The NY Times has an interesting look at the Impressionist and modern art market. The article notes 30 years ago, the Imp/Modern category offered some of the most costly works in the world. Even 8 years ago Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” sold for $104.3 million. Now the art market is dominated by contemporary art. The article notes most important works are now hard and few works being fresh to market have hurt the market. There is hope that Asian collectors will sustain the marketplace and category.
The NY Times reports
Source: The NY TimesIt’s a commonplace of the art market that Impressionist and modern art is not the force it once was. Thirty years ago, it was the most expensive in the world, with paintings by Gauguin, Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh achieving eight-figure prices at black-tie auctions at Sotheby’s and at Christie’s, in London and in New York.
Last month’s $646 million evening sale at Christie’s of Impressionist and modern works from the out-of-time collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller conjured memories of that bygone era. But tastes have changed. Contemporary art now dominates collecting fashion. Bidding at “Imps and mods” sales is generally much thinner than it was in the 1980s, with most works selling at the low estimate and sale totals redeemed by a few exceptional prices. That was certainly the case in London this week.
On Wednesday night at Christie’s, there was a rare round of applause at an Impressionist and modern sale after “Drei Pferde,” a 1912 gouache on card by the German Expressionist painter Franz Marc, soared to 15.4 million pounds, or about $20.3 million, more than four times the estimate.
The 19-inch-wide vision of three horses in a vibrantly colored landscape had not been seen on the market since 1951 and came from the family of the revered Westchester County, N.Y., collector, Kurt H. Grunebaum. It was bought by a telephone buyer, who beat competition from at least four other bidders.
“It was everything you want in a Marc,” said Alex Lachmann, a collector based in London. “It had horses, color, was in great condition, had a marvelous provenance and was a perfect museum piece,” he added. “The only problem was the price.”
But the Marc painting was one of the very few museum-quality works in what was widely regarded as a group of underwhelming offerings at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
“Both sales were quite thin, apart from two or three standout things,” said Offer Waterman, a dealer in 20th-century British art, who is based in London.
Nowadays, New York is generally the venue of choice for sellers of Impressionist and modern trophies, as was evidenced last month by the $157.2 million sale at Sotheby’s of a 1917 Modigliani nude from the collection of the Irish horse breeder John Magnier.
The latest London auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s were each estimated to raise a little under £100 million and each featured eight-figure Picasso paintings among the highlights. On the night, Christie’s raised £128.1 million with fees, from 44 lots. The previous evening, the slightly smaller 36-lot sale at Sotheby’s took £87.5 million. Sixteen percent of the works failed to sell at Christie’s; 28 percent at Sotheby’s.
What gave Christie’s the edge?
The auction houses look to the new wealth of Asia to bolster the contracted collecting base for Impressionist and modern art. Both houses exhibited highlights from their London sales in Hong Kong, which helped Christie’s to attract Asian buyers for 32 percent of its lots, the company said. Equivalent figures were not available from Sotheby’s. Staff members for the Asia market were conspicuously more active on telephones at the Christie’s auction than at the Sotheby’s one.
Asian clients tend to covet works by famous names. Elaine Holt, a Christie’s international director based in Hong Kong, took a winning telephone bid of £12.6 million — way above the £7 million upper estimate — for a rare bronze of Rodin’s sculpture “the Kiss,” cast during the artist’s lifetime.
One of the Asia-based staff members at Christie’s also took the winning telephone bid of £2.6 million for Monet’s historically important, but unappealingly dark landscape, “Le Dam à Zaandam, le Soir.” The previous evening, Monet’s “Le Port de Zaandam,” from the same 1871 series, estimated at £3.5 million to £5 million, had Patti Wong, chairwoman of Sotheby’s Asia, poised on a telephone, but her client declined to bid.
That Monet was one of three works guaranteed by Sotheby’s for a total of at least £6 million that failed to sell, denting the auction’s profitability. Over all, about a third of the lots at Sotheby’s were guaranteed, either by the house or by third parties, a financial mechanism that can inhibit bidding. Christie’s, whose “Imps and mods” credentials have been enhanced by the Rockefeller sale, was able to gather this London auction using just two guarantees, both covered by third parties.
On Tuesday night, Sotheby’s offered a Picasso painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1932, the year that is currently the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Modern.
“Buste de Femme de Profil (Femme Écrivant)” was a little-exhibited, geometric study of Picasso’s lover and muse writing in front of a window. The canvas, 3 feet 10 inches high, was hardly the most sensuous evocation of Ms. Walter, and it sold to a single bid from its third-party guarantor who agreed to buy the painting for £27.3 million with fees. The presale low estimate had been £33 million.
A 1942 Picasso at Christie’s, “Femme Dans un Fauteuil (Dora Maar),” a darker wartime painting depicting Ms. Walter’s successor as muse and lover seated in an armchair, was also supported by an external guarantor. It sold for £19.4 million, just above the low estimate, to a client represented by Xin Li, deputy chairman of Christie’s Asia.
With “market freshness” at a premium in this sector, both houses tried to present as much material not previously seen before at auction as possible. But Giacometti’s charming, pipe cleaner-thin bronze sculpture “Le Chat” (1955), which was one of the few big-ticket highlights at Sotheby’s, had been bought by its owner at auction in 2010 for $20.8 million. This time round, it sold to a single bid in the room of £12.6 million.
“It’s difficult to find fresh material,” said Anthony Brown, partner in the art dealership Connaught Brown, based in London. “The collectors get phoned up all the time about works, and there are so many sales that it stops them getting excited and concentrating on one. There’s auction fatigue.”
The New York Rockefeller auction was always going to be a hard act to follow, but the aggregate total of £215.6 million achieved at these London evening Impressionist and modern sales was nonetheless 22 percent lower than last June.
The star lot at Christie’s summed up how the market in London had changed. Monet’s 1877 Impressionist masterwork, “La Gare St.-Lazare, Vue Extérieure,” from the celebrated collection of the Texas philanthropists Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass, sold for £25 million to a North American bidder in the room who was representing an undisclosed private collector. Coincidentally, the dollar price, $32.8 million, was almost exactly the same as that achieved last month at the Rockefeller auction for another of Monet’s paintings of the Paris railway station. But it was a long way short of the artist’s high of $84.7 million, given that same night in New York by the casino mogul Steve Wynn for Monet’s 1914-1917 painting, “Nymphéas en Fleur.”
The $104.3 million given in 2010 for Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” — the last time an “Imps and mods” great set a truly spectacular auction high in London — seems a distant memory.
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