post war sotheby thots: (a little over a 1/4 billion total sales)

1) no pollocks sold (3 went unsold, two gaurenteed, one that sothebys had a stake in)
2) one of three big rothkos upcoming didnt break 100 (i mean 72 and change is still huge, but i wonder if this is the first auction season in half a decade when a most expensive painting ever doesnt happen (irises, picasso, then de kooning, if a really nice johns flag or target comes up, the narrative would be complete)
3) koons has now become a blue chip, as has cecily brown
4) next year its going to be impossible to find a prince for under 2 or a balderssai for under one, for post mondernist photogs obsessed with the epehemeral, this says something interesting, im just not sure what
5) w. warhols worst work overpriced, and the same w. johns&rauschenberg, 2nd teir pop artists (including, in this auction lichenstien and wessleman (best example of this is his smokign manquette from 75, an impossibly glam, deeply fetishitic work, that went for 5.84 now and would ahve gone for less then 1 5 years ago) are going to go thru the roof. (dietch bought the really silly/vapid 1965 girl in a mirror for like 4.08, which is crazy; even crazier is the 1972 green vase by roy going for 4.2)
6) you can still get a nice kline for realtivley cheap, the two de kooning women sold for under market, and pollock is in the middle of a correction, i wonder if the death of modernism, at least in a capital sense will finally be completeld this season. (or maybe they arent buying shit, the pollocks are subpar, and the dekoonings are the melted barbies he did when drinking robbed him of his colourist skills)
7) half completed ryman canvases for 784k, there is an essay to be written abuot the fact that the mroe itneresting his surfaces/tensions are, the less marketable they are--the work that goes for millions is the really slick, plasticy stuff. (i wonder if the same thing is happening with the late 80s, early 90s brassy martins, as opposed to her really gentle work from the mid 60s, but then a lot of teh mid 60s stuff isnt coming to market.
8) all the pro colourfield agit prop thats gone on in the last couple of years has pushed morris' canvases high, not thru the roof, but they are jacknifing
9)an early, polite currin went unsold, which might mean that he is stuck in a signture style, and that he isnt iconic enough to let work that is on the edges of that style to be sold to musuems as teachign tools (like the 1959 Martin at Seattle, or the abex canvases of lichenstien in LA)
10) warhol is still a lisc. to print money