In a nearly three-hour marathon double sale, the first in its new Breuer Building digs, Sotheby’s on Tuesday evening sold Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Elisabeth Lederer for $236.4 million, the second highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction—and that wasn’t all. Two Klimt landscapes later, the auction house had sold a total of nearly $400 million in paintings by the Vienna Secession artist.The Klimt results, part of a trove of works from the recently deceased cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, garnered multiple round of applause, and signaled a bright moment in an art market that over the past two years has been shaky.The Lauder portion of the evening totaled $527.5 million, far outdoing its pre-sale low estimate of $379 million, and auctioneer Adrien Meyer finished off by saying, “it’s an absolute triumph, we are thrilled.” But at that point, the evening wasn’t even half over. Next, the gavel was handed to Phylis Kao for the “Contemporary and the Now” sale which, estimated at $143.6 million–$198.25 million, brought in a total of $178.5 million. The evening’s overall total was $706 million; the low end of its pre-sale estimate was $522.8 million.The top lot in the “Now & Contemporary” sale was a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting from the collection of French actor Francis Lombrail, which bested its $45 million high estimate to make $48.3 million (all prices are inclusive of fees, unless otherwise noted). At the $36 million mark, the painting entered a bidding war between two phones, that of Sotheby’s contemporary art chairman of Gregoire Billault and Jen Hua, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. Hua won the piece, indicating that it likely went to an Asia-based client.The Klimt portrait, however, wasn’t the only artwork to set a record over the course of the evening. In the Lauder portion, Vincent van Gogh’s Sower in Le Semeur dans un champ de blé au soleil couchant (The Sower in a Wheatfield, 1888), which set a new auction record for pen-and-ink piece by the artist when it sold for $11.2 million; the previous record was $10.4 million for La Mousmé (1888), set at Christie’s in 2021. In the “Now & Contemporary” sale, individual auction records were set for Cecily Brown, Antonio Obá, Yu Nishimura, Jess, and Noah Davis. Multiple bidders on the phones and in the room chased Brown’s High Society (1997–98) in a 10-minute showdown that brought it from a starting bid of $4 million to a total of $9.8 million, besting her previous record, set in 2018, by a full $3 million. There was also a near-record: Agnes Martin’s painting The Garden (1964) made $17.6 million after another 10-minute bidding war. Her record is $18.7 million.Lauder was a white-glove sale, meaning every lot sold. But two large, high-value works in the “Now” auction failed to sell. A 2008 untitled painting by Kerry James Marshall from the collection of Neda Young, estimated at $10–15 million, and Barkley Hendricks’s 1973 Arriving Soon, estimated at $9–12 million, both of which barely eked out a bid. And one of the auction’s most buzzed about lots just barely sold. Maurizio Cattelan’s gold toilet, America (2016), hammered at the opening bid of $10 million, or just above its current price of its weight in gold of $9.9 million. The single bid for the work resulted in a final tally of $12.1 million. A post-sale report noted that the work sold to a “Famous American Brand,” via Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice chairman of science and natural history, which typically deals in dinosaur skeletons. The winning paddle number for America was also the buyer of two Matisse sculptures during the Lauder sale.Late in the “Now” sale, a group of four pieces by Roy Lichtenstein from the collection of the artist and his widow Dorothy sold for below their low estimates—the rare works during the evening that did so—but all were backed by third-party guarantees.Two lots later, Jeff Koon’s 2004–12 sculpture Hulk (Rock) came up to the block. Larry Gagosian, the mega-dealer to whom Koons returned just months ago after a stint with Pace Gallery, battled Sotheby’s chairman of North and South America Lisa Dennison, who was bidding on behalf of a client on the phone, for the work. Gagosian won the piece for $4.4 million, perhaps a signal of confidence in his prodigal artist.Sotheby’s originally guaranteed a minimum price for the Lauder material but by the time of tonight’s sale the house was pretty insulated from risk: all but five of those house guarantees had turned into third-party guarantees, including the three Klimts. (In fact, all lots estimated at over a million dollars now carried third-party guarantees.) In the “Now & Contemporary” sale, nearly half of the 44 lots had third-party guarantees.Speaking before the sale, Anita Heriot, Americas president of the London-based advisory Fine Art Group, commented on what she called “the auction houses’ aggressive focus on pushing guarantees for pieces coming up for sale.”“No one wants an unsold work,” Heriot said, “but with all of the guarantees in the market, the psychological power of auction bidding is diminished. The plethora of guarantees is taking the oxygen out of the room.”After the evening’s sales, adviser Gabriela Palmieri, a former Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art, told ARTnews, “The fact is there were singular works of art on sale tonight—and the collectors showed up. Between Christie’s last night and Sotheby’s tonight it was cathartic evening, a cathartic two days for the market. You could see it in the depth of bidding. We have gotten so used to saying ‘they got it done.’ But tonight there was real competition—on the phones, in the room, and at levels that haven’t been tested yet.”