Australia’s Art Market Records Another 49% Sale by Lot and Nearly A$5 million

The Age reports that Bonhams and Goodman had a record for John Russell at A$1.56 million and strong interest in the quality goods. Meanwhile, Bloomberg follows up on the Sotheby’s sale to include the day sale results:

“What’s happening in the stock market and property market are being reflected in the art market,” said Georgina Pemberton, head of Australian Painting at Sotheby’s.

Australia’s benchmark S&P ASX 200 Index has fallen 21 percent this year, while the nation’s housing affordability index is near a 24-year low.

Pemberton said Sotheby’s sale results show “the art market is becoming more realistic and less speculative.”

Records, But Art Market Still Twitchy (The Age)

Stock Slide Curbs Sotheby’s Australian Art Sale with 50% Unsold (Bloomberg)

The New York Times gives the Indian art scene the once over. Somini Sengupta zeros in on the birth of public/private institutions that will form the backbone of an Indian Contemporary art establishment:

India is bursting with commercial art galleries, but Devi is poised to be what the Poddars’ home has been for many years: a noncommercial, nonprofit exhibition space for contemporary art from India and the subcontinent. Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie’s auction house in London, described it as “a truly groundbreaking first for India.”

In a way, Devi (online at www.deviartfoundation.org) is the natural next step for a country awash in new wealth, soaring art prices and a prolific crop of artists and collectors. Think of it as India’s turn to do what the United States did in the early 20th century, when wealthy patrons came together to give birth to some of the most important American cultural institutions. India is not there yet, cautions Vishakha N. Desai, the India-born president of Asia Society in New York, but perhaps heading in that direction.

“I would very much hope that like-minded people will come together to build larger civic institutions that go beyond any individual collector or founder,” Ms. Desai said in an e-mail message.

A modern art museum is also under way in the eastern city of Calcutta. Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that built the Tate Modern in London, is designing it. Construction is to start next year, and the museum is to open in late 2013, said Rakhi Sarkar, a collector there and one of the driving forces behind the museum.

Where Tradition Has Ruled, A Home for Contemporary Art (The New York Times)

Interview with Guy Bennett

In our continuing effort to de-mystify the art market and make the auction houses more accessible, we bring you this interview with Christie’s Guy Bennett (along with some video excerpts.)

First, a little background. Guy Bennett is Senior Vice President, International Co-Head of Impressionist and Modern Art. In addition to overseeing the day to day running of the department worldwide, he is responsible for the daily management, marketing and promotion of Christie’s sales of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York. And, of course, it’s his job to find the right properties to sell at the right time. He headed the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in November 2006 which totaled $491.5 million, making it the most valuable auction ever. The next year, he organized the second most valuable sale totaling $396 million in November 2007.

In 2008, Bennett landed the Miller Collection, which included Monet’s spectacular “Le bassin aux nymphéas” which sold for $80.4 million in London in June, doubling the artist’s previous record set a month earlier when Bennett had orchestrated the sale of Monet’s “Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil” in New York which sold for $41.5 million. (The interview, with video, after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Rothschild lets the Economist browse among his acquisitions:

The first artist he collected was an idiosyncratic Swiss-Italian sculptor, Giacometti. He has been collecting ever since, not just for the walls of his sitting rooms, but for Spencer House in St James’s, London, which he helped to restore (he lent a Panini and a Romney from his own collection), and for Waddesdon Manor, the vast pile in Buckinghamshire, which he inherited from an aunt. Read the rest of this entry »

Sotheby’s Melbourne sale brings in A$5.77 million against a pre-sale estimate of A$9 to A$12 million with 49% of the lots sold. The Australian says its the economy:

Georgina Pemberton, Sotheby’s head of paintings, described last night’s result as “a reflection of our economic climate and we are now going through a correction in the art market”.

But the sale was significant for the A$1.89 million Russell Drysdale portrait (left) that was the star lot of the sale according to  ABC News. There were also good prices for works in the A$50,000 range. Though the Grace Cossington Smith work that a Dallas couple bought for $25 and was estimated in the $35,000 range failed to find a buyer.

The Wall Street Journal has this think piece on the meaning the Hirst auction for the art market. And The Art Newspaper claims to have an inventory of White Cube’s unsold stock totaling £100 million.

Melik Kaylan’s tart views in the WSJ spare no one. Dealers are haughty but also panderers; Hirst is creature of the vulgar new money being made in Russia, China and the Gulf States; and art is for social climbers.

Because Sotheby’s and Christie’s appear to operate a species of global commodities exchange, with dates and prices instantly disclosed on the Internet, it all feels so much more transparent to, say, a new Chinese millionaire. In the first place, there will be a local office near him co-headed by a Chinese speaker who understands the millionaire’s social sensitivities — so much more pleasant than having to kow-tow to a self-important New York or London gallerist. It puts an end to a long era in which superior dealers could treat outsider clients with the snooty hauteur of a French waiter. Above all, though, the auction houses’ relative transparency — the fact that prices are set and transactions occur out in the open, for all to see — will appeal to the international new money crowd that knows plenty about how money and markets work.

