As Middling Sotheby’s Sale Nets $105 M., Market Watchers Ward Off Talk of London’s Waning Importance

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.Before Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale on Tuesday, the omens weren’t good; a stuttering UK economy, an impending election, a cooling art market, and the headline lot (Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, 1982) listed with an estimate of around $20-25 m