Sotheby's Chasing Phillips for a Change

Today Sotheby's issued a press release highlighting lots in the upcoming fall sales — and it wasn't the marquee November Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art Evening sales that caught our eye. There's a new addition to the lineup: Important Post-War and Contemporary Design.

Contemporary design (or Design Art) has been on the rise, and Phillips de Pury & Company has come out as the auction house leader--everyone else is scrambling to catch up, including Christie's Sotheby's, which has in its November 16th sale a Maria Pergay daybed, carrying an estimate of $70,000 - $90,000 and a table by George Nakashima estimated to fetch $40,000 - $60,000.

The blockbusters of the fall Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art Evening sales won't be announced until after Labor Day, but the release did include some interesting details about other star lots:

In the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening sale on November 7th, there's Der Wasserfall (Frauen Unter Einem Wasserfall) by Franz Marc, estimated to sell for $20 million - $30 million, and Henri Matisse's Espagnole (Buste), with an estimate of $12 million - $16 million. (Sotheby's set a record for Matisse in London in June, when Danseuse dans le fauteuil brought more than $21 million against an estimate of $16 million - $24 million.)

A Jean Michel Basquiat painting in the Contemporary Art Evening sale on November 14th depicts an electric chair that evokes Warhol's classic silk-screens of the subject and is expected to fetch $8 million - $10 million. It's the first time the piece has come to market since a collector bought it from Basquiat's first dealer, Annina Nosei. A Warhol soup that is also on offer with an estimate of $8 million - $12 million is largely hand-painted, not silk-screened, as was Warhol's favored technique later on.