Brisk Business at Day Sale Shows Pop Art’s Bounding Strength

“Somebody is printing the stuff. It can’t be real money,” hissed a woman struggling through the crowd at Sotheby’s auction house.

She wasn’t talking about the multimillion-dollar prices being paid for contemporary art at this week’s most exclusive auctions. Her joke was leveled at what used to be called the bottom end of the market, the “Part II” day sales of relatively low-priced works that traditionally follow splashy, big-ticket evening events.

Once poorly attended and still rarely publicized beyond the auction houses’ mailing lists, these sales have changed from quiet opportunities for the trade to public spectacles as the market for contemporary art has escalated. You can still walk in without a ticket, but you may not be able to find a seat, and unless you are willing to shell out several thousand dollars--or hundreds of thousands--you will not be able to buy.

Watching is fascinating, however, for these rambling sales of everything from major works by minor artists and vice versa to aesthetic curiosities sometimes reveal trends more clearly than the more prestigious auctions.

The most obvious trend--that contemporary art is selling better than ever--is not news. Another, only slightly more subtle, is the bounding strength of Pop art in general and Andy Warhol in particular.

Warhol is a cult figure whose seminal position in the Pop movement and untimely death, followed by a major retrospective exhibition, have ensured that prime examples of his work will bring extraordinary prices. But before Japanese dealer Kazuo Fujii paid a record $4 million for “Shot Red Marilyn,” other collectors were snapping up every insignificant Warhol in sight at Part II of Sotheby’s contemporary sale.

Twenty Warhols were in Sotheby’s day sale Wednesday and an equal number were offered Thursday at Christie’s. The first to go under the gavel at Sotheby’s was an ordinary Coca-Cola bottle covered with gold leaf and collage that was a gift to curator Henry Geldzahler in 1962. The catalogue estimate for the piece (which directors of Warhol’s foundation say is nothing more than a “souvenir” or “house gift”) was $20,000 to $25,000. After fierce competition, the bottle sold for $63,250 to a telephone bidder.

Next came a silk-screened image of a crowd scene, valued at $25,000 to $35,000. It brought $77,000. An 8-inch-square painting of hot-pink flowers, estimated at $25,000 to $35,000, fetched $55,000. And so it went, except for a few items that sold near their estimates.

Warhol’s 40-inch-square painting of tennis star Chris Evert, done in 1977, brought $88,000 instead of the predicted price of $15,000 to $20,000. “Hammer and Sickle,” a large red painting of the Soviet symbol, went for $231,000, nearly three times its high estimate of $80,000. “Shadows,” a dark image composed of diamond dust and silkscreened polymer and valued at $40,000 to $60,000, fetched $154,000, while a horrific, 10-inch-square self-portrait brought $44,000 instead of the estimated $10,000 to $15,000.

“I think it’s about time,” said Steven Bluttal, a director of the Warhol Foundation who logs many auction hours. Though the Warhol retrospective has focused attention on the artist and probably promoted sales of some of his more difficult images, Bluttal said he thought the market was just beginning to catch up with Warhol’s significance.

Works by other Pop figures also commanded astonishing prices in the day sales. Two painted plaster loaves of bread by Claes Oldenburg, valued at $100,000 to $125,000, sold for $220,000. One of Robert Indiana’s familiar paintings of the word “Love,” estimated at $15,000 to $20,000, brought $104,500. Mel Ramos’ painting “Lucky Lulu,” depicting a buxom blond pin-up on a cigarette package, sold for $110,000, more than twice its high estimate of $50,000.

One can conclude from this that it’s a hot time for easy art, but there is also evidence of quality-consciousness and a healthy spread of interest into fine drawings by artists whose paintings have become unaffordable. A glowing drawing of a female nude by David Hockney estimated at $40,000 to $60,000, for example, brought $77,000. In Sotheby’s Tuesday-night sale, Hockney’s exquisite color pencil portrait of Henry Geldzahler, from the collection of former New York City Councilman Carter Burden, soared to $209,000. The catalogue estimate was $70,000 to $90,000.

“We have been in the habit of reducing the size of the sale room (with partitions) for the day sales because the audience has been smaller,” said Christie president Christopher Burge in a press conference following the Wednesday-night auction. “But now there seem to be twice as many people and twice as much art.”

By 10:30 Thursday morning, Christie’s unpartitioned sale room had standing room only and, once again, sales were brisk. Among the successes were early Warhol drawings that went for up to four times their estimates and a Tom Wesselmann still life from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation that soared past its estimate of $65,000 to $85,000 and finally sold to a telephone bidder for $275,000.