Ice breaker: Lot 1 of the 21st Century Evening Sale is a conversation starter

The sale room is abuzz with activity. Anticipation among collectors, dealers and spectators is palpable. The auctioneer approaches the rostrum and opens the auction book prepared by the bids department. A hush falls over the crowd. 

In the auction world, the opening lot is critical. Specialists take great care to select a work for Lot 1 that will make a splash and set the tone for lively, competitive bidding throughout the sale. The goal is to generate momentum that will crescendo with the highest-value lots later in the auction. 

In Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale, Lot 1 is also an opportunity to spotlight new and rising creators in contemporary art that resonate with the current moment and point to where the art world is headed. ‘We’re reacting to what the market wants but also what we want the market to deem important,’ says head of sale Isabella Lauria. ‘Lot 1 is a focal point, and we're taking a position, as Christie’s 21st Century platform, to push boundaries and introduce new names.’

On 15 May, the sale will open with Ice Queen by Brooklyn-based painter Robin F. Williams. Now in its sixth iteration, the 21st Century Evening Sale in New York showcases the art of the moment, drawing a through line from pioneers of contemporary art like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Yayoi Kusama to present-day luminaries redefining the canon. 

Last spring’s instalment opened with an alluring portrait by Canadian-born phenom Anna Weyant. Summertime sold for $1,500,000 after nearly eight minutes of fierce bidding, quintupling its presale high estimate. At just 27, Weyant was the youngest artist in the sale, and her debut was a star-making moment. Like most artists featured in the Lot 1 position of the series, it was her first appearance in an evening sale. 

But not every Lot 1 comes from a young or emerging artist. The opening spot is also a place to highlight mid-career and seasoned artists who are now receiving long overdue recognition from collectors and institutions. Lot 1 of last November’s sale was a painting by the artist, educator and Native American activist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who at age 83 is currently the subject of a historic retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Quick-to-See Smith’s work soared past its estimate, reflecting the growing fervour for her paintings among collectors and the larger art world.

Alex Da Corte’s neon Night Vision made its debut as Lot 1 of May 2021’s sale, aligning with the excitement surrounding his enchanting commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop garden. Later that year, Xinyi Cheng’s Darling opened the 21st Century Evening Sale, hot on the heels of the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States, at Matthew Marks Gallery. 

For Lauria, William’s painting was a fitting choice to kick off the upcoming sale this May, in which more than 50 per cent of the works are by women artists. Ice Queen upends the male gaze that has historically defined the tradition of the female nude, mingling realism and surrealism in an otherworldly portrait that grants unprecedented agency to its subject. The painting is further marked by its intricate, textured surface and bright, enticing colour palette, adding additional layers of dimensionality. 

‘My work exists at the intersection of genre painting and portraiture,’ Williams told New American Paintings. ‘Most recently, my subjects are fictional women in unexpected or awkward poses. They provide the viewer with a dark but humorous version of their most culturally valuable attributes (sex appeal, youth, style, grace). In doing so, the figures expose the backhanded offer of limited power these traits promise to women.’

Williams frequently mines vintage advertisements from the 1970s for source images, complicating the cheerful veneer of female spokesmodels. ‘Robin can take a common image of female behaviour as portrayed in the media,’ Wendy Olsoff, cofounder of P.P.O.W. gallery, told Galerie, ‘and re-present it, showing the ludicrous subjugation of the female while allowing the audience to also see this for themselves.’ 

In Ice Queen, a nude woman poses on her back, her legs outstretched in the air and her mouth curled in a bracing, enigmatic grin. ‘The figure pulls you in, but when you look closer at her expression, there’s something darker and more complicated about her, almost mischievous,’ says Lauria. ‘Williams is turning those vintage ads — and the tradition of figuration in painting — on its head.’ 

Williams has said her work addresses the history of the representation of women’s bodies in art, interrogating and revising the male-dominated canon. She is part of a rich and varied contingent of women artists changing the face of figuration, who are well represented in the upcoming sale.

Simone Leigh’s monumental sculpture Stick honours the history of Black women as leaders, protectors and healers. Untitled (The Beautiful and Damned) by Cecily Brown recalls Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), among other iconic frieze-like arrangements of figures, rendered in a luxurious brushwork that is all Brown’s. Both artists are currently the subject of major museum surveys, at the ICA Boston and the Met respectively. 

The surrealism of Williams is echoed in the reclining cartoony body in Louise Bonnet’s innovative Interior with Orange Bed. Danielle McKinney’s intimate portraits, such as We Need to Talk, capture her sitters in deep, introspective moments, fleshing out their interiority. 

Uniting these artists’ diverse approaches is the empowerment of the subject. As Lauria said of the figure in Ice Queen, ‘She becomes a protagonist instead of just a body. She is imbued with her own personality and identity.’ With a defiant gaze that refuses passivity, Ice Queen is sure to provoke conversation at the start of the 21st Century Evening Sale.