Strong Hong Kong Evening Sales, Totaling a Combined $184.6 M., Mask Key Hurdles in Asia’s Art Market

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The Hong Kong art market’s recovery remains uneven, with a mixed macroeconomic backdrop in Asia weighing on collector budgets, as evidenced by this week’s round of auctions in the special administrative region.

Mainland Chinese equities dropped to a 13-month low this month, while the Japanese yen dipped to a multi-decade low in June. In contrast, South Korea’s economy gained traction on the back of strong semiconductor exports, while capital from the Middle East has continued to flow into financial centers like Hong Kong and Singapore amid prolonged geopolitical friction.

With China’s domestic market continuing to face headwinds, commercial galleries are already bearing the brunt. The abrupt closure earlier this month of Tang Contemporary’s Wong Chuk Hang space in Hong Kong after months of accumulated rent arrears, which the gallery attributed to a sharp contraction in sales, sent shock waves across the market.

The top international auction houses have reflected the market’s cautious tone, too. Staged between September 28–30, the modern and contemporary art evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips in Hong Kong generated a combined $184.6 million, a steady increase from the $164.9 million achieved during this past spring season. (All figures are reported in USD and inclusive of buyer’s premium, unless otherwise noted.)

However, unlike those March auctions, which delivered two white-glove auctions, the autumn season yielded just one, at Christie’s. Notably, Christie’s achieved its perfect sell-through rate only after withdrawing two major lots prior to the sale: Jonas Wood’s Wood Grain Pot 4 (2016) and Cheong Soo Pieng’s 1926 Paysage (Landscape).

Firing the first shot of the auction season was Sotheby’s on Monday. The evening opened with a single-owner collection sale of billionaire Joe Lewis’s holdings of paintings and works on paper by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita. Continuing the momentum of a Sotheby’s London sale from Lewis’s collection earlier this year, the Hong Kong auction realized $8.7 million. Of the 15 works offered, 80 percent sold above their high estimates. The top lot for this portion of the evening was Foujita’s 1949 oil-and-ink painting Le rêve (Hommage à La Fontaine), which sold for $3.38 million against an estimate of $510,000–$765,000.

Yet as the evening progressed to the main marquee sale, buyer caution and risk aversion became clear. While the opening lot—Wood – Rift I by Chinese artist Hu Xiaoyuan—surpassed its high estimate by over 160 percent to fetch $212,080 and establish a new auction record for the artist, momentum quickly faltered as the second and third lots both failed to sell. The biggest surprise came when the season’s top lot—Mark Rothko’s 1965 Chapel-series masterpiece Untitled (Plum and Dark Brown)—was withdrawn prior to bidding. It had been estimated to sell for between $9.94 million and $16.3 million.

Without the Lewis portion, the Sotheby’s evening sale concluded with a total of $87.3 million and an 88.5 percent sell-through rate. Inclusive of the Lewis sale, the house reported a 91 percent sell-through rate and $124.3 million haul, its highest total since fall 2023. The main auction’s top lot ended up being Yoshitomo Nara’s 1994 painting Present for $9.13 million; the work made its return to the market after last appearing at auction at Sotheby’s New York in 2004.

At Christie’s on Tuesday night, the underbidding activity was buoyant for many European Old Masters and established contemporary Asian artists, from Peter Paul Rubens to Liu Ye, now in his 60s.

In one standout moment during the Old Master offerings, intense bidding escalated for Rubens’s Landscape with Willows (1577-1640) between two phone buyers until Rebecca Yang, Christie’s China chairman, brought down the hammer at $1.5 million, or 150 percent above its low estimate, drawing a sharp burst of excitement and applause from the salesroom floor.

Ada Tsui, vice president for Christie’s Asia Pacific, said she was particularly impressed by the bidding on Liu’s work, noting that the lot sparked a head-to-head battle between a Hong Kong–based collector and a Western buyer. “The underbidding activity was remarkably strong, and the Western collector went all out to fight for that piece.”

