A Look at the Warhol Market

With the recent news of the Warhol Foundation selling its inventory the Gallerist NY has an interesting article on what to expect in the Warhol market in the near future.  One of the main concerns pointed out in some of the initial reports was with so much coming to market, values might fall.  In looking at the full market for Warhol, the Foundation inventory may account for only about 10% of the annual Warhol market.

The Gallerist NY reports

While 100 million is nothing to sneeze at, a major Warhol dealer told us that the private market for Warhol last year was “comfortably over half a billion dollars,” which, when combined with the $346 million the artist brought in at auction last year, describes an annual market that’s closer to $1 billion, making that $100 million closer to just 10 percent of the annual market. Moreover, the most expensive piece Christie’s will sell has a high estimate of $1.5 million, whereas, on the subject of $100 million, Philippe Ségalot sold Eight Elvises (1963) for just that price in 2008. It’s not insignificant that a single Warhol work can sell for the entire price of the Warhol collection—it implies that such high-end deals are a regular part of the Warhol market. And, of course, the Eight Elvises price point serves to drive home the fact that the Warhol Foundation is offering works of a different quality than most works that trade hands in the Warhol business.

“It makes no sense,” said the major Warhol dealer, of the implication that the foundation sale might affect the market. “It’s like saying if there was a big sale of Picasso lithographs, the value of Les Demoiselles D’Avignon would be affected.”

It’s important to keep in mind that, as Sarah Thornton wrote for The Economist in 2011, the actual Warhol market is controlled by a small handful of people:

“Sixteen Jackies” sold at the low end of its estimate for $20m to an anonymous phone bidder. However, Mr Mugrabi, said to have a huge inventory of Jackie paintings, was the direct underbidder. Mr Mugrabi and his sons also underbid two other Warhols at Sotheby’s and bought two Warhol paintings at Christie’s, including a red version of his 1986 self-portrait, known as a “fright wig”, for $27.5m. In any given contemporary auction week, a fair number of the Warhols will have been either consigned, underbid or bought by the Mugrabi family, sometimes in partnership with Larry Gagosian (who sits across the narrow aisle from Mr Mugrabi at Christie’s and one row ahead of him at Sotheby’s).

Source: Gallerist NY