owned by financier David Martinez and last sold at Christie’s in May 2013 for for $27 million failed to garner a bid. Buyers may have been put off by the $25 million low estimate

Leading the modern portion of the night was Giacometti’s Femme Leoni (1956) prompting another sparring match between Terase and Lampley; the statue hammered at 22.6 million to Terase’s bidder, going for $26.2 million with buyer’s fees, against an estimate of $14 million to $18 million. Van Gogh’s floral still life from 1890, formerly restituted to the Rothschild family, the descendants of its original owners, went for $16.2 million to Brooke Lampley’s phone bidder, hammering below the estimate of $14 million.

Giorgio de Chirico’s mythological scene Il Pomeriggio di Ariannne from 1913 brought one of the more suspenseful moments of the night. Caught between phone bids from Julian Dawes, co-deputy head of the Impressionist and Modern Art department and Grégoire Billaut, head of the contemporary art department in New York, it eventually went to Billaut’s client for $15.9 million with premium, setting a new, but surprisingly low, record for the artist. It last sold at Christie’s from the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé for $14.1 million in February 2009. A second lot from the same collection as the de Chirico, Man Ray’s Black Widow (Nativity), 1915, hammered below its low estimate, going for $5.8 million, against an estimate of $5 million to $7 million, making the second highest price for the artist.

Surrealists occupied a substantial portion of the modern sale. René Magritte’s, L’ovation from 1962, formerly in the collection of Dominique de Menil, made $14.1 million, against an estimate of $12 million-$18 million. Another Magritte’s Reverie de monsieur James (1943) depicting a bushel of intertwined roses and emerging hands sold for $5.1 million with buyer’s premium. The painting has been requested for the upcoming museum exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris devoted to the artist, but failed to reach much beyond the low expectation. Paul Delvaux’s Le Vestales (1972) sold for $1.4 million, almost reaching the high estimate of $1.5 million. Georgia O’Keefe’s Jonquils (1936) made $4.3 million, hammering below the low estimate of $4 million.

A Monet from the Brooklyn Museum saw competition from Hong Kong and New York, hammering at $3.8 million, against an estimate of $2.5 to $3.5 million with an online bidder.

Correction, 10/29/20, 11:31 a.m.: A previous version of this article misstated the seller of René Magritte’s L’ovation was Dominque de Menil. Menil previously owned the work and is not current the seller.

A photograph by Eli Lotar of Alberto Giacometti in a room of the Hotel de Rive in Geneva, Switzerland, before October 1944.

©ELI LOTAR/FOUNDATION GIACOMETTI, PARIS

This summer, the Guggenheim Museum in New York has been hosting a well-reviewed, large-scale exhibition of work of Alberto Giacometti. It closes September 12, but just a month later, those in the city will have another chance to enjoy the work of the Swiss master, in a show focusing on a key stretch of his career that has received less notice than the periods when he was devoted to making his famed Surrealist and Existentialist pieces.

On October 17, the Upper East Side gallery Luxembourg & Dayan will open “Intimate Immensity: Alberto Giacometti Sculptures, 1935–1945,” looking at works by the sculptor that are almost impossibly tiny—one is made out of a matchbox and none is taller than three inches. Thinking deeply about questions of scale while making these pieces, the artist was laying the groundwork for the thin, elongated figures that are now his trademark.

The years bracketed by the exhibition were dark ones for Giacometti: World War II raged, and his mother died. But they were also ones of restless experimentation for the artist part, and it was also during this time that he began exchanging letters with the art dealer Pierre Matisse, the son of Henri Matisse, about his practice, and a sample of the letters will be shown at the exhibition. (The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation is among the show’s lenders, who also include the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti and the Alberto Giacometti Stiftung.)

Describing that correspondence, the gallery’s founder, Daniella Luxembourg, who is a Giacometti expert, told ARTnews that the artist “spoke to Pierre Matisse, and he said, ‘My problem is that no matter how hard I try to start with the structure, I start in my head and it’s very big.’ And then his demon became abstraction. He said, ‘Then I enter into the eyes, and the nose and the mouth, and it becomes abstract. So for me to catch all the head at the same time, I need to make it very small so that I have control over the figure.’ ”

The modestly scaled nature of the work will have a special resonance at the gallery, which is the second-narrowest house in Manhattan, Luxembourg said. “The space and the work will look sort of like they’re talking to each other.�� The exhibition will feature an installation design by Urs Fischer, another Swiss artist with a penchant for sculpting the human form in inventive ways.

“Intimate Immensity” is curated by Giacometti scholar Casimiro Di Crescenzo, who said in an email, “It is a privilege to open the first exhibition in the United States to focus on Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures from the years 1935–1945, a transformative decade in the life of one of the greatest sculptors of all time. This is a decade in which Giacometti found himself reducing the size of his work further and further and further until his sculptures vanished, as he later confessed, ‘into dust.’ Truly a revolutionary experiment.”

