When New York’s Auction Block Becomes a Global Art Earthquake
A single night at Sotheby’s New York can redraw the map of contemporary art, and this season’s sales did just that. Julie Mehretu’s explosive canvas, Walkers With the Dawn and Morning, shattered records as it sold for $10.7 million—the highest price ever achieved by an African artist at auction. This wasn’t an isolated event: seven artists in total reached new personal bests, signaling a shift in whose stories and visions are commanding the spotlight.
The evening’s top lots read like a roll call of modern legends, with Basquiat, Richter, and Mitchell each fetching multi-million dollar sums. But the real intrigue came from the unexpected leaps: works by Barkley Hendricks, Mohammed Sami, and Barbara Chase-Riboud soared far beyond their estimates, revealing a hunger for fresh voices and overlooked narratives.
In the high-stakes world of art auctions, every gavel drop can rewrite history—and sometimes, the loudest echoes come from the artists once left out of the frame.
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