However, performance across other marquee lots was mixed. Yayoi Kusama’s 2011 A-Pumpkin (YHP) hammered at $5.99 million—2.08 percent below its low estimate—realizing roughly $300,000 less than a comparable painting of the exact same dimensions sold at Sotheby’s the previous evening. Meanwhile, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1991) hammered at $3.568 million, falling 26 percent short of its low estimate; with premium, it sold for $4.47 million.

“We took a bit of a risk by bringing this particular Richter work to the evening sale,” Cristian Albu, head of auction and private sales for Christie’s Asia Pacific, told ARTnews, noting that while Richter created prolifically across diverse media, this marked the first time Christie’s presented a painting executed in oil on wood in Asia.

While the auction house was pleased with the result—given that the consignor had acquired the piece in 2006 at Christie’s London for a fraction of its current value—Albu reflected that a dedicated exhibition in Asia showing the full breadth of the artist’s material possibilities might have helped collectors better contextualize the work for collectors in the region.

Regarding Kusama’s performance, both Tsui and Albu deemed the final result solid despite the below-estimate hammer. “The artist’s passing was priced in a long time ago because of her age, and we think this is a very respectable price with the buyer’s premium—over $7 million,” Tsui said. “With sales of very comparable works scheduled back-to-back with our competitor, having multiple clients bidding at that level is encouraging.”

Ultimately, Tsui observed, performance often comes down to the specific work, its medium, and individual collector taste. She noted that Asian collectors are deeply familiar with Richter’s oeuvre, pointing to the sale of the Marian Goodman collection in New York in April, where buyers from Asia acquired or underbid on more than half of the seven abstract paintings on offer.

At the end of the night, Christie’s marquee 20th- and 21st-century evening sale generated $92.6 million, a 28 percent increase year-on-year, though the latest result was supported by 14 additional lots compared to last year’s offerings.

Synthesizing the broader season, auction house veteran Yuki Terase, cofounder of advisory firm Art Intelligence Global, highlighted the structural challenges currently facing top-tier secondary market offerings. With a global art calendar packed tightly with international fairs, major gallery shows, and private secondary market inventory, buyers returning from the summer break were met with a sudden influx of choices.

“We have a vast pool of collectors who can comfortably and intuitively spend up to a few million dollars, but once you cross into eight figures and above, the buyer pool shrinks dramatically,” Terase told ARTnews.

She pointed out that top-tier market trophies in Asia this season—such as Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Ancient Scientist (1984), which sold at Christie’s for $9.81 million to become the most expensive work sold at auction in Asia this season—exemplify this dynamic. Though leading the regional market, the hammer price of $7.97 million landed just 11.61 percent above its low estimate. Having previously changed hands in Hong Kong at a joint Phillips and Poly Auction sale in December 2020, the work demonstrates how premier eight-figure lots increasingly rely on unlocking fresh capital and attracting new high-net-worth buyers to the market, rather than simply depending on existing participants to re-engage.

At Phillips on Wednesday night, the autumn sale marked the house’s first Hong Kong evening auction since the departure of Asia chairman Jonathan Crockett earlier this month and an overall staff exodus from the house globally. Acting as interim lead, Dina Zhang, head of modern and contemporary art for China, actively dispelled market rumors that Phillips might scale back its regional presence. Instead, Zhang emphasized that the firm is focusing on client retention and acquisition through tailored service and a more flexible consignment strategy, incorporating experimental and edgy works and expanding into category niches that larger competitors may overlook.

“I think we remain very competitive in certain categories and within specific price ranges,” Zhang told ARTnews. “Whenever we are competing for a major consignment against other houses, I always ask clients to give us a fair shot. Even if we lose the bid, I ask them for transparent feedback so we know the real reason.”

Across a lean catalog of 16 lots, Phillips’ Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale generated over $6.4 million, concluding with a sell-through rate of 87.5 precent. The sale’s top lot was another Richter, 1983’s Abstraktes Bild (522-1), which sold for $2.93 million, or about $1.54 million less than the Sotheby’s Richter, painted eight years later.