Dealers have always offered clients a higher degree of discretion than the public space of an auction ever can. That has traditionally been their great asset. But let’s be candid: Nobody in Dubai or Shanghai wants a pickled cow to gaze at musingly in solitude for the sheer beauty of its hindquarters. When today’s clients buy such wares, privacy is the last thing on their minds.

The important question is whether the Hirst sale is truly driven by new buyers seeking access to his work that can’t be satisfied by his dealers. Sotheby’s is sending the works to New York (well, the Hamptons) and New Delhi but not to Dubai or Shanghai. But The Art Newspaper turns the equation around by suggesting that Hirst’s volume of production has overflowed what his dealers can place:

the scale of his output requires him to find a steady stream of new buyers; the global reach of the auction house will have proved decisive. “Sotheby’s promotion is not directed at existing collectors. They are targeting new buyers, especially in parts of the world which have only recently started collecting contemporary art,” says a trade source

The Times also picks up the Art Newspaper’s claims and wraps up the whole package including the shows in Bridgehampton and New Delhi:

This will be Hirst’s first show in India. “Until now Indian collectors have primarily shown interest in art from their own culture,” said Oliver Barker, senior international specialist at Sotheby’s. “Now they are thinking global.”

Hirst’s Marketing End Run (Wall Street Journal)

Revealed: the Art Damien Hirst Failed to Sell (The Art Newspaper)

200 Unsold Hirst Works Looking for An Owner at Sotheby’s (The Times of London)

Do you remember when Bill Gates bought the Codex Hammer not long after he became the richest man in the world? Well, there’s a dearth of da Vincis out there for billionaires to buy. Which may explain the excitement around this picture that was previously attributed as a 19th Century German marriage portrait. According to the New York Times, various scientific tests and art historical opinions suggest it may be the master’s work. But the $50 million supposedly already offered by a Russian buyer also points to the motives that would make many eager to believe.

“The market is a fairly efficient place,” said Hugh Chapman, assistant keeper at the department of prints and drawings at the British Museum in London. “This would be an amazing miss.”

These days you’re not a serious emerging market unless you have a serious emerging art market star. Indonesia nominates I Nyoman Masriadi. Here’s Bloomberg on his prospects in the upcoming Asian contemporary sales in Hong Kong and his first solo show in Singapore:

In the past two years, Masriadi, 35, has become a poster boy for Indonesian contemporary art. Christie’s International sold his painting “Used to Being Stripped,” depicting one of his trademark stocky black figures, for HK$4.2 million ($538,000) in May in Hong Kong, an auction record for Southeast Asian art. In an Indonesian sale in 2006, his “Angels” was offered for 10 million rupiah ($1,088) with no takers.

“Masriadi is one of the vanguards for Southeast Asian Contemporary,” said Mok Kim Chuan, Sotheby’s head of department for Southeast Asian paintings. “His prices have been skyrocketing.”

( . . . )

“Many regard him as Indonesia’s answer to Chinese contemporary art,” said Michael Koh, chief executive officer of Singapore’s National Heritage Board, which hosts the 8Q show. “He’s hot and never had a solo show, so it’s quite groundbreaking for us.”

The rapid rise of Indonesian artists and the slump in global financial markets have prompted some collectors and critics to suggest that art prices may fall.

That will be tested in October, when Masriadi’s new work and his 4.5-meter-wide triptych “The Man From Bantul — The Final Round” from 2000 go under the hammer at Sotheby’s first evening sale of Asian art in Hong Kong. “Bantul” has a top estimate of HK$1.5 million ($192,000).

But Masriadi is not the only Indonesian artist gaining ground. Newsweek offers its own guide to the boom in South East Asian painters:

The pace of Masriadi’s rise has been unusual but not unique in the region. The Indonesians Rudi Mantofani, Agus Suwage and Handiwirman Saputra have also done very well at recent auctions, though the prices paid for the work of Mantofani, the second highest-paid Indonesian, remain well behind Masriadi’s. Artists in Thailand and Malaysia are also enjoying a boom. Their success reflects collectors’ rising appetite for Southeast Asian work, which still tends to go for a fraction of the price of Chinese art. Now the boom is creating new challenges for museums in the region, which can no longer afford many of the suddenly popular artists.

Indonesia Artist Masriadi Slays Ogres, Cuts Batman Down to Size (Bloomberg)

Turning Black to Cash (Newsweek)

A Thin-Skinned Government vs. an Overflowing Art Market

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Asia Society had been blind-sided by the Chinese governments slow-playing their hand on a loan of art from the Revolution, 1950-1970. With their spotless control of the Olympics, the Chinese goverment’s actions should come as no surprise even if one has to chuckle at the trick of reneging on a promised loan at the last minute to sabotage the exhibit:

Despite the Chinese government’s decision, Asia Society has decided to proceed with the show by seeking loans from private collectors.

The approach of the Olympics seemed to have been the deal breaker. “Initially, they said, ‘Any loans you want; no problem,’ ” said Vishakha N. Desai, the society’s president. “The closer it got to the Olympics, they changed their policy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Enthusiastic Australians Flock to the Art Market

The 11th Annual Melbourne Art fair demonstrates that Russian and Gulf States collectors are not the only ones riding the commodities boom toward art.

Bloomberg has this report on the Australian art market which is driven primarily by interest in Australian art: Read the rest of this entry »