Auction links:
JEFF KOONS - Balloon Monkey (Blue)
Christie's, 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale, Lot 13
Estimate: GBP 6,500,000 – GBP 10,000,000
DAVID HOCKNEY - L'Arbois, Sainte-Maxime
Sotheby's, Contemporary Evening Auction, Lot 4
Estimate: 7,000,000 - 10,000,000 GBP
This market resolves to the artwork that sells for more at auction, according to the final sale price listed on the website.
Resolution details
If either lot is withdrawn before auction, this resolves N/A. If either fails to sell at auction, that counts as selling for $0. Exact ties (including $0) resolve to 50% each.
It resolves based on the final sale price listed on the website.
Sotheby's example: Magnificent unmounted diamond, "Lot Sold
Christie's example: Gentileschi painting, "Price realised
Note that the final listed sale price typically includes the buyer's premium (and potentially other fees).
JEFF KOONS - Balloon Monkey (Blue)
Amajestic vision seven years in the making, Balloon Monkey (Blue) (2006-2013) sees Jeff Koons’s sculptural practice reach extraordinary new heights of formal splendour, technical achievement and sheer, awe-inspiring impact. Its seductive form, monumental scale and reflective, opulently coloured surface—all precision-crafted to seemingly impossible levels of flawlessness and finish—capture the essence of his work, which employs the iconography of childhood innocence to expose the deep drives of desire and joy that animate our relationship with art. (Lot essay)
DAVID HOCKNEY - L'Arbois, Sainte-Maxime
Executed at a critical moment in the development of David Hockney’s remarkable career, L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime of 1968 is a work of pivotal significance that brilliantly embodies the artist’s masterful synthesis of photography, painting, and drawing. The present work is an impressively scaled example of Hockney’s celebrated series of pictures inspired by the South of France, exquisitely rendering the landscape and architecture of the French Riviera in brilliant colour. (Lot essay)
1,000
3.00BLOW OUT. Humiliation for Koons. His balloon monkey sold for GBP 7,555,000 (towards the lower end of the estimates), while Hockney's painting sold for 13,150,000 GBP, almost double.
Here's some coverage of the auctions:
Koons ‘Balloon Monkey’ Makes $9.9 Million at ‘Solid’ $107 Million Christie’s Auction in London
About 88 percent of lots sold, but half went for prices at or below their low estimates.
Since the Koons market has been a bit soft recently, Hirst did well to get a guarantee. Only two bids were made before it sold, below estimate, to Stephanie Rao, a Mandarin-speaking member of Christie’s London staff, for £7.5 million ($9.9 million). Christie’s said that 22 percent of the night’s buyers were from Asia. (Artnet News)
The top lot of the night was David Hockney’s L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime (1968), which sold for £13.15 million ($17.19 million), beating its estimate of £7 million–£10 million ($9 million–$13 million). The painting, depicting the Hotel L’Arbois near Saint-Maxime in the south of France, last sold for £1.3 million ($2.1 million) at Sotheby’s in 2011.
“This week is the most exciting for London's art world, and this year, we have felt that buzz as much as ever—with collectors descending on the once-in-a-generation museum shows, the galleries, and, of course, the fair that started it all,” said Michael Macaulay, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s in Europe. “We are thrilled that our Hockney is the headline lot of the week across the auction houses, a feat that anyone who saw it in person would agree was well-deserved.” (Artsy.net)
These artists have history! From Wikipedia:
On 15 November 2018, Hockney's 1972 work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at Christie's auction house in New York City for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction.[8][9][10] It broke the previous record which was set by the 2013 sale of Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange) for $58.4 million.[11] Hockney held the record until 15 May 2019 when Koons reclaimed the honour by selling his Rabbit for more than $91 million at Christie's in New York.[12]
They're in the same ballpark fame-wise, and the dog is harder to execute and more fun to show off to one's rich swell friends, so I'm putting ten fake money on the dog. Disclaimer: not an art critic
Edit: I know it says "balloon monkey", but it looks more like a dog to me.