Hopes Magritte and Monet paintings in autumn New York sales can shake up auction market
Christie’s and Sotheby’s New York auctions this week also include works by Ed Ruscha and Keith Haring and one of Maurizio Cattelan’s bananas
With a Magritte painting estimated to sell for nearly US$100 million, drawings by pop artist Keith Haring and a rather gnarly banana, New York’s auction houses will try to shake up a stale market this week.
The sale of one of Magritte’s Empire of Light (L’Empire des Lumieres) paintings, which will go under the hammer at Christie’s evening sale on November 19, 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 US$95 million, which would easily shatter the previous record for a Magritte, £59.4 million (US$75 million), achieved in 2022.
Christie’s is hoping that the Magritte, and a celebrated 1964 painting of a petrol station by the now 86-year-old American pop artist Ed Ruscha, can reinvigorate an art market that has slowed since 2023.
The auction house – which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by France’s Pinault family – said sales totalled US$2.1 billion in the first half of 2024.
