Richard Prince’s Nurse Paintings Have Been a Mainstay of the Market

“That market has been ready to crack for a long time,” a senior auction house specialist said late last week while casting a glance toward one of the two Nurse paintings on offer in the Contemporary art sales.

No single body of work has better tracked the recent levitation of the art market better than the Nurse paintings. In London last month, Dude Ranch Nurse #2 (left) sold for $5.5 million, a let-down considering the rapid upward arc of prices. Had the financial markets not collapsed, the painting might have made $8 million or more . That was surely the consignor’s hope. But since the owner had bought it a mere 18 months earlier for $2.5 million, no will feel sorry for the consignor’s “loss.” Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times Is First Out of the Gate

Carol Vogel had this column in Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section.

A $60 million painting by Kazimir Malevich. A $40 million self-portrait by Francis Bacon. It hardly seems the ideal moment to be selling such pricey art. As Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury brace for their big fall auctions in New York, starting with a sale of 71 Impressionist and Modern paintings, drawings and sculptures at Sotheby’s on Monday night, anxiety is the dominant mood. [ . . . ] Much of the art up for auction this week and next was secured early in the summer, when the world seemed a far different place. Now, with the net worth of so many buyers plummeting, auction houses have been trying to persuade sellers to lower their reserves, that is, the undisclosed minimum price that a bidder must meet for the art to be sold.

“Prices of all assets have fallen — stocks, gold, oil, real estate — and it would be unrealistic to expect works of art to be immune to the market’s pressures,” said Marc Porter, president of Christie’s in America. “We are actively encouraging consignors to set reasonable reserves.”[ . . . ]As for buyers, the message is a little trickier. With them, Mr. Porter said, Christie’s is making the argument that the objects they desire “might not reappear on the market next season at an even lower price.” [ . . . ] “Americans who fled when prices began soaring will jump back into the market but at a different price level,” said Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art. Among the standouts in the fall lineup at Sotheby’s are paintings like Edvard Munch’s “Vampire” (1894), priced to bring more than $35 million, and an Yves Klein wall relief estimated at more than $25 million. Christie’s is offering a 1934 portrait of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter estimated at $18 million to $25 million and a Basquiat painting at $12 million and $16 million. “I still hold the belief that the great works will find buyers,” said Guy Bennett, of Christie’s.

Tapped Out? (The New York Times)

Updated Data from London’s Contemporary Art Market

London’s Contemporary art sales were a tough battle in the face of unprecedented turmoil in the financial markets. Reserves were lowered and sell-through suffered but when you take a step back, the numbers are surprisingly . . . good.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Top Ten after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

The International Herald Tribune’s Take on the October Auctions

You might know that Souren Melikian is a scholar of Iranian cultural history. However, he doesn’t tell the readers of the IHT as he castigates the auctioneers for not having translated the Persian on an Alighieri Boetti work in one of the Italian sales. Better to preserve his omniscience.

But there is a serious side to Melikian’s pretzel logic. Melikian seems to believe works of art have a definitive value. If art prices do not conform to the values he has assigned them, it must be the result of a nefarious influence. In Dr. Melikian’s universe, the culprits are the auction houses:

The auction market just delivered an unexpected message. Money remains available for art, lots of it, but the buyers are now calling the shots, not the sellers. Particularly not the auction houses, which have been playing a risky game for years in encouraging an artificial inflationary drive. [ . . . ] In just 10 days, auction houses thus received splendid news - money for art miraculously remains abundant - and a severe warning. Stop the old game of relentlessly hiking estimates in the hope that bullish buyers will meekly go along. Count yourselves lucky that buyers are still there, occasionally even bullish. But meek, they are no more, nor will they be for quite some time.

Why art dealers are not included in this matrix of inflation–let alone the over-eager buyers all-too-willing to race around art fairs as soon as raise their paddles–Dr. Melikian does not explain. But his understanding of economics needs to rise to the levels of his erudite taste and linguistic skills.

The auction houses can be accused of aggressively encouraging collectors to sell. Whether they offer guarantees or attach unrealistic estimates, there is nothing an auction house or art dealer can do to force someone to buy. Grandiose estimates and bullish guarantees are punished by the same mechanism–a failed sale. (Though peple forget that bought-in lots can actually work out in the end.)

But the point is that price is a mechanism of distribution, not a moral category. Prices in the months and years to come will be determined more by the available stock of money in the world (there’s a lot less today than there was two months ago) than by auction house experts.

