The first NFT to come to auction in Europe—and only minted in September—sold for just shy of one million pounds to a bidder sat in the room at a Christie’s auction in London. A triptych of NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)—one of the most popular NFT projects online—sold for £982,500 (with fees) after a quick flurry of bids.
The buyer may have caught a wave. The collective Yuga Labs, the creators of BAYC, announced they had signed with the agency Maverick, which represents pop artists including Britney Spears and Madonna. The successful bidder now owns three of the roughly 10,000 algorithmically generated bored apes which, together, traded $132.2m during peak sales in August according to The Block. More traditional works of art also turned heads at Christie’s 20/21st Century Evening Sale, which contained 38 lots, including many major 21st century artists, and was the first fully attended in-person event to be held since the onset of the pandemic.
The first lot of the sale, a figurative painting from 2019 by the British artist Cecily Brown, which was donated by the artist and her gallery Thomas Dane Gallery, was estimated at £500,000 but went for £2.9m (£3.5m with fees) after a sustained bidding war from buyers from three continents. Proceeds from the sale will go to ClientEarth, an environmental charity Christie’s is partnering with in collaboration with Gallery Climate Coalition. Brown was the most prominent of a strong showing of female painters at the auction, with works by Shara Hughes, Hilary Precis and Emily Mae Smith all far exceeding their estimates.
Clore, previously chairperson of Sotheby’s Europe until 2016 and now co-founder of the art advisory group Clore Wyndham, notes the Christie’s sale came off the back of a very strong showing at Sotheby’s equivalent auction on Thursday for young artists like Jadé Fadojutimi, Ewa Juszkiewicz and, most notably, Flora Yukhnovich, the 31-year-old British artist from Norwich who graduated from the City & Guilds of London Art School as recently as 2017. Her painting I’ll have what she’s having, created in 2020, shattered expectations to sell for £2.3m. At Christie’s today, Hilary Pecis’ 2019 painting Kaba On A Chair sold for £180,000 (£225,000 with fees) against a high estimate of £60,000, whilst Emily Mae Smith’s 2017 Paint While Screaming sold for £95,000 (£118,750 with fees), nearly four times the high estimate.
In contrast to heady bidding for young painters, there were some disappointments for established names. Hockney’s Guest House Garden, a painting from 2000 which some commentators expected to fly, sold for £5m (£5.8m with fees) on an estimate of up to £7m, whilst Peter Doig’s Hill Houses, estimated at up to £3.5 to £4.5m, failed to sell. A Rudolf Stingel painting from 2012, estimated at £1m, was withdrawn. Christie’s reported 35% of buyers were from Asia. There was 50% increase in buyers under 40, year on year. In all, 90% of the lots sold for a total of £64.6m (with fees), below a pre-sale high estimate (without fees) of £66.4m.