The UK's Telegraph has a good recap of the art sales from New York City earlier this month. The total of all sales was $1.6 billion, up $500 million from 2016 May sales, but still way off the $2.74 billion record set in 2015.
The Telegraph reports
The art market clawed back another notch from the 2016 downturn after the all-important Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in New York last week realised $1.6 billion (£1.23 billion). The total was $500 million more than last May, though still adrift of the record $2.74 billion set in May 2015.
As we have come to expect, the earlier period of Impressionist and Modern art came in second with $537.6 million, approximately half the amount of the post-war and contemporary sales which made $1.064 billion. Which is not to say the Impressionist sales were without substance.
Christie’s star lot was a small and rare lifetime cast bronze head of a sleeping muse by Brancusi that excited passionate interest and sold for a double-estimate record $53.4 million. It was followed by a contorted Picasso portrait of Dora Maar on the outbreak of war in 1939 which sold within estimate for $45 million. The painting cost the seller, Dimitri Mavrommatis, $29 million in 2011 and sold to a Chinese bidder – one of several lots by Picabia, Braque, Chagall, Renoir and Monet to attract Asian bidding that night.
At Sotheby’s, there were signs of nerves when their top lot, an early Egon Schiele with a $30 million estimate and no guarantee, was withdrawn by the owner at the last minute. Into the top slot went a rare 1917 abstraction by Russian revolutionary artist, Kazimir Malevich, that sold for $21 million. But otherwise the stand-out feature of the sale was sculpture.
The first lot, for instance, was an early abstract wood sculpture by Alexander Archipenko that had slipped through an auction in Maryland two years earlier for $425. Thanks to Christie’s authentication and London dealer Offer Waterman’s bidding, the buyer now saw that price rise to a lottery-scale win of $564,500.
This was followed by an emphatic record $16 million for an anthropomorphised chess piece bronze by the surrealist Max Ernst; a record $6.3 million for some elaborate library shelves by Alberto Giacometti’s designer brother, Diego; a record $4.8 million for a curvaceous Jean Arp torso; and a record $3 million for a tall, spindly Don Quixote by the French post-war artist, Germaine Richier.
Ahead of these sales it was notable how many third parties (nine) came in to offer guarantees or irrevocable bids at the last minute, lending an air of casino or racetrack gambling to the proceedings with each guarantor standing to win if the price went higher than predicted. Do these guarantors get wind that something will do well and then place their bets?
Whatever the case, Christie’s demonstrated a greater desire to win the inter-auction-house competition, furnishing 55 per cent of the pre-sale value of its main Impressionist sale with guarantees, achieving a $207 million total. Sotheby’s had only 37 per cent of its sale value under guarantee, and realised $147 million.
But the contemporary sales were always ahead. Phillips had over 70 per cent of its main $110 million sale guaranteed and duly sold the lot, achieving a record $29 million for British painter, Peter Doig, in the process.
According to auction analysts, Art Tactic, 56 per cent of the value of the three main evening sales was guaranteed, with Christie’s, which staged the most valuable sale at $488 million, correspondingly arranging the highest value of guarantees. The guarantees ensured that most top lots were sold, and that at least nine, including the record $10.5 million paid by a Chinese bidder for a self-portrait by Rudolf Stingel, sold even though there was no competition.
While there were few substantial gains made in the Impressionist sales, there were many in evidence here. A sculpture by Thomas Schutte, for example, was bought two years ago by dealer Rafael Jablonka for $1.9 million, and sold for $5.2 million, and a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, bought in 1989 for $341,000, sold for $25 million.
Dealers and collectors have been grooming Basquiat for superstardom for years, likening him in stature to Picasso and Warhol, and last week their efforts bore fruit when a Japanese internet billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, paid $110 million for a massive, primitive totem-like head painting at Sotheby’s, the most ever paid for an American artist. The painting had been bought at auction in 1984 for $21,000. That’s an average 55 per cent per annum increase in price.
As ever, it is the hopes of substantial gain which drives this market. Attention is also directed at comparatively lesser-known artists like the late Blinky Palermo whose tall minimal abstract painting, Rot/Gelb, bought by Zwirner & Wirth in 1998 for $167,500, sold for a record $4.5 million dollars (a return rate of 71.5 per cent p.a).
In a similar vein, barely a handful of paintings by Japanese abstract artist Takeo Yamaguchi have appeared on the western market before, but a classic 1940s example came Sotheby’s way and it doubled the artist’s previous record selling for $950,000 - accentuating the revaluation that is taking place of post-war Asian art in general.
As the contemporary art market bounces back, it is digging into its history and global reach on a scale that earlier periods in art cannot.
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