Sotheby’s Evening Contemporary Sale – London

Once again, sorry for the late update.  I’ve been working on my dissertation all week and, after an intensive day of reading and writing about art markets and entering auction data into a spreadsheet, it’s a bit hard to concentrate enough to talk about art market news not relating to the Japanese market.

So, the Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening sale that occurred last week on 1 July.  Not surprisingly, the beautiful yet small Study for the Head of George Dyer, 1967, by Francis Bacon exceeded the £8m – £10m estimate (that was available on request) to sell for £13.8m ($27.5m).  Because it is such a small (14 in x 12 in) painting and a study, I wasn’t expecting a crazy price like Abramovich paid for the large Triptych.  However, with the beautiful colors and movement and intimacy and strong brush strokes, I had no doubt that it would go over estimate.

Study for the Head of George Dyer by Francis Bacon

I was, however, surprised to see how well Murakami’s work did at the sale.  DOB Flower, 2000, sold for £825,250 ($1.6m).  Mushroom-1, 2000, went for £481,250 ($959,709) and a statue of his character Kiki from a 2000 edition of 5 came in at £361,250 ($720,405).  While Kiki came in underestimate, the two paintings surpassed their high-end estimates.  I’m surprised by this because they’re very impersonal Murakamis, I haven’t researched them but I assume they were produced in the studio.  However, they did both come through Galerie Perrotin in Paris where they were exhibited in 2001.  Also, they both show iconic characters often produced by Murakami.  Still, despite my surprise, I’m happy – helps me in proving my dissertation hypothesis!

DOB Flower by Takashi Murakami

The U2 Basquiat did alright, selling for £5.1m ($10.2m), under the high-end estimate of £6m, but still a nice little packet for the band to split.

Basquiat owned by U2 on display at Sotheby\

And Gormley’s maquette for Angel of the North, 1996, sold for £2.3m ($4.6m), well above the £600,000 – £800,00 estimate.

The sale total was £94.7m ($188.9m), just exceeding the pre-estimate of £92.6m.   It does seem to be a bit of a bear market at the moment.  But I’m not yet sure how much of this is a result of the overall financial situation, or how much of this is just contemporary art prices re-adjusting themselves from the excessive highs they have been at lately.  I’m rather inclined to think it’s simply a bit of both.

NB – all sale results include Buyer’s Premium

Sotheby’s Press Call

I was at Sotheby’s yesterday morning for yet another press call. This one was “to mark the start of £500 million selling season”. Modern, Impressionist, and Contemporary works were all on display. The Impressionist & Modern evening sale will be 25 June at 7 pm and the Contemporary evening sale is scheduled for 1 July at 7 pm.

Some of the highlights of the exhibition:

-Gormley’s life size maquette of Angel of the North (est£600,000 – £800,000) was the darling of the photographers. An edition of 5, it seems all are in the hands of private owners.

-Severini’s Danseuse takes the front cover of the Imps&Mods catalogue in all its pastel glory. It has a strong geometric presence and looks like it owes much to German expressionism. However, I just can’t get over the fact that it looks like it should be hanging in a five year old girl’s room. As a girl who always had pink walls in her bedroom, I should know. Plus, I think the estimate is a little high at £7m-£10m.

-A few Giacometti sculptures – maybe hoping for Abramovich wannabes?

-There’s a Monet beach-scene up that Sotheby’s is really promoting. It’s a nice work, but it was recently bought-in in New York and it’s by no means outstanding. Sad considering Christie’s has a lovely Monet for their Imps&Mods sale that I’m really looking forward to seeing.

-Raoul Dufy’s Le Havre -14 Juillet was by far my favorite piece of the Imps&Mods followed closely by Kandinsky’s Park von St. Cloud – mit reiter. Both lovely pieces.

-The band U2 is selling a Basquiat that they bought collectively in 1989. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Basquiat (probably because I’m not actually old enough to remember his work being new and exciting), but this painting is a fabulous one. According to Alex Branczik, deputy director of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department, the band bought the painting together in 1989 as a sort of “insurance policy” (though, as Alex said, after Joshua Tree they didn’t really need it). Apparently Adam Clayton is the collector of the group and the one who convinced the other three to invest in the painting. Well done, Adam.

-Three Murakamis are in the contemporary sale – a DOB Flower and a Mushrooms paintings. and also a Kiki sculpture. Not overly exciting, but nice to see my golden man back in the evening sales.

-The lovely Study for the Head of George Dyer is in the sale. It was a joy to be able to see it again. Such a fantastic painting. I’ve never been a huge Bacon fan (not that I don’t love his compositions/style/colors, but they really just don’t do much for me aesthetically) but this portrait is absolutely gorgeous. While the estimate is upon request, it seems Sotheby’s is banking on £8m-£10m. There’s another Bacon in the sale as well, Figure Turning. Not nearly as nice as the portrait, but a really great composition of movement and very Bacon.

Image courtesy of Sothebys.com.

-Some older Gilbert and George silver prints. Really lovely ones, none of their recent “we’re obviously doing this to try and shock you, aren’t you so shocked?” work.

