Welcome back to Wall Power, your twice-weekly foray into the art market. I’m Marion Maneker.

Art Basel Paris was clearly a succès d’estime, as the French say—more impactful in terms of visibility and cultural impact for Art Basel than in terms of deal flow, I’d guess, for the galleries that attended—but still a hit. On the auction side, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s performed quite well, and Sotheby’s officially launched its new Paris headquarters with a party that spilled out onto the Avenue Matignon.

In the departure lounge prior to my flight home, a senior Sotheby’s person expressed relief at finally receiving some good news from the sales. I’ll go into more detail on all that below.

• Come on, Aileen: Last night I stopped by Artwalk, the Coalition for the Homeless’s annual fundraiser, to watch art advisor and former Phillips auctioneer Aileen Agopian stoke the crowd through its live auction. “You get me,” Agopian shouted to one man as she coaxed him to add another $5,000 to his bid on Katherine Bradford’s Mother Walks in Surf, a painting that the artist had donated to the cause. In the end, another bidder would buy the piece for $80,000, adding to the more than $700,000 the event raised.

  Agopian had opened the evening by reminiscing about the kindness and support her own family had received when they arrived in the U.S. as immigrants—and how Artwalk was a way of paying it forward. This is the 15th year that Agopian, who was also an honoree last night, has been the auctioneer for the event, which sold works by Ed Ruscha, Kenny Scharf, Joan Snyder, José Parlá, and Bradford, who was also honored.

• Lévy Gorvy Dayan museum sales: The Upper East Side gallery has placed Tu Hongtao’s massive 10-by-20-foot, three-part painting, The Corrupted Garden of Eden (2020-23), with the Buffalo AKG. The painting had been the centerpiece of Tu’s show at the gallery earlier this year. It joins a number of other large, abstract paintings at the Buffalo AKG by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, and Clyfford Still.

  The gallery also placed work by Jenna Gribbon in two different museums. The Boston MFA got I am the dog (2023), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art received Soft butch sunset (2023). Both works depict Gribbon’s musician partner, Mackenzie Scott (no, not the philanthropist and Bezos ex), and were featured in her show at the gallery late last year.

• Ansel Adams auction makes $4.5 million: A storied collection of Ansel Adams’ photographs sold at Sotheby’s last week for $4.5 million, far above the presale estimate of $1.77 million. Owned by Austin collectors Lynn and Tom Meredith, the 96 photographic prints were originally made by Adams to illustrate the span of his entire career. “This collection represents the very essence of Adams’ vision,” the Merediths said in a release after the sale, “his reverence for the natural world, his technical mastery, and his unwavering commitment to photography as an art form.”

  The collection has been loaned to a wide variety of museums over its existence. “Adams conceived of this as the best of his output,” Emily Bierman, Sotheby’s global head of photographs, told me. “Adams was an exacting master in the darkroom—condition and print quality are important. Condition across the board was really excellent, especially when they had been touring for 30, 40 years.”

  The sale offered hungry collectors opportunities to acquire rare images, and the depth of the market was reflected in the sale prices. An example of the Surf Sequence was estimated at $200,000, but sold for $576,000. Bierman told me she’d never seen a photograph from the Surf Sequence series that wasn’t on the wall of a museum. Aspens, Northern New Mexico (vertical) sold for $720,000, over a $150,000 estimate, and Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California sold for $384,000 over an estimate of $100,000. There were 41 different record prices for various Ansel Adams images in the sale.

Now let’s get back to Paris…

For Sotheby’s, the surrealism sale was a smart way to begin the day of auctions, timed to take advantage of Art Basel Paris. Surrealism continues to be a bright spot in the market, especially works by female surrealist painters. Meanwhile, the Centre Pompidou was also mounting a large-scale survey of the century-old art movement that began in Paris.

The Paris auctions were also remarkable for being led by two women auctioneers. At Christie’s, the formidable Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France, commanded her troops from the rostrum, alternately refusing to accept chopped bids and coaxing additional bids from the room. At Sotheby’s, Aurélie Vandevoorde, the co-head of the modern and contemporary department, received a pair of white gloves for the 100 percent sold-through surrealism auction. (Sotheby’s quietly withdrew two lots to assure the perfect sale, but who’s counting?) Vandevoorde and Verdier have different styles in the box, but the effect of having two women lead the sales, especially in straitlaced Paris, was very positive for the companies and the market.

