As global auction houses claw out of a prolonged correction, Asia reasserted its buying power for top-tier material in New York. Regional centers are consolidating their auction ecologies, while Hong Kong has reset to ground zero—its growth from 2018 to 2021 driven by conditions that no longer hold.

Ground Zero

Hong Kong’s debut “marquee week” in September, which saw the three international houses staging sales in the same week for the first time, brought in a combined total of HKD 1.5 billion (USD 190.6 million)—an “eight-year low,” according to South China Morning Post, and barely a third of the HKD 4.2 billion (USD 544.1 million) realized at the Asia market’s peak in spring 2021. 

Within this diminished playing field, with the days of Covid-era frenzied trading long past, Christie’s has pulled ahead. Well settled into its headquarters at the Henderson building, the house’s 20th/21st century evening sale in March, timed to Art Basel Hong Kong, totaled HKD 560 million (USD 72 million) with a 95-percent sell-through rate. The headlining lot, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sabado por la Noche (1984), sold for HKD 112.6 million (USD 14.5 million). In September, the house realized HKD 817.3 million (USD 106 million) across its evening and day sales, accounting for over 50 percent of the total among the three houses. The season was anchored by Pablo Picasso’s Buste de Femme (1944), a classic portrait of Dora Maar in a red dress, which ignited a 15-minute bidding battle that more than doubled its low estimate. Ultimately selling for HKD 196.8 million (USD 25.4 million), the work set a new auction record for Picasso in Asia. Strong results for works by Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, as well as Asian staples Zao Wou-ki, Yayoi Kusama, and Zeng Fanzhi underlined a strategy of tightly curated, shrewdly priced works by established names.