Cool-headed buyers are now running the show (IHT)

Christie’s Contemporary Art Evening sale brings in £31,978,500 ($55,642,590) with 26 of the 42 lots sold or 62% sell-through. Many works sold below the low estimates as Christie’s and their consignors adapted to the new price structure. Richard Prince’s Dude Ranch Nurse #2 went for $5.5 million. Not bad considering it changed hands for $2.5 million last May. The Freud portrait of Bacon sold; the Bacon portrait of Henrietta Moraes did not. The Fontana sold for $9 million but it was announced that a bidder with a financial interest in the picture would be participating. There was only one bid.

Fontana, Freud Pictures Sell in UK Art Market Test (Bloomberg)

The Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune Call the Action

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the Art market took a beating this past weekend in London but came out better than the financial markets all around it. Souren Melikian narrates the blow-by-blow at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Kelly Crow comes up with some good quotes from collectors and dealers: “People are just being so cautious,” says Roberto Annicchiarico, a Milan-based dealer. “Before, collectors had to take whatever art they could get from dealers and auction houses, but now those collectors are saying, ‘Kneel down and ask nicely.’ ”

Not a Pretty Picture at Auctions (Wall Street Journal)

Art market stumbles on at contemporary sales (International Herald Tribune)

With £5 million realized in the evening sale, and about half the lots sold, plus £3 million from the day sale, Phillips de Pury’s October Contemporary art sale ran headlong into the credit crisis. Though artists like Antony Gormley and Marlene Dumas found their work in demand, the marquee lots by Takashi Murakami, Elizabeth Peyton and Joan Mitchell failed to find buyers.

Josh Baer reports that Takashi Murakami was a buyer at PdP (a Chapman work.) Others noted that no work over $1 million sold at the auction house. The question for Phillips de Pury is whether their problems lie in having moved to high up the price ladder for the new economic climate or whether their consignors were less flexible about reserves.

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn reports:

“The most dramatic moment came when Murakami’s 21-foot-high Fiberglass sculpture “Tongari-kun” (2003-2004) failed to attract a single bid. It was expected to fetch at least 3.5 million pounds. The Japanese artist, clad in a black puffy jacket, attended the auction and laughed after the lot was passed in a hushed room.”

“Among the casualties were Lisa Yuskavage’s 2003 oil-on-canvas work “Dark Garden II,” a 2001 joke painting by Prince and a pink acrylic work of blank advertising signs from 2004 by Ed Ruscha.

Not a single lot sold for 1 million pounds or more. None of the 10 top-selling works managed to achieve a hammer price above the higher estimate. The top lot, Warhol’s “Flowers” (1964), fetched a mid-estimate 735,650 pounds, going to a telephone bidder.”

Crisis Bites Art Market as Sale Raises Less Than Third Estimate (Bloomberg)

The Contemporary Art Evening Sale Brings in $38m with 71% Sold

Sotheby’s got the job done this evening in London. The Contemporary Art sale had a respectable 71% sell-through as 45 of the 63 lots went to buyers. Clearly consignors were willing to lower reserve prices because many lots sold below the low estimate. Though there were many artists like Jenny Saville, Antony Gormley, Yves Klein and John Currin who saw their work soar above estimates. Subodh Gupta, Fred Tomaselli and Sean Scully performed well within their estimates too.

Cheyenne Westphal said: “Bidding in tonight’s sale was rational and considered with many long-time collectors actively participating.  It is important to keep perspective; this market has witnessed rapid growth.  What we have seen tonight is that buyers are continuing to respond to unprecedented saleroom opportunities and works of high quality, fresh to the market and properly estimated continue to perform well.”

To put things in perspective, Sotheby’s reminds us that the sale is the highest total for an October Contemporary art sale in London–even though it was well below the low estimate. More to the point, so far this year Sotheby’s has sold $1.2 billion worth of Contemporary art, 68% more than 2007 which was already a record year well above the previous year.

Bloomberg reports that the Mugrabis bought Andy Warhol’s Skulls for £4.3 million, a price below the low estimate.

Sotheby’s Press Release for the Sale

Today brings two very different stories that, when combined, suggest the Contemporary art market will slow down for reasons outside of the economy. Bloomberg discusses guarantees in a story about Sotheby’s raising cash. Josh Baer writes a piece for The Art Newspaper that discusses the end of a certain kind of career-making speculation in lesser-known artists.

Guarantees have been used at both the top and emerging ends of the art market. But their biggest effect is at the top. As part of a defensive measure announced much earlier in the year, Sotheby’s has been reducing its guarantees and shifting them to third party deals. Here’s Bloomberg with the details: Read the rest of this entry »