Sotheby’s hasn’t released the day sale figures yet beyond the total of $35,808,600 for both sessions. You can see the lot by lot results here. This Rauschenberg Traffic Flower Glut went for $362,500. That price was just above the low estimate. The picture was bought at Sotheby’s four and a half years ago. Then, a mere $136,800 took it home. Though it was ballsy price considering the estimate range was a demure $25-35,000.

At Christie’s, the two day sale sessions(here and here) brought in $39,084,500 with almost 62% of the lots sold. The morning session’s top ten was dominated by Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn, with Calder, de Kooning and Robert Indiana muscling in as well. The afternoon saw a Hirst butterfly-wing stainglass window top the list that featured Basquiat, Sherrie Levine, Christopher Wook, Sugimoto and Zhang Xiaogang.

Christie’s $113 million Contemporary art sale started as an easy, crash-defying walk. That’s what CEO Ed Dolman is referring to here in Carol Vogel’s story:

“In the beginning we thought we were witnessing a gravity-defying auction,” Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, said after the sale. “But it was disappointing not to sell the Bacon.” He added, “There were some good prices but it’s inconsistent.”

The bad news was the Bacon and a big Richter that didn’t sell and number of works that couldn’t find buyers. The good news is:

The sale had its high points. When “Pharmacy” (1943), a Joseph Cornell box that once belonged to Marcel Duchamp’s wife, Alexina (Teeny), came up for sale, the room perked up. Four bidders wanted to take it home and it made $3.7 million (with fees), well above its high $2 million estimate. It was a record price for the artist at auction.

Another record price was set when “No. 2” a shimmering 1959 canvas of white and gold tones by Yayoi Kusama, was bought by Mr. Ségalot for $5.7 million (with fees), way above its $3.5 million high estimate.

Lindsay Pollock explains it with this quote:

“No one’s going to do silly spending in this market,” art adviser Allan Schwartzman said. “If they are flush with cash, they don’t want to look like the fool that got carried away.”

Judd Tully offers these observations:

Three artist records were set, including for a rare and beautiful Yayoi Kusama abstraction, No.2 from 1959 (est. $2.5–3.5 million). The work, which was once owned by Donald Judd, fetched a bullish $5,794,500, making it the most expensive artwork by a living woman artist.

The painting sold to New York private dealer Philippe Segalot, who outgunned stiff competition from at least three other bidders. “For something like this,” he said moments after the sale, “there’s no difference [in price] between six months ago and today. I think the market is becoming rational, which is a good thing, because there needed to be an adjustment in terms of prices.” [ . . . ]

“The estimates and expectations have to come down a little bit, like 30 percent,” said New York art adviser Sandy Heller, who underbid on Takashi Murakami’s DOB in the Strange Forest (DOB), which went to Segalot for $3,442,500 (est.$5–7 million). “But the buyers are still there, and that’s encouraging.”

The New York Times has a little video story on the state of the art market in the “new economy.” They mean the new nightmare economy, not the internet fantasy of a decade ago. Despite Catherine Opie and Richard Armstrong expressing their  thanks at still having day jobs, the story doesn’t tell you much you couldn’t guess. Of course, the Guggenheim benefit auction they’re at sold eveything above estimates. Surprise! So maybe this video is playing catch up to reality, like the rest of the art market.

Urban Eye: Guggenheim Gala (New York Times Video)

Sotheby’s took its medicine last night selling $125 million worth of art against a $202 million low estimate. Some of the biggest lots failed to find buyers or were bought at big discounts from the prices in mind when they were consigned.

Still, some bidders and buyers were grabbing with both hands. There was Valentino Gravani in the front row bidding hard. Eli Broad, who rather vocally has been staying out of the market these last few years and predicting a round trip on prices much like the one we’re seeing right now, bought $8 million worth of art, according to Carol Vogel. Larry Gagosian was buying too. He bested Valentino for Roy Lichtenstein’s Study for New York State Mural (Town and Country) with a $3.9 million bid. Later, auctioneer Tobias Meyer looked toward Gagosian with a wide-eyed, beseeching glance as Lichtenstein’s Half Face with Collar fell without a bid.

An anonymous telephone bidder backstopped the market buying Jeff Koons’s Cheeky for $4 million; Willem de Kooning’s Untitled VI for $4.6 million and Figures in a Landscape for $1.8 million; Lichtenstein’s Interior with Red Wall for $7 million; and Tom Wesselmann’s Still Life #58 for $2.4 million.

The wholesale buying is a good sign. It suggests that someone sees value in these works that will return sometime soon. Carol Vogel closes her story with Eli Broad making exactly this point:

Buyers were clearly careful about parting with their cash, wondering if better bargains were around the corner. “I don’t think we’ve reached the bottom yet,” Mr. Broad said as he was leaving Sotheby’s after the sale. “We may be close.”

