ArtMarketMonitor

Christie’s Manages Its $219m Return to Live Sales

“That was a managed white glove sale,” one of Christie’s specialists said to her colleague as they walked out of the Christie’s hybrid salesroom-livestream studio. It is true that Christie’s heavily managed 21st Century Evening sale that opened the November cycle of marquee auctions in New York, the first event since the global coronavirus pandemic disrupted the traditional art market. In the two…

Deep Inside the Mackloew Sale: Koons, Richter, Polke and de Kooning (Part 2)

Jeff Koons, Aqualung, $8-12m Now that the Macklowe collection is finally on the auction block, we can see that it has already filled one important role. In a market awash in cash waiting to be spent there has been a dearth of high quality supply. The Macklowe collection’s undisputed level of taste has brought a surprising number of other competitive works to all three auction houses. The market…

Deep Inside Sotheby’s $600+m Bet on Macklowe, Part 1

When last we left the art market—just a few short weeks ago in London—the story was all about the hunt for new talent with collectors making aggressive bets on the “next big thing” artist. Had the top of the art market become dormant, or had it simply retreated into the secrecy of the private market on WhatsApp? Perhaps we were all left with the wrong impression because the auction houses seem to…

Phillips Drops a Last-Minute $35m Bacon Bomb on the November Sales

Francis Bacon, Pope with Owls, 1958 )$35-45m) Phillips announces tonight that it will offer Francis Bacon’s ‘Pope with Owls’ ($35 – 45 million) from 1958 during its New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. The work has been in same private American collection for nearly four decades though it was purchased from legendary Swiss dealer Thomas Ammann and seems to have been held in…

Sotheby’s Build Better Relationships in Las Vegas

Brooke Lampley presents Oliver Barker with the traditional white gloves after a sold out auction The Thursday before Sotheby’s Saturday-night-in-Las-Vegas sale of 11 Picasso works from the Bellagio’s eponymous restaurant, Brooke Lampley was feeling more than a little “trepidation.” MGM Resorts International, the corporation that had bought Steve Wynn’s Mirage Resorts in 2000—including Wynn’s pet…

Pablo Picasso Rolls the Dice in Vegas This Weekend

Pablo Picasso’s work is a staple of the high-value art market. So it isn’t a wonder that there are a number of works coming to the auction block in the next three weeks with substantial seven-figure estimates. Nonetheless, the market mood both at the Frieze sales and in recent art fairs has been toward spending aggressively in the six-figure range to discover talent rather than to spend lavishly…

The Coming Out Party: Breakout Sales for New Talent at Frieze

Flora Yukhnovih, I’ll Have What She’s Having (£60-90k) £2.3m An art advisor summed up the mood of the Frieze sales in London last week in a comment on Instagram. Observing the top lots at Sotheby’s Evening sale, the advisor wrote, “So it’s either a major Cy Twombly, OR … a Flora Yukhnovich … hmmm.” The advisor had purchased the Twombly work on paper for £2.8 million at slightly below the low…

Contemporary Cools in Sotheby’s $97.8m HK Sale as Demand Shifts to New Discoveries

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Red Warrior) Sotheby’s Hong Kong sales cycle was down substantially from the Spring with the Contemporary art category falling from $141 million in sales to just under $100 million. Looking at the sales results, it would appear the problem was more one of limited supply more than cooling demand. The top Contemporary art lot, Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Untitled (Red…

Javier Calleja Breaks Out in Sotheby’s Hong Kong Contemporary Sale

During Sotheby’s Hong Kong Contemporary art sales this past weekend, all of the action was in the day sale lots. The sale made $22.5m, an all-time high for a Hong Kong Contemporary art day sale; and, all but one of the top ten most dynamic lots—those bid highest above their pre-sale estimates—were works offered in the Contemporary art day sale.  What does this tell us? Collectors are looking for…

Swann African American Sale Reaches Highest Total Ever at $5.1m

Hale Woodruff, Carnival ($250-350k) $665,000 Swann celebrated the end of its 14th year holding African American art auctions—a category the small New York house pioneered—by hitting the highest ever auction total. On October 7th, Swann sold $5,106,585 worth of art across 201 lots. That reflects an 86% sell-through rate. The top lot of the sales was an oil painting by Hale Woodruff, the most…

Auction Overview: Georg Baselitz for Frieze 2021

Georg Baselitz, Clyfford Still (350-450 GBP) at Sotheby’s Oct 14th There are three works coming up for sale in London’s Frieze week auctions. Two are works on paper and a third is a portrait of Clyfford Still on canvas. Last week, another work on paper, Adler from 1978, sold for $50,000 at Christie’s, a price right in line with the market.  Of the works on offer in London, the Elke from 1976 was…

The Hero’s Journey: Baselitz at the Pompidou

Georg Baselitz, Die großen Freunde, 1965 Museum Ludwig For many the name Georg Baselitz immediately brings to mind a painter of inverted portraits. That pictorial strategy was born out of the artist’s desire not to be trapped in a recognizable style; but it also became a defining, perhaps distracting, feature of his art. Baselitz’s role as a key figure reviving German Expressionism and connecting…

Sotheby’s Hong Kong Contemporary Evening Sale = HKD 568.9m ($73m)

Sotheby’s Hong Kong Evening sale of Contemporary art was more notable for the several artist’s records set for Shara Hughes, Nicolas Party, Louis Fratimo, Jadé Fadojutimi and Joel Mesler than for the top lots in the auction. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Red Warrior) struggled to reach the low estimate and Adrian Ghenie’s guaranteed The Death of Charles Darwin failed to elicit bidding. George…

Sotheby’s Hong Kong Modern Evening Sale = HKD 580.2m ($74.5m) Hammer

Sotheby’s opened their Hong Kong sales cycle this Autumn with an ambitious selection of Modern works from Asian and European artists. In many respects the strategy paid off with the top work, a Picasso, achieving HKD 165m. Four of the top ten works were by European masters like van Gogh, Renior and Georges Mathieu. Additional strong prices were seen for Asian artists who worked in Europe like…

Auction House Veterans Unveil New Data and Private Dealing Platform

LiveArt website interface. LiveArt There’s a funny thing that happens in the private art market that really isn’t very funny when it happens to you. Because the best art is rarely for sale publicly—and because art buying is too much like being on a treasure hunt—it isn’t uncommon for someone to approach a collector known to have work by an in-demand artist and claim to have a serious buyer for…

After Pandemic’s Rapid Change, Sotheby’s Has 8 Predictions for 2021

Auctioneer Oliver Baker in London Saleroom. Courtesy Sotheby’s. In 2019, when Charles Stwart was named CEO of Sotheby’s, he knew 2020 was going to be a year of big changes. But he got more change than expected, when, due to restrictions around the coronavirus pandemic that began in March, his first full auction season faced a global shut down. Yet when your mission is to continue to move a…

Christie’s Announces Preliminary 2020 Results: Auction Sales Down 25% to £3.4 Bn. ($4.4 M.), Private Sales Up 57% to $1.3 M.

Christie’s released this morning preliminary sales figures for the fraught auction year of 2020 now closing. Despite the widespread closure of sales rooms around the globe, the house was able to make £3.4 billion ($4.4 billion) in auction sales, a drop of 27% from the previous year. In any other year, these figures might be viewed as a sign of weakness in the art market or the secondary market…