Record $1.5bn auction reveals Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as voracious collector

Auction records tumbled at Christie’s New York on Wednesday night as the first 60 works from the collection of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sold for $1.3bn ($1.5bn including fees). It was the biggest single auction haul ever and the first to break the $1bn barrier. All but one work hammered above $1mn — the cheapest was a 1922 oil by Paul Klee at $850,000 ($1.1mn with fees) — while three works hammered for more than $100mn, five once the auction house’s premium was added, in another auction first.

Top of the lots was Georges Seurat’s 1888 work “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version)”, which sold for an artist record of $130mn ($149.2mn) over the phone to Xin Li-Cohen, Christie’s deputy chair and its liaison with China’s billionaires. Buying in the busy saleroom was dominated by high-power art advisers picking up works on behalf of their wealthiest clients. Overall, 20 artist records were made on the night.

Wednesday’s cream-of-the-crop auction — with hammer proceeds all going to charities — beats the likes of Peggy and David Rockefeller’s, whose collection totalled $835.1mn with fees in 2018. Much of the excitement of the Paul Allen auction was inevitable. Presale estimates had been set to at least $1.1bn and Christie’s had guaranteed to buy all the works, with 39 of the 60 subsequently backed by third parties who promise to buy at a minimum agreed level. Nonetheless, the astronomic totals will add more confidence to a market that still seems to defy the ongoing economic and political uncertainty outside of its bubble.

The works in the Christie’s sales, which by no means include everything that Allen owned, characterise him as a scattergun collector. The Microsoft executive, who died in 2018 aged 65, voraciously bought a broad range of artists rather than favouring any one style or period. He had a sentimental streak, and Christie’s catalogue notes some themes, including a penchant for Venice, where Allen’s yacht was often spotted. His Venice-based works on Wednesday included two Canalettos — one from around 1730, which sold for $8.8mn ($10.5mn with fees, est $5mn-$7mn) and a slightly later work that soared to $10mn ($11.8mn with fees, est $2.5mn-$3.5mn). Manet’s uncharacteristic, light-filled 1874 painting “Le Grand Canal à Venise” went for $45mn ($51.9mn with fees, est $45mn-$65mn) while Giacometti’s “Femme de Venise III” sculpture (cast 1958) sold for an above-estimate $21.5mn ($25mn with fees).

Most striking is the revelation of Allen’s dominance in London and New York auction rooms in the last 20 years of his life. He apparently bought directly and often picked up more than one work in a sale. On December 8, 1999, he bought three paintings from an auction at Christie’s in London. These sold well: Paul Klee’s “Bunte Landschaft” (1928), bought by Allen for £991,500, sold on Wednesday for $4mn ($4.9mn with fees, est $1.2mn-$1.8mn); Yves Tanguy’s “Un grand tableau qui représente un paysage” (1927), bought for £1.5mn — an artist record at the time — sold on Wednesday for $2.8mn ($3.4mn with fees, est $2.5mn-$3.5mn); while Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for Self-Portrait” (1979), bought for a mere £1.2mn in 1999, proved the best investment of the day, selling this week for $25mn ($29mn with fees, est $25mn-$35mn).

Artist Andrei Molodkin has been commissioned by Libero, a Spanish football publication, to produce an alternative World Cup trophy to highlight the human rights violations in Qatar, the oil-rich host of this year’s controversial tournament, which begins on November 20. Molodkin’s life-size acrylic mould, made from a replica trophy, will be slowly filled with crude oil and offered for $150mn. The artist says that this price level was chosen to match the profits from “bribes and kickbacks” taken by former officials of world football’s governing body Fifa, as identified by the US Department of Justice in 2015.

Proceeds from the sale will go towards compensation for migrant workers who have suffered human rights abuses during the preparations for the 2022 World Cup, in keeping with calls from Amnesty International, the artist says. “I have always been interested in important icons that are corrupted by the materials of war and fighting,” Molodkin comments. Another recent work by the artist, who was born in Russia, served in its army and now lives in France, uses blood donated by Ukrainian soldiers to pour into a portrait of the Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The plan is for his “World Cup Filled with Qatari Oil” (2022) to go on display in London on December 18, coinciding with the tournament’s final, in the recently opened Kennington space of A/political, an activist organisation.

Photofairs, which has run in Shanghai since 2014, is to open an edition in New York next year. The fair for up to 100 galleries will run alongside The Armory Show, a modern and contemporary art fair, in the Javits Center on Manhattan’s West Side (September 8-10). “It’s already an amazing time of year to be in New York and we are adding flavour to that week,” says Scott Gray, founder and chief executive of Creo (previously the World Photography Organisation), a partnership with Angus Montgomery Arts.

Photofairs had a trial US run in San Francisco in 2017 where it held just two editions. Since then, there has been increasing interest from collectors and institutions for photography while, as Gray notes, the medium itself has expanded its definition. The new event will have separate sections for film and video art, alongside more traditional modern to contemporary fare. “Artists today rarely classify themselves as just photographers. The whole ecosystem around contemporary photography has grown so much. Regardless of how you feel about NFTs, they have helped engage the market for digital art,” Gray says.

Michael Benson and Fariba Farshad, founder-directors of Photo London, have taken a 10 per cent stake in the New York fair, although it will be run by a team on the ground, Gray confirms. In February, Creo bought a 25 per cent stake in Photo London.

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