Robert Frank’s Take on the Art Market

In case you don’t scour the web and newspapers looking for news of the art market, I thought I’d point you in the direction of a post by Robert Frank in his The Wealth Report blog for the Wall Street Journal.  It’s from the beginning of this month, right after the Sotheby’s and Christie’s Spring Impressionist and Modern sales.  Frank does a great job of sifting through the flattering hype spewed by market insiders to say that the sales really weren’t all that great.  Masterpieces didn’t even reach their highest estimate.  The sales were a let down compared to those of the past few years.

However, I will take one issue with Frank’s post: the final sales figure for Christie’s, while much lower than the Spring sale last year and the Yves Saint Laurent sale in February, were still comfortably within the overall estimates for the auction.  While this isn’t the amazing, over-the-top figures we’ve seen the last few years in the art market, it does show that there are buyers out there who are steadily willing to pay good money for good works of art.  The art market seems to have nicely self-corrected from its excesses and is still in good form.  Market correction is needed for further growth, afterall.

Old Master Week London

It’s that time of year in London – time for endless summer rain and sales of Old Master paintings and drawings.  Christie’s held their Old Master evening sale on Tuesday 8 July, while Sotheby’s sale was last evening.

Last night’s sale at Sotheby’s reaped £51.5m ($101.5m), with 76.7% of the 91 lots selling.  According to the press release, 58% of those lots sold over their high-end estimate.

Christie’s didn’t manage to bring quite as much money in on Tuesday night, but then they also sold a much smaller number of paintings with only 48 lots offered.  Still, only 31 of those lots sold, making the sale total £24.1m ($47.5m).  However, Christie’s did have a re-discovered French masterpiece by Jean-Antoine Watteau,  La Surprise, the location of which has been unknown for nearly 200 years and the painting was presumed destroyed.  The Watteau ended up selling to an anonymous buyer for £12.4m ($24.4m), well above it’s estimate of £3m – £5m.  It seems the previous record for a work by Watteau at auction was established when Le conteur sold at Christie’s London on 13 December 2000 for £2.4m.  It also was a record for a French Old Master at auction.

Watteau's La Surprise, sold at Christie's London

At the moment, I don’t have the information on the breakdown of buyers at Christie’s, but I do know that 42% of the buyers at Sotheby’s were British, 35% other European, and 16% American.  An interesting mix of numbers.  Good to see that the Old Master market is still going strong.

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

Damien Hirst & Sotheby’s

For those of you who don’t read every arts section you come across, you may not yet have heard that Sotheby’s will be auctioning new works by Damien Hirst, consigned directly from the artist to the auction house.

This might not seem unusual to some. Afterall, Hirst’s works come up for sale at auction all the time. However, in the art market, the sale of works of art tend to follow a precise pattern. The art market is divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. The primary sector involves dealers selling new works on behalf of artists. The secondary sector involves dealers selling works that are no longer “new” (private treaty sales between individual collectors also fit into this secondary sector). And the tertiary sector is made up of the auction houses who sell “old” works at auction to the public. Works coming to auction may have remained in the same collection since they were first sold, but, outside of charity auctions, it is a unknown concept to hear of an artist consigning his own works to auction.

Personally, I don’t think the auction will have any adverse effects on Hirst, his works, or his prices. Hirst is obviously an established artist. At 43 years old and one of the biggest names from the “Young British Artists” movement, Hirst is simply taking a step for his career that will offer more publicity and hopefully bigger returns.

However, I do worry that young artists who are currently the “hot” thing to buy will get the wrong idea. The reason behind an artist having a dealer is not to sell paintings. It’s to build a lasting relationship that can see both the artist and the dealer through tough times. A good artist/dealer relationship can survive just about anything, and both benefit from it in the end. While I don’t think the big name auction houses will choose just anyone to have a “solo” auction, I do worry that such auctions might cause young artists to lose sight of the importance of dealers.

That said, go for it, Damien. You never fail to disappoint when it comes to your publicity and sales strategies (and you’re always good for a laugh). Also, as one art market specialist commented, Damien has always had a bit of an open marriage with his dealers. In fact, Gagosian released a statement saying, “As Damien’s long-term gallery, we’ve come to expect the unexpected. He can certainly count on us to be in the room with paddle in hand.”

The Damien Hirst sale at Sotheby’s will occur at Sotheby’s London on 15 September. Entitled “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, the auction will include paintings, cabinets, sketches and “The Golden Calf” – one of Hirst’s cows ‘preserved’ in formaldehyde which includes a solid gold halo and 18k casts on its horns and hooves.

Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale – London

So sorry for the late update.  I’m really hoping things will settle down soon and I can get back to updating daily.

So, the sale.  Well, I have to eat my words.  I said I thought the £7m – £10m estimate on the Severini was a bit high.  It ended up selling for £15m ($29.9m).

Monet’s Plage à Trouville went for £7.7m ($15.4m), just over the low-end estimate of £7m.  The Dufy I loved, Le Harve, 14 Juillet, ended up selling for £1.6m ($3m), above it’s £900,000 – £1.2m estimate.

The sale total was £102.2m ($203.8m).  Yes, that’s much lower than Christie’s total, but not bad considering the Sotheby’s sale lacked the masterpieces from the Miller Collection that Christie’s managed to secure.

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.

Corporate Sponsorship in the Art Market

I would like to start by apologizing for the irregularity of posts this past week. I have family visiting, so my time has not been my own, even at such an exciting time in the art market.

I want to write a bit today on corporate sponsorship in the realm of the art market. This is most likely a topic I’ll come back to again and again, as it’s a big issue in the art world.

This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to attend the 5th annual Althorp Literary Festival at Althorp House, home of Earl Spencer. Sotheby’s sponsored the event. While I am extremely grateful the event managed to find such a corporate sponsor in order to run, I was actually a bit surprised at the hands-off attitude of Sotheby’s concerning the festival. I did not run into anyone from Sotheby’s at the festival and there were no brochures or flyers, not even a poster listing the next sales of books and manuscripts.

Now, I realize Sotheby’s is a strong brand name. Placed in the right circumstances, it can remind those who already know it that it exists without much fanfare. And there were certainly some attendees this weekend who know Sotheby’s already and probably took note of the sponsorship with a pleased eye and a mental note to keep Sotheby’s in mind for any appraisals or auctions in the future. However, there were some attendees who seemed to not have much of a background with Sotheby’s. Oh, they probably know it’s an auction house and might know it’s located on Bond Street, but they might stop thinking about it there. I know Sotheby’s is trying to deal with only the best of the best at the moment, but you never do know who has what. Some of those who don’t know Sotheby’s might just have the income to spend at auctions. They might have some family heirlooms they’re looking to sell. And, at a literary festival, they may well be book collectors who would be interested in at least attending an exhibition for a manuscript and book sale. Once again, this was a literary festival at a stately home where most of the attendees were referring to Earl Spencer by his given name – the “right sort of people” for Sotheby’s were in attendance.

This I think, is where Sotheby’s has it wrong. You can let your name do the talking for you, but if someone doesn’t know your name, it won’t help much. Most people are not curious enough to do their own research. And simply because someone doesn’t know your name does not mean they are not worthy to do business with. You can’t judge your unknown potential clientèle until you get to know them.

I’m not saying Sotheby’s needed to set up a circus tent and perform tricks for the audience at the literary festival. However, a person or two from the Corporate Sponsorship department would have been nice. Maybe an “Art Tour” led by a Sotheby’s specialist around the fantastic Lely and Knoller portraits hanging all around Althorp. Perhaps someone from Sotheby’s could have introduced the speakers. Certainly they could have at least had an informational desk with brochures and such. Such actions would definitely gain the attention of those who know less about Sotheby’s, perhaps inciting them to make a mental note about the auction house.

I just hope that if anyone from the Corporate Sponsorship department at Sotheby’s is reading this, they give me a call to discuss future Althorp Literary Festivals. I am, afterall, their target audience and know a thing or two about marketing to myself.

The Library at Althorp.  Photo courtesy of Althorp.com

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.

Impressionist & Modern Sales NY – May 7 & 8, 2008

Impressionist and Modert Art
Sotheby’s Evening Sale
Sale Total with Premium	$235,333,000
Total Lots	52
Lots Sold	41
Percentage Sold	78.80%
Average Lot Value	$5,739,829
Median Lot Value	$2,281,000
Christie’s Evening Sale
Sale Total with Premium	$277,276,000
Total Lots	58
Lots Sold	44
Percentage Sold	76%
Average Lot Value	$6,301,727
Median Lot Value	$3,065,000

Table courtesy of Sotheby’s Art Market Review, prepared by Art Market Monitor. Comments on these sales to follow when I’m not working on art consultancy pitches for imaginary colleges. I started this blog yesterday and I’m already playing catch-up. The joys of graduate school.