With guarantees in abundance, Christie has a rocky start of the auction week

Offer chandelier. Quiet telephone benches. Executives wiped their eyebrows.

One of the most expected auctions of the season turned out to be anti -limactic in Christie’s in New York on Monday evening, where many objects were sold in advance to have guaranteed bids and there was few indications of the enthusiastic buyers who defined the defined The peak of the market in 2022. Experts said that the sale was marred by the economic uncertainty surrounding the rates of President Trump and how they could harm the global art market.

Louise Riggio sent nearly 40 works from the collection she built with her husband, the Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio, who died last year. A second auction on Monday evening, called the 20th -century evening sale, did better, with some works of art that were sold above their estimates and Livelier bids on the phones and in the room.

The auction house had guaranteed the senders an unknown minimum amount for their entire collection and then worked feverishly in recent days to find the risk of the auction house, object through object, to be discharged by external buyers to leave their own presale bids from modern masters such as Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso.

At first glance, the Riggio collection seemed to have done well with a total of $ 272 million, including the costs of the buyers. But stripped of the reimbursements, the sale was short of the expectations of the auction house, including a low estimate of $ 252 million.

“Coming in? It would now, ideally, said the auctioneer, Adrien Meyer, struggled at one point to find bidders on one of the cheaper items in the sale, one terra-cotta vase By Picasso that was eventually sold within his estimate for $ 567,000, including reimbursements.

The best of the Riggio sales was one 1922 Geried painting By Mondriaan who once greeted visitors in the Grand Entryway of the Avenue apartment of the Bookstore Tycoon. It sold for $ 47.6 million, including reimbursements. The canvas, “Composition with large red plane, bluish gray, yellow, black and blue”, was short of the Previous record for a Mondriaan$ 51 million, only three years earlier at Sotheby’s.

The canvas – no larger than a pillow, at almost 21 centimeters square – was still a show stopper in a gloomy sale.

The art dealer Brett Gorvy said that the Mondriaan failure to generate a bidding war, was the result of his aggressive estimate, around $ 50 million. “This would not have been such a problem a year ago when the real depth of bidding was an important factor for the riding prices.” he said. “Victory In the beginning was a deterrent among many collectors, despite the quality and rarity of the work.”

As the first major sale of the auction season, the Riggio collection was seen as a Bellwether for the most important sale of this week at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, who have a combined estimate from $ 1.2 billion to $ 1.6 billion.

The after sale of the 20th century ended with a total of $ 217 million including reimbursements, at a low estimate of $ 194 million – by taking into account the costs of the buyer. A major setback came halfway through the auction when the company announced that the most expensive Warhol painting of the season, “Big Electric Chair”, with which an estimate of approximately $ 30 million had yielded.

“The weakness of the Warhol market is a clear collection meal.” said the art adviser Jacob King after leaving the auction floor. “There is so much uncertainty in the financial markets, the auction houses’ answer was to give everything guarantees.”

But there were some signs of life. Paintings by Gerhard Richter, Vincent van Gogh and Helen Frankenthaler sold above their high estimates, a sign of demand in the art market.

“Peplers au Bord de l’Epte, Crépuscule,” an 1891 Monet -Painting Van Populier trees sold for nearly $ 43 million including reimbursements, after a five -minute bid match. The lawyer Thomas Danziger, who represented the anonymous seller behind the canvas, said that the purchase – within the estimate of the auction house of $ 30 million to $ 50 million – was a positive sign.

“The world has clearly changed since the foaming art market from 2022,” said Danker. “If it is a choice between a blue chip painting and a more speculative illustrations, a smart collector will probably say:” Show me the monet. “

However, not all sales were made equal, and some successful transactions showed how far the market had fallen for certain works of art.

A painting by Lucio Fontana that had sold nearly $ 14 million in 2017 with Christie (or $ 17.4 million in adjusting inflation) returned to the auction house on Monday evening. It sold for ordinary $ 7.5 millionIncluding reimbursements.

Bonnie Brennan, the Chief Executive at Christie’s, said the company had a positive achievement. “It was a solid result,” she said. “Would we like to have seen even more excited in the room? Of course.”

As Alex Rotter, the worldwide president of Christie, added: “It is a healthy market. You have to work very hard.”