Explaining Christie’s New Imp/Mod Habit

Christie’s now-consistent habit of producing over-stocked and under-performing Impressionist & Modern Evening sales in New York generated more than a few complaints from dealers and even auction house personnel last night. Judd Tully spoke to Ivor Baraka after he bought a Caillebotte and a Pissarro:

“It was mixed pickings,” said the dealer as he exited the salesroom, “but there were some unfashionable but very good early Impressionist pictures that we haven’t seen for a very long time. That’s the sort of picture that has fallen out of fashion.”

Tully queried Rachel Mauro after she lost out on a Picasso:

“Is there a crack in the market?” queried Mauro as she left the salesroom. “The market is reacting to the aggressive estimates and the auctioneer had a tough time drawing people out.”

But at least one significant figure was not willing to join the estimate-bashing bandwagon when Picasso’s Coq sculpture died under the weight of a $10m low estimate:

Diana Picasso, a granddaughter of the artist who is compiling a catalogue raisonne of Picasso’s sculpture, looked somewhat surprised at the outcome, almost at a loss for words. “It’s a magnificent work and was properly estimated.”

Katya Kazakina got a different point of view from Marc Porter who runs privates sales for the firm:

Porter […] said the results were skewed by excessive presale estimates that a seller stipulated for 14 lots. “If you tease out that collection, you’d see a different result for the whole sale,” he said in an interview.

Carol Vogel went to a London dealer to pass her verdict:

“There were too many fillers with optimistic estimates,” James Roundell, a London dealer, said after the sale. “It was an auction that was not edited.”

Christie’s Limp $205-Million Sale Prompts Talk of “A Crack in the Market” (Artinfo.com)

Kandinsky Sells for Record $23 Million in Mixed N.Y. Sale (Bloomberg)

Art, Not Storm or Election, Is Blamed for Anemic Sale at Christie’s (NY Times)