The sale at Phillips de Pury totaled $37.9 million, but many seasoned collectors who attended declined to bid.

The auction of contemporary art totaled $190 million, above the $168 million high estimate, with only three works among 53 failing to sell.

One of Jasper Johns’s seminal “Flag” paintings, which had belonged to the writer Michael Crichton, became the star in the auction house’s postwar and contemporary art auction.

The spring art auction at Sotheby’s brings solid prices, with the biggest seller a colorful Matissse.

Painted in one day, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” a painting of the artist’s mistress, was sold to an unidentified buyer.

At the Tavern on the Green auction.All the major lots were briskly gaveled away during the three-day auction of flotsam from the foundering of the bankrupt Tavern on the Green.

Potential bidders previewed a three-day auction of 1,000 lots of items at Tavern on the Green that have been valued at $100 to $1.2 million.

Next month, the bankrupt restaurant Tavern on the Green’s famous treasures will be up for sale to the highest bidder.

Sotheby’s is selling the renowned floral designer Robert Isabell’s collection of mid-20th-century furniture and sculpture, which includes some sublime oddities.

About 700 people at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in Midtown Manhattan and more than 1,000 others online vied for items ranging from a Mets jacket to Ruth Madoff’s jewelry.