It’s been a major sales week for the art market in New York, with a Gustav Klimt portrait fetching more than $236 million on Tuesday, making it the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction, and a surrealist self-portrait by Frida Kahlo selling for $54.7 million on Thursday, breaking the auction record for a work by a woman. Both pieces were sold by Sotheby’s, whose total sales for the week surpassed $1 billion, with Christie’s close behind. The surge has led analysts to declare that the art market is rebounding after a three-year slump, and art historian Ernst Ulrich Leeben joins us for more insight.
