A Look at the Record London Sales

The Telegraph takes a look at the recent London Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art sales and declares the art market at a new peak.  The group of sales totaled $1.184.5 billion.  That amount is 39% above last years sales and 29% over the previous high. This is the first time the group of art sales in London have surpassed the $1 billion mark.  The Telegraph reports that the Impressionist sales even outperformed the NY Impressionist sales.

The Telegraph reports on the sales

It’s official! The art market has reached a new peak, and it’s good, old-fashioned painting, figurative and abstract, that’s driving it.

London’s auctions of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales over the past two weeks have amassed a record £709.5 million, a 39 per cent increase on last February and a 29 per cent increase over the last highest combined totals for these sales in London, achieved in June 2008. In dollar terms, they breached the $1 billion mark for the first time, reaching $1.2 billion.

Last week, I reported on London’s record £414 million Impressionist and Modern art sales, and since then, the friskier contemporary art sales have realised £295.5 million, another record for London.

However, while the Impressionist sales exceeded most New York totals, London still lags behind New York in Contemporary because of the weight of American post-war art that is sold in New York.

Last week, there was only a sprinkling of that in London, but it produced sparkling results. Sotheby’s boasted a Warhol portrait of Mao Zedong which had been bought 14 years ago for £421,500 by the dealer/collector, Jose Mugrabi. Having changed hands since then, it sold within estimate to a European buyer for £7.6 million, who had to see off competitive bidding from Asia.

The main post-war US highlight was a record for a Cy Twombly painting. The classic 1964 Untitled (Roma), with markings like little coloured clouds, was pursued by dealer Larry Gagosian, who invested heavily in presenting the artist’s work when he was alive. Gagosian gave up when the price doubled the estimate at £12.2 million, looking surprised but not unhappy at the result for an artist in whom he still has a big stake.

There was broader strength in European late-20th-century masters. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s were testing the market for abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, which has slowed down since it peaked in 2012 with the £21 million pounds paid for Eric Clapton’s example. Sotheby’s red-tinted Wall, had come from the collection of Taipei businessman Pierre Chen, with a guarantee and a £16 million estimate. It just scraped by, with one buyer from “Europe” (which includes Russia) in contention, selling for £17.4 million. Christie’s example was earlier and more intricate. Although guaranteed, it attracted more bidding and sold to an Asian bidder for £19.6 million.

Asian buyers were really throwing their weight about. A rare work, Black Hair, 1969, by the difficult-to-pigeonhole Sixties artist Domenico Gnoli, was estimated at £1.2 million, and was pursued by London-based Italian dealer/collector Guya Bertoni and by Xin Li, deputy chairman of Christie’s Asia, both bidding for clients, before finally selling to Bertoni for £7 million – three times the previous record for Gnoli.

Towering over all the sales was Francis Bacon’s Portrait of George Dyer Talking, which sold for £42.2 million ($70 million), a record for a single canvas – as opposed to a triptych – by Bacon. The painting had sold 14 years ago for $6.6 million to a collector from Brazil, and was acquired, reportedly, by Mexican financier David Martínez eight years later for $12 million. Christie’s described the buyer as an American who is good at poker – a possible allusion to hedge funder Steven A Cohen, a poker fan since school days.

Another senior British artist to perform well was pop artist, Gerald Laing, who has emerged from obscurity since his death in 2011, and whose 1963 portrait of Brigitte Bardot sold to a private European buyer for a record £902,500. The painting was being sold by British actor Roddy Maude-Roxby, who bought it from Laing in 1964 for just £40.

Christie’s provided a spotlight on the Young British Artists (YBAs) of the Nineties, with a selection of works from the collection of American commodities trader Frank Gallipoli. Some had been owned by Charles Saatchi and shown in the Sensation exhibition of 1997. Of these, Jenny Saville’s unflattering self-portrait Plan (1993) sold to an Asian buyer for a record £2.1 million; Gary Hume’s Vicious sold to a private European buyer for a record £410,500, but Chris Ofili’s Popcorn Tits sold below estimate for what may prove to have been a bargain £386,500 to London dealer, Hugh Gibson.

Damien Hirst sales were disappointing; he had more success as the seller of Jeff Koons’s large stainless steel sculpture, Cracked Egg (Magenta). Hirst acquired the sculpture from Gagosian in 2006, the same year that he held a substantial exhibition at Gagosian’s gallery in London, for an estimated $3.5 million. Last week it was the only sculpture among the top lots selling for a handsome £14.1 million ($32.5 million).

Source: The Telegraph