This year’s Asia Week New York saw participating galleries and auction houses pull in a combined $100.8m during the 15th edition of the annual event. The nine-figure sum includes sales reported by 21 out of the 28 participating galleries (two of which did not sell) and five out of six auction houses, as iGavelAuctions still has sales taking place online.
Brendan Lynch, chairman of Asia Week New York, said in a statement that sales were “solid at both the auction houses and galleries”. The $100m figure is nearly a quarter (24.1%) lower than the sales made last year, when Asia Week reported $131.2m in sales from 22 out of 26 participating galleries and five of six auction houses.
“Broadly, one can blame it on the Chinese economy being at such a very low point,” Lynch told The Art Newspaper in a statement. Last year’s sum marked the most robust total since 2019, when $150m in sales were reported. Organisers chalked up the success of last year’s event to the return of Chinese collectors and dealers for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, after China opened its borders in early 2023.
Since then, the art market in mainland China has been challenged by an economic slowdown and a domestic property crisis. While China (including Hong Kong) made up 19% of global art market sales by value with $12.2bn, sales during the second half of 2023 were “considerably slower”, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS report on the global art market.
Steven Chait, president of Ralph M. Chait Galleries called sales this year “healthy” in a statement. “Sales were a notch better than last year, and though collectors from Hong Kong and Mainland China were less, we expect follow-up with the scouts who were here on their behalf,” he added.
Lynch said that while Chinese collectors may be spending less, participating dealers sold work to American and Asian museums as usual and specific corners of the market, like work by Indian artists, stayed “buoyant”. Auction house totals were also largely down, and there were no “blockbuster single-owner sales like James J. Lally’s collection last year”, Asia Week New York executive director Margaret Tao said in a statement.
“The market is, broadly speaking, suffering from a lack of a younger generation of collectors. But there were several million-dollars sales in the Indian and contemporary auctions, so that market is in fact thriving,” Lynch said.
Christie’s set a new record for Francis Newton Souza during its South Asian Modern and Contemporary sale, on 20 March. The Lovers (1960), which had not been seen in public in decades, made $4.8m—almost five times its $1m high estimate. Souza’s previous record was set in 2015, also by Christie’s in New York, when the house made $4m for Birth (1955).
Souza’s market, alongside other Indian Modernists, has been heating up for a number of years, but 2024 marks the centenary of his birth and his work will be included in the main exhibition of the forthcoming Venice Biennale (20 April-24 November). Accordingly, The Lovers was one of more than two dozen works by Souza to come to the block in Christie’s sale last week. Another top performer was Souza’s Priest with Chalice, which sold for $3.9m against a $500,000 to $700,000 estimate.
Other Modernists to shatter their estimates at Christie’s sale include Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Portrait of a Tree (1975), which netted $1.3m, more than five-times its $250,000 high estimate.
Another Souza led Sotheby’s equivalent South Asia sales this month. House with Trees (1958), from the collection of Virginia and Ravi Akhoury, which made $571,500 against a $300,000 to $500,000 estimate.
Another auction success was the sale of a complete set of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji for more than $3.5m with fees, breaking the artist’s record at auction set during last year’s Asia Week New York in another Christie’s auction, when Under the Wave off Kanagawa sold for $2.8m, with fees.
