Jeff Koons is offering a $100 million selection from his personal collection at Christie’s this autumn, a sale that places works he bought and lived with for decades back on the market.
The trove is the product of a buying spree in the late 2000s, when Koons — by then the most commercially successful living artist — acquired Old Master paintings alongside contemporary work.
Among the lots are examples from the Dutch Golden Age and paintings by Pablo Picasso and Édouard Manet, a combination that illustrates how casually art-historical categories were once ignored by collectors raised on the contemporary market.
The sale is being watched as a live indicator of how the market values blue-chip modern work at a moment when auction houses are relying on trophy consignments to carry results.
