A work by Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1984 entitled Joy was the top lot at the Sotheby’s summer evening sale of contemporary art in Paris on June 2. It was bought by a European private collector for €1,464,750, a figure well above the top estimate of 900,000. The sale achieved a successful total of €9,517,050, a figure well above the pre-sale expectations of €5.1-7.0 million. Sell through rates of 93% by lot and almost 100% by value rank among the highest ever seen at a contemporary sale at Sotheby’s Paris. A remarkable 74% of sold lots realised prices in excess of their high estimate.

Sotheby’s Summer Sales of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art in Paris concluded on the evening of June 3 having brought an outstanding total of €31,332,325.  The Impressionist and Modern sale brought in 17.5 million and the evening and day contemporary art sales brought in a total of 13.8 million.  There were new auction records across the two days for Helena Viera da Silva, Jacques Villeglé and Louis Marcoussis. Four works sold for over one million euro and 14 for over 500,000.

Louise Bourgeois, the world renowned French born New York based sculptor, died on Monday, May 31, 2010. Though 98 she worked up to the end. She died of following a heart attack. Her influential sculptures explored the deepest feelings of women about birth, sexuality and death.

Bourgeois was the first sculptor commissioned for The Unilever Series to celebrate the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. The monumental female spider, Maman, carrying her white marble eggs beneath her, was the work visitors first saw when they entered the vast space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern at Bankside in London. Hers was the first new work to be commissioned for the gallery.

Irish paintings fared badly at the Christie’s sale of 20th Century British and Irish art in London on May 27.  The auction house was hoping to achieve a price of over a million pounds for a 1949 Yeats entitled Until we meet again. The painting, which was probably over estimated, failed to sell.

In fact only three of the 13 Irish lots found buyers in a sale which was largely unpromoted in Ireland.  The view in this country is that the new policy at Christie’s of mixing Irish with British 20th century art in the same auction does not work.   One of the four works by Paul Henry, his only known still life, entitled Chrysanthemums, sold. It made 51,600.  The Music has come by Yeats made 55,000.  A William Scott, entitled Together, made 22,500 and another Scott failed to sell.  Christies failed to sell works by Louis le Brocquy,  Sir John Lavery, Colin Middleton, Sir William Orpen and William Conor.