In case you missed yesterday’s Artelligence conference in New York. The Observer’s Dan Duray gives you a little taste of the Modern panel. Here’s Nick Acquavella on the different between the private and public markets:

“From the outside looking in, everyone wants to see a graph, everyone wants to see a chart,” Mr. Acquavella said. “If you just looked at the auction market, you would think that Matisse was a quarter of the value of Picasso, but I think everybody up here knows — and probably most people in the audience — that great Matisses have sold privately for well in excess of $50 million dollars, and if the right one were to come up, it could easily bring over $100 million at auction.”

Later, Acquavella expanded on the idea of how the private markets can lead prices without being publicly confirmed:

“I think one of the really major moments in the last 15 years in the art market was when the Neue Galerie, with the help of Ronald Lauder, purchased that Klimt for $135 million,” Mr. Acquavella said, to nods from the audience. “Because I think you could argue that Klimt is similar to Giacometti, not necessarily straight-down-the-middle mainstream artists. So if you took that mark of $135 million for the Klimt, it made it a lot easier to digest the idea that if Klimt is worth 135 million, certainly there are Picassos worth that, certainly there are de Koonings, certainly there are Pollocks.

The 11th Work: Going ‘Inside the Modern Market’ at Artelligence (Observer)

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