Auction Results: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, June 26 and 27, 2013 @Sotheby's London

Andreas Gursky easily carried the photographic load at Sotheby's Contemporary Art auctions in London last week. His five stock exchange images in the Evening sale brought in just under £5.5M in aggregate, and with the help of the Struth Pantheon image at roughly £800K, basically made the rest of the results irrelevant. Even with an overall Buy-In rate near 35%, the Total Sale Proceeds still soared over the pre-sale high estimate.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Photography Lots: 43
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £3961000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £5503000
Total Lots Sold: 28
Total Lots Bought In: 15
Buy In %: 34.88%
Total Sale Proceeds: £7171475

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 0
Low Sold: NA
Low Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total Low Estimate: £0
Total Low Sold: NA

Mid Total Lots: 22
Mid Sold: 14
Mid Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 36.36%
Total Mid Estimate: £343000
Total Mid Sold: £250625

High Total Lots: 21
High Sold: 14
High Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 33.33%
Total High Estimate: £5160000
Total High Sold: £6920850

The top lot by High estimate was lot 28, Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade, 1997, estimated at £700000-900000; it sold for £1538500. The top outcome of the two sales was lot 26, Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade III, 1999-2009, estimated at £600000-800000, sold at £2154500 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's).

100.00% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were four surprises in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 26, Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade III, 1999-2009, estimated at £600000-800000, sold at £2154500
Lot 437, Mona Hatoum, Performance Still, 1985-1995, estimated at £6000-8000, sold at £20000 (image at right, middle, via Sotheby's)
Lot 447, Thomas Struth. Jiangxi Zhong Lu, Shanghai, 1996, estimated at £12000-18000, sold at £40000
Lot 448, Thomas Struth, Nanjing Xi Lu 2, Shanghai, 2002, estimated at £18000-25000, sold at £57500 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby's)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

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