Basically, they have some really great works lined up for the Contemporary sale, and a few strong ones in the smaller Impressionist & Modern sale. I’m looking forward to being in the saleroom those nights.

Art in the Face of Natural Disasters

An interesting article on Bloomberg says that a painting by Liu Xiaodong, who recently set mainland-China’s contemporary auction record, failed to sell at auction in Beijing on 22 May.  Council International Auction Co. had a hard time selling any of its lots in the face of the devastation left after the earthquake of 12 May.  Only 87 lots of 143 offered sold.  Bloomberg says,

“Council’s auction was the first art sale since the government shut bars, cinemas and other entertainment outlets for three days to commemorate the 41,000 people estimated to have died in last week’s earthquake. Buyers stayed away, forcing the auction house to allocate extra bidding time for the star lot, Wang Guangyi’s 1992 “Great Criticism – Marlboro,” in an effort to draw a buyer.“

Not everything in the sale was a flop, but selling in a devastated country is rarely easy.  Especially when paintings of nudes and beautiful women are considered “inappropriate” in times of mourning.

Bringing Home the Bacon

Sorry for the absence, but I take my bank holiday weekends very seriously. Or, I was just too ill to be bothered to try and form a coherent sentence. But the former sounds much more glamorous.

On to the art market. Last week I was lucky enough to attend a press call at Sotheby’s London to preview Study for the Head of George Dyer (1967) by Francis Bacon. The painting is absolutely wonderful, full of color and life and motion as it showcases the love of Bacon’s life. It’s intimate for a Bacon, only 14 x 12 in., and one of only two known portraits of Dyer in this small format. Bacon never worked from life models, instead using photographs taken by John Deakin. I was able to see a copy of the photograph Bacon used for this study, and it’s quite interesting. Bacon first cut out the photograph and mounted it, doctoring it a bit to fit his aesthetic view. The end result of the study is quite different from the photograph, but the main points of the composition remain the same.

The painting of Dyer has been in the same collection since it was bought at Marlborough Gallery two months after Bacon painted it. Oliver Barker, Senior Specialist for Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s London, wouldn’t comment on why the collector was selling it outside of “very personal reasons”. The study was recently exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in the exhibition Francis Bacon: Portrait and Heads where it was also the cover image of the catalogue. It was also on display at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg for A Guest of Honour: Francis Bacon und sein Umkreis. And the Tate has requested it for their upcoming Francis Bacon retrospective which will travel to the Prado and the Met.

Study for the Head of George Dyer will be auctioned at Sotheby’s Evening Sale of Contemporary Art on Tuesday 1 July 2008. The date of the sale was moved so it doesn’t conflict with Euro 2008 football (no, really, I’m serious. This is what the Sotheby’s people told me.). The painting is estimated in excess of £8 million.

Discussing the phenomenal price the Triptych, 1976 sold for at the latest Evening Contemporary auction in New York ($86.3 million, to refresh your memory), Mr. Barker was asked if he thought the market could hold such prices. He replied that when such amazing works come onto the market, there will always be knowledgeable, passionate collectors who are willing to put out the money to buy them, no matter the state of the economy. He was very excited to have such an intimate and special Bacon to offer in the upcoming sale and, like many of us, is looking forward to seeing how it sells.

Contemporary Spring New York Sales – Sotheby’s & Christies

The spring contemporary sales in New York did extremely well, despite naysayers predicting a downturn in the art market. Christie’s total for it’s May 13 evening sale was $348.2 million, well above it’s low estimate, but not quite at it’s high estimate for the night. Rothko’s “No. 15″ (1952) was the top seller of the night, going to a telephone bidder for $50.4 million. Lucien Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (1995) also went to a telephone bidder, but for $33.6 million, an auction record for Freud. Indeed, an auction record for any living artist. In addition, only 3 lots of a total of 57 were bought in.

Perhaps the most interesting lot of the Christie’s sale was a house. Designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar J. Kaufmann as a desert retreat, the 5 bedroom modernist house located in Palm Springs, CA sold for $16.8 million with premium (a steal when you consider that a painting went for $50 million).

Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs

The Sotheby’s evening sale on May 14 also did very well, bringing in $362 million for the house, above the high estimate of $356 million. Only 10 lots of 83 were unsold. As mentioned before on this blog, Francis Bacon’s “Triptych” (1976) sold for $86.3 million (with premium), the highest price ever for a ‘contemporary’ lot. Apparently 18 records for artists were set, including that for Takashi Murakami when his “My Lonesome Cowboy” sold for $15.16 million. Yves Klein’s works sold well on the night, as did those of Robert Rauschenberg who passed away on May 12. Usually after the death of an artist, the prices will drop or stagnate for a bit before rising sharply. However, Mr. Rauschenberg, ever avant-garde, seems to have defied this trend.

Yves Klein’s “MG 9″ (c. 1962) sold for $23.56 million (photo copyright Sotheby’s)

While both sales had a smaller number of lots with greater quality lots, both still exceeded expectations. It seems that the contemporary market is still safe, for now at least.