Catch Up - New York's Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Sales

I dont wish to dwell too much on items that were missed during my brief Google Blogger imposed exile, but I do wish to follow up on the important NY impressionist, modern and contemporary sales held mid November.  Carol Vogel of the NY Times has a good article stating the sales went well, buyers were willing to spend so long as the price and quality were right for the current times. Part of the renewed spending is based upon more reasonable estimates placed upon the consigned items in the sales.  Many believe confidence is slowly returning to the impressionist, modern and especially contemporary art segments.  This has been shown with the art fairs in London and Paris and now as well at auctions.

Vogel notes total auction sales were close to $600 million, which on its own sounds good, but it is surprisingly less than the poor sales of a year ago bringing which brought close to $730 million and no so surprisingly well below the $1.6 billion from sales in 2007. Vogel believes that Sotheby's had the better sales than Christies during this important month.

Since the sales were a couple of weeks ago, I will not go into the sale details, and instead rely on the general mood of the market as noted by Carol Vogel in her recap article on the sales.

Vogel states

But the relief that prices are crawling back up was palpable.

“A year ago people were distracted and primarily assessing their own net worth,” said Marc Porter, president of Christie’s in the Americas. “Now that the worst of the financial crisis seems to be over, people are once again focusing on collecting.”

Last fall there was a sense of panic because nobody knew if prices had hit bottom, not just for art but for any asset, and even the richest collectors froze. This season was all about the estimates. “Ultimately that’s what provided buyers with the confidence to bid,” said Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of Sotheby’s contemporary art department, who added that for some artists, prices have dropped more than 40 percent from their high two years ago.

The deliberately low estimates became catnip for bidders. Or so it seemed when Warhol’s 1962 silkscreen painting “200 One Dollar Bills” incited a bidding war among five collectors and ultimately sold for a staggering $43.7 million (including Sotheby’s fees), more than three times its $12 million high estimate.

To read the full NY Times article, click HERE.