“There was very good energy in the room—incredible energy,” said New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe, leaving the sales room after unsuccessfully bidding on a large 1969 Picasso. (Musketeer with a Pipe brought $30.9 million.) “What was surprising was that so many lots sold over their high estimates.” According to Sotheby’s, 94.2 percent of sold works brought prices at or above their estimates.

“The estimates were much more reasonable than last night,” New York dealer David Benrimon told A.i.A. after bagging a 1975 Marc Chagall canvas for $2.2 million at the evening’s end. “Tonight they did their homework and had better estimates. Many works were fresh to the market, and had not been shopped around before the sale.” Simon Shaw, head of the Impressionist and modern art department, pointed out at a post-sale press conference that only a dozen works offered last night had appeared at auction in the last 20 years.

Opening the evening’s proceedings were the 14 modernist works, which brought a total of $64 million. All had been off the market since prior to 1975 and were purchased from Paris’s Galerie Tarica, according to the catalogue. The highest price among these works was achieved for Balla’s 1913 oil and ink on paper Moving Automobile, an abstract work in which motion is evoked with raking diagonal lines and multiple swirl shapes. It fetched $11.5 million, which, despite not meeting its low estimate of $12 million, set an auction record for the artist.

During the 37 minutes it took to sell these 14 works, auction records were set for four artists, including two for Francis Picabia. His abstract canvas Volucelle II, ca. 1922, sold for $8.8 million to an unnamed buyer, more than doubling his record previous to last night, of $4.1 million. Over five minutes of bidding, May Ray’s Promenade, a 1916 abstract oil, brought $5.9 million from an anonymous purchaser, nearly doubling the artist’s previous record of $3 million.

The biggest sale of the evening was Alberto Giacometti’s 1955 bronze Large Thin Head (Large Head of Diego), which met its high estimate of $50 million after seven minutes of bidding. The buyer was New York’s Acquavella Galleries.

Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1935), a painting of his young lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, was the second-highest sale, fetching $39.9 million from an unidentified buyer after a four-minute bidding war, with Sotheby’s specialists David Norman and Simon Shaw contending.

While moderns dominated, Impressionists also sold well, led by Claude Monet’s Ice, White Effect (1893), which rang up at $16.1 million, above its high estimate of $14 million. The winter landscape shows ice floating on the Seine.

At a post-sale press conference, Shaw touted global participation, with sellers from 13 countries and buyers from 36. You can have a sale like this, he boasted, “when you have property that his fresh to the market and estimated in a responsible way,” a clear dig at the competition.

“This is a sophisticated market,” New York dealer Frances Beatty, of Richard L. Feigen & Co., told A.i.A. after the sale. “People recognize quality and they are looking for opportunities. They see that Dada and Surrealism are undervalued—witness the Picabia and Man Ray prices achieved tonight.”

The auctions continue next week, with Phillips’ contemporary art sale Nov. 11, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales of postwar and contemporary art Nov. 12 and 13, respectively. 

Capitalizing on the particular form of spring fever surrounding Picasso  — weeks after opening at Gagosian Gallery, the late master’s show still sends lines of gallery goers snaking down West 21st Street — Sotheby’s banked on La fille de l’artiste à deux ans et demi avec un bateau (1938) as its catalogue cover image. The painting of the artist’s then-young daughter, Maya, was expected to fetch between $16 and $24 million. Following just a single nod from an unnamed bidder, however, the lot tanked at $12.25 million — an undoubted disappointment for its seller, Bernie Madoff victim William Achenbaum, who runs the Gansevoort Hotel Group. (Christie’s also chose Picasso as its cover boy: Mousquetaire a la Pipe, a late work from 1968 estimated at $12 to 18 million occupies the front, while Julian Schnabel’s Femme au Chapeau takes the back.) Alberto Giacometti’s 1959 bronze, Le Chat, also proved an unequivocal loss, as the lot stalled without a single bid against its $16 – $24 million estimate.

There were successes at Sotheby’s sale: Piet Mondrian’s Composition in Black and White, with Double Lines (1934) was the evening’s top earner, raking in nearly double its $5 million high estimate at $9.2 million. Some attributed social capital as a driving force behind the sale, as the residual effects of Christie’s February auction of the estate of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé are still being felt in the market; several of the top lots were Mondrians, and the Louvre museum’s Abu Dhabi location was said to have paid $24.5 million for one canvas from 1922.

A series of smaller sales bolstered the evening. Impressionist works were in high demand, as several properties from the fabled collection of Henry O. and Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer sold for well above their estimated values, including Camille Pissarro’s Inondation à Pontoise, which sold for $2,994,500 (it was initially estimated at $900.000 – $1.2 million). German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop sold four paintings by the Polish Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka for a total of $13.8 million. At $4.9 million (est. $4-6 million) Lempika’s Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (1932) set an auction record for the artist.

[Click through the slide show above for the top lots from Sotheby’s Modern and Impressionist evening sale. Note that final prices include the commission paid to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000; 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.]