Its auction total was off 28, but a jump in private sales helped close part of the gap.

A $1.9 million Mark Bradford failed on the block at Sotheby's Singapore earlier this month. It had sold for below its estimate not long ago.

"They were his works, he could do whatever he wanted with them," Sotheby's executive Samuel Valette said, denying the auction house's role in Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier's art fraud scheme. Italian ...