If that’s true–and it seems pretty quick to be calling a bottom–the Contemporary art market at 2006 prices is not so dreary after all. Though, Lindsay Pollock suggests we’re not there yet:

“Bonuses are going to be really bad this year” on Wall Street, Dallas-based art economist David Kusin said. “That’s going to be the single biggest hit for the newest, freshest, least-seasoned work.”

Pollock also quotes Broad in a gleeful mood:

“It’s a half-price sale,” said Broad, a 75-year-old billionaire who predicted for years that prices would fall. “Things are a little more reasonable.”

Judd Tully adds to the cheering from collectors:

“It’s a bad night for Sotheby’s,” said Berlin dealer Heinrich zu Hohenlohe, “but a good night for the art market.” Six of the 26 guaranteed lots failed to find buyers [ . . . ] New York collector Aby Rosen bought Jean-Michel Basquiat’s huge oil painting on paper Ribs Ribs from 1982 for $626,500 (est. $1-1.5 million). “When the price was right for great objects,” said Meyer after the 70-minute sale, “the audience responded and bought it.”

Currin Nudes Set $5.46 Million Record at Spotty Sotheby’s Sale (Bloomberg)

A Dreary Night for Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s (New York Times)

Sunk Costs at Sotheby’s Contemporary Sale (ArtInfo)

Eli Broad Goes Shopping as Sotheby’s Auction Falls Short (Bloomberg)

Saltz and Gardner: Too Good to Ignore

We’ve covered the wonderful Morandi show at the Met before. But this essay in the Wall Street Journal and Jerry Saltz’s review in New York are both just too good not cover this ground again. Let’s start with Gardner:

To understand Morandi in his sullen greatness, to appreciate the full flowering of his art that took place in the 1950s, you need to understand his evolution as it is set forth at the Met. Half a dozen still lifes of bottles on a table from the mid-1950s can be seen as the logical summation, if not the manifest destiny, of Morandi’s entire career. They are the goal to which, patiently and methodically, he advanced over half a century, though not without the occasional detour or misstep. In getting to that point, much of Morandi’s earlier career proceeds along two parallel tracks. On the one hand, he is fishing around in the sundry styles of his day and producing works of widely differing appearance. On the other hand, at any moment he can return to the placid quasi-realism of those bottles on a table that he produced, with remarkably little fundamental variation, throughout his career. [ . . . ]

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

The Economist likes Richard Serra’s work, singling out his two lots from a Contemporary art sale that they expect to feel real repercussions from the credit crunch. Ignore the first half of the story that seeks to wind up fears and jump right in here:

“Richard Serra is one artist whose prices never reached the stratosphere, despite a 40-year retrospective last year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) and a highly acclaimed installation at the Grand Palais in Paris earlier this summer (visited, to Mr Serra’s amazement, by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy). [ . . . ] Yet the sculptor’s fascination with the possibilities inherent in curves, his almost inhuman (or superhuman) mathematical imagination, dedicated vision and uncompromising commitment mean that the slow-burning Mr Serra will be one of the artists whose work will continue to shine long after he is gone. [ . . . ] Two works by Mr Serra in Sotheby’s forthcoming sale of contemporary art offer different opportunities for an interested buyer. The bigger piece, “12-4-8”, an exterior sculpture comprising three steel plates in a square structure which was executed in 1983, demonstrates the importance Mr Serra gives to space. “I consider space to be a material,” he said in a 2006 interview with Kynaston McShine, MoMA’s chief curator-at-large. “The articulation of space has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to use sculptural form to make space distinct.

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

The New York Observer Profiles Brett Gorvy on the Eve of Selling A Prized Basquiat

Meredith Bryan takes a look at Brett Gorvy, Christie’s low-key co-head of Contemporary art:

A slight South African-born Brit of aristocratic bearing who started in Christie’s London office in 1994 after several years as an art journalist, Mr. Gorvy talks fast and walks faster, partially hunched over, as though constantly en route to a meeting where millions of dollars are at stake (these days, he is). He was wearing an expensive-looking suit and muted purple tie, and his short hair was slicked back. At the sale on the 12th, he will stand on an elevated platform to one side of the room: working the phones incessantly, consulting with international bidders at 2 or 5 a.m. their time, placing their bids in increments of $1 million with a cool nod of his head. When Christie’s sold Warhol’s Double Marlin for $32.5 million in May, including fees, it was to Mr. Gorvy—or rather, Mr. Gorvy’s invisible clients. [ . . . ]

Still: “Every season we knew that the potential moment the music would stop was there and was just lih-terally within eyesight or on the horizon,” said Mr. Gorvy. Now, “I think in most cases there’s actually a genuine relief.” After all, there’s a certain stress in selling a record $385 million worth of postwar art in one sale, as his department did in May 2007. Where does one go from there? [ . . . ]

walking around the Frieze Art Fair in London, he was besieged by “angry dealers basically saying, ‘You’re to blame for this, you guys, you got greedy during the boom period.’ And you turn around and say, ‘Well, why is that painting on the wall at that price point? Why is your Richard Prince at $5 million dollars? It’s not because you priced it at $5 million, it’s because the auctions happened and the prices went higher and higher to the point where that is now the value point. So you’ve done extraordinarily well. Your second house in wherever is because of the auctions.” [ . . . ] it’s the buyers who make the prices, not the auction houses.