As I said on Sunday, we should not be comparing the sales in London and Paris. The two markets, with Frieze in London and Art Basel in Paris, are very different—different buyers, different artists, etcetera. And the path forward for Paris will be to consolidate as much of the selling on the continent as possible into one location. In Christie’s auction room, the motto “Four Cities. One Destination” was painted behind the auctioneer. This may have been a vestige from the pandemic “relay” sale, when Christie’s passed the gavel from Hong Kong to Paris to London to New York in a single sale. But it also serves as a reminder that the auction business has been seeking efficiency—geographic and otherwise—for years.

And Paris, of course, is the capital of the fashion and luxury industry. So it makes sense for both houses to try to increase sales there using a larger art presence as a halo. The idea is that you walk into Sotheby’s new headquarters to look at watches but also get to see some cool art. In fact, for its inaugural show, Sotheby’s borrowed exceptional and distinctive works from their best clients to put on display.

There was a great Diego Giacometti chair, a very good Monet waterlily painting and other great examples of what Sotheby’s hopes to sell there. I like art. But the vitrine that was most interesting to me was the one that contained the prototype bag Hermès made for Jane Birkin. I’m not sure I would be nearly as captivated with it in a different setting. I definitely wouldn’t have gone to an Hermès boutique to see it. And, of course, Sotheby’s hopes the reverse will be true. The majority of new clients who come to the auction houses enter through the luxury category. The hard part is getting them to collect art.

That said, 35 percent of the sold lots made prices above the estimate range, and represented 36 percent of the value of the sale. Another 42 percent of the lots, by number and value, were sold within the estimate range. And only 22 percent of the lots (and the value) were sold at compromise prices below the estimate. With more lots and value above the estimate range than below it, these numbers reinforce the strong performance suggested by the hammer ratio. In Paris, both houses got the estimates to a level that attracted buyers.

Only three of the top 10 works by price were sold above the estimate range. This suggests the top of the market remains fairly priced, even with room for estimates to come down further, but that buyers are willing to bid aggressively on a few specific works.

What will it take for this kind of success to radiate outward into the broader market? As we’ve discussed, the art market itself isn’t the sick patient we constantly hear worried reports about. Private sales are good. Both houses seem on pace to beat their previous best years in that area. Galleries are selling art. For some weird reason, if the art market isn’t overheated, we deem it to be failing.

That doesn’t fully explain why Magritte, hardly overlooked in the past, has suddenly become so very valuable. But the mechanism matters less than the market leadership. Over the past few years, Magritte’s auction sales have climbed the ladder of artists with the most auction volume. A decade ago, Picasso, Warhol, and Richter were the top artists. They were providing market leadership. With a $95 million Magritte on offer at Christie’s next month, there’s a good chance the Belgian surrealist will post a very high number for total auction volume this year.

As in the past, we need more than just one artist showing growth and drawing in buyers in order to spread confidence in the market. But… if that Magritte attracts a few of the right bidders, we could be off to the races. Those headlines will help part the clouds that, perhaps unfairly, hover over the art market. With the sun shining again on art, there’s no telling where it might lead.

Until then, I should acknowledge the news from last week that Lisa Schiff pleaded guilty to wire fraud. The revelation of the art advisor’s misappropriation of client funds for her personal use is both shocking and, unfortunately, all too common. Art advisors run the gamut, from highly professional organizations to sole proprietors with few credentials. In this case, it would appear that Schiff’s clients relied too heavily on their friendship with her and not enough on following up on basic legal and financial matters. That doesn’t excuse Schiff, but at a time when Sotheby’s has eliminated introductory commissions and moved away from enhanced hammer deals, art advisors should be clarifying how they get paid in transactions—and clients should be more diligent in making sure their accounts and paperwork are in order.

Let’s speak again on Sunday,
M