With a “multicamera global livestream” in place of its usual New York sale, the auction house tried breathing life back into a pandemic-numbed market.
LONDON — “This is what we like: the ping-pong between New York and Hong Kong. We see them on the split screens in perfect clarity,” the auctioneer Oliver Barker said late Monday, sounding like a prime-time TV game show host. He was taking seven-figure bids at a Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art, presented as a “multicamera global livestream.”
The marathon 74-lot auction at Sotheby’s, which replaced the postponed May evening sales in New York, used the latest technology to try breathing life back into the pandemic-numbed top end of the international art market.
The hybrid format featured the suavely suited Mr. Barker taking bids on a rostrum in an empty room in London, facing a bank of screens showing telephone-wielding colleagues in an adjoining room, as well as in New York and Hong Kong.