Bargain Basement Basquiats (New York Observer)

The Summing Up Has Commenced

Lindsay Pollock looks at the role of guarantees in Christie’s sale:

Christie’s International and Sotheby’s sold about $418 million of art over three nights, below their combined low estimate of $682 million. The total was off about 37 percent from $665 million a year ago, even after Christie’s added an unusual second evening auction. (Tallies for both years omit day sales.) [ . . . ]

The results appear to have been helped by arrangements made prior to the sale. Five of the top 10 lots, including the Kandinsky, were subject to an auctioneer’s saleroom announcement that “parties with a financial interest will be bidding.” These works had effectively been sold weeks or even months before the sale date.

Christie’s had locked in “third-party guarantors,” according to Toby Usnik, Christie’s spokesman. These guarantors, who sometimes are required to place a bid, have been paid a fee to assume Christie’s risk. The guarantor’s compensation includes a portion of the revenues on the sale, whether or not the guarantor is the top bidder, he said.

These sorts of deals have been used over the past few years as the financial side of the auction business has become much more involved and competitive. They had a major impact last night: The five lots with third-party guarantors wound up contributing $63.1 million to the sale, or 43 percent of the $146.7 million total.

Souren Melikian gives the speculators what-for:

Of all the economic sectors, the art market alone is beating a fairly orderly retreat from the wild excesses that characterized it in the last four or five years. The major evening auctions of Impressionist and Modern art that began this week at Sotheby’s on Monday and ended at Christie’s on Thursday delivered two unequivocal messages. First, money is still available in abundance when rarities of stellar importance or, more simply, very beautiful works of art turn up. This is because, unlike the manufacturing sector or financial services, the actors here are driven by desire. And as anyone who ever yearned to acquire a coveted picture or object knows, the fear of missing an opportunity unlikely to come back is powerful enough to overcome awareness of economic difficulties.

The second message should come as a sobering thought to auction house managers who had better respond there and then if they are to avoid big trouble. The waves of newcomers loaded with money and playing the auction field as if works of art were chips in a poker game have vanished, leaving the floor to traditional buyers who know something about the art they chase.

NY Impressionist Sales Fall 37% from 2007 (Bloomberg)

Mixed sales reflect a return to basics and sanity (International Herald Tribune)

Bloomberg covers London’s Asian art sales:

Sotheby’s was one of three auction houses and nearly 50 commercial galleries offering works during the 11th annual Asian Art in London, running through Nov. 12. The event came at a time when losses on the world’s stock markets and contracting economic growth have begun to reduce sales of Asian art. [ . . . ]

[Sotheby's] 341-lot sale fetched 3.3 million pounds with fees, with 67 percent of the material finding buyers. No work sold for more than 200,000 pounds. [ . . . ]

“There is still demand for high-quality works, but at a price,” said Giuseppe Eskenazi, whose Mayfair gallery specializes in Chinese art. He said at the moment collectors were hesitant to pay more than 200,000 pounds for pieces. “They know that prices may well fall over the next six months and they’re prepared to wait,” said Eskenazi, who added that collectors were also aware that the pound was sliding in value against other currencies.

Christie’s 258-lot auction fetched 5.3 million pounds with fees against a pre-sale estimate of 3.3 million pounds to 4.8 million pounds. Sixty-eight percent of the material successfully found buyers.

“People have become more selective,” said Christie’s London-based Chinese art specialist Ruben Lien. “Things need to have a good provenance because buyers are scared of fakes. And they have to be sensibly estimated. Sellers are going to have to be more flexible.”

Lien said that the strengthening value of the renminbi against sterling had encouraged Chinese buying at this London auction. “Around 30 percent of the material went to mainland Chinese buyers, 10 percent up on last year,” said Lien. “We’re seeing new buyers from China, and existing Chinese clients are upgrading their collections.”

Auctioneers and dealers said it was difficult to sell routine-quality items in the current environment. On Nov. 6, Bonhams held an auction of 358 lots of Chinese art, mostly priced at less than 20,000 pounds.

Buddha Statue Withdrawn From London Art Sale as Buyers Balk (Bloomberg)