German artists took five of the 10 top lots, including Neo Rauch’s 1999 large-scale oil-on-paper, "Einbruch," estimated at $400-600,000, which sold to another telephone bidder for $542,500. The late and great Sigmar Polke’s 1983 untitled gouache-on-paper that was estimated at $100,000 to 150,000 — it was acquired by the seller in November of 1993 after the work bought in at Christie's New York bearing an estimate of $25,000-35,000 — sold for a modest $86,500 to New York private dealer Neal Meltzer, who was seated at the front of the salesroom. The sighting of a familiar face bidding in the room broke the relative tedium of the telephone–dominated sale.
Nevertheless, there were other exciting moments to be had, as when Julie Mehretu’s thrillingly layered five-by-seven-foot architectural composition on canvas zoomed to a record $1,022,500, becoming the top lot of the sale. The work was first acquired from the The Project, the short-lived cutting-edge New York gallery, in May 2001, before Mehretu’s work acquired worldwide acclaim. It smashed the previous mark set at Sotheby's in London in June 2009 when the 2005 work "Untitled (Dervish)" made £241,250 ($394,038).

Exiting Sotheby’s York Avenue salesroom, another living artist was hard at work hawking his glowering portrait of Lehman’s much–demonized CEO Robert Fuld on the sidewalk. Resembling a middle-aged college professor and wielding a handful of different colored magic markers, artist Geoffrey Raymond (see his Web site here) invited passersby to inscribe their thoughts about Lehman on his canvas, titled "The Liquidated Fuld" and priced at $50,000.

"The last one I sold to somebody in Stuttgart for $36,000," declared the artist, who is known for painting controversial Wall Street figures and then exhibiting them in public places. It seems that while Lehman Brothers is in Chapter 11 today, Lehman Brothers art can't help but go up in value. How's that for irony?

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