Review of London Contemporary Art Sales

Melanie Gerlis writing for the Artnewspaper has a good review of the recent contemporary art sales held in London.  As we know from earlier posts, the sales were solid, and within expectations yet failed to provide the market with any real excitement.  Gerlis does note that Phillips had a particularly difficult sales week in London, only selling 50% of its lots and totaling less than 5% of the total London sales between the big three international houses.  Although the comment is cursory, Gerlis states that Phillips might be in trouble.  Although they are backed with capital from a large Russian conglomerate, so I would not be too quick to discount Phillips.

Gerlis states

While the bidding levels couldn’t match the excitement of New York’s contemporary sales in May and are still nowhere near the contemporary market’s boom days, there was a buzz in Christie’s saleroom that had failed to materialise at Sotheby’s earlier in the week.

“They had a more curated, cohesive and stronger sale which was reflected in the bidding,” said New York art adviser Kim Heirston straight after the Christie’s auction. Perhaps the bidding went too high for her: she didn’t purchase at Christie’s but picked up Jeff Koons' Bear (Gold), 1999 (lot 43) at Sotheby’s earlier in the week for £385,250, a hammer price below it’s low estimate (£350,000, hammer price £320,000) as well as Anselm Reyle’s Untitled, 2006, from Phillips de Pury for £99,650 (est £70,000-£90,000, see notable lots below).

At Phillips de Pury’s sale, squeezed between the two major auction houses (29 June), a buy-in rate of nearly 50% and sale total less than 5% of the £90.7m sold over the three evenings, suggest that the auction house is struggling to compete effectively in the major contemporary sales arena.

After the previous week’s shaky Impressionist sales, all three auction houses seemed to have wisely persuaded buyers to keep their reserves relatively low, reflecting the limits of a still-fragile market, vulnerable to continuing wider economic unknowns. “Vendors have been excessively zealous about some of the high prices achieved,” said London-dealer Ivor Braka, “no markets go up steadily and exponentially.”

To read the full Artnewspaper article, click HERE.