Artelligence for December 20, 2017

Dasha Zhukova’s Latest Art Project: The founder of Moscow’s Garage Museum and Met board member is keeping company with the scion of one of the world’s leading art collecting families. …

Leonardo’s Condition Issues, Bendor Grosvenor Goes Into More Detail: If you haven’t listened to Bendor Grosvenor discuss the condition of Salvator Mundi on our Artelligence podcast, you can read his views in more detail in The Art Newspaper: “Persuading people to queue around the block to see such a damaged painting is simply a triumph of marketing over connoisseurship. But that’s enough about  The Last Supper. ” …

William O’Reilly Joins Dickinson in New York: Bonhams director of the Impressionist and Modern Art department is leaving for Dickinson’s gallery to work out of their New York office. …

Sotheby’s Stock Recovers to $53 Level: It has been a long and rocky road from early August when Sotheby’s stock (BID) suffered a 20% decline after earnings seemed to flatline. By the end of October, the stock price had made strong gains almost erasing the loss but then collapsed again by 10% in early November. Since that time, the stock has climbed back quietly by nearly 15%, especially with this week’s spike on light volume. Right now, Sotheby’s trades around $53, not terribly far from the July peak of $57. …

More Leonardo Speculation, This Time About the Guarantee: The Fine Art Fund’s Philip Hoffman has made more than his share of bold claims in the press that cannot be backed up with much hard evidence. In BusinessWeek he conjectures that the third party guarantors on the Salvator Mundi could have made a big score: “According to his own calculations, and based on the $400 million pre-commission price for Salvator Mundi, Hoffman estimates that the guarantor of that sale made $90 million to $150 million.”

That’s assuming the guarantor got 30-50% of the upside for his or her trouble and Christie’s kept the entire commission. That’s not an unreasonable assumption based upon much smaller deal terms. But a key moment in the sale suggests the guarantor didn’t cut such a good deal. Before the remarkable bidding kicked in, there was a moment with Jussi Pylkkanen announced he could sell the work for a mere $90m bid. That signaled the guarantor was not interested in getting stuck with the painting—and might have accepted a loss to avoid it.

In the end it worked out for the guarantor but the weak hand suggests the guarantor was facing more risk than reward. Others, pointing to the rumors that the deal to sell the painting was complicated, suggest it would have been hard for any one participant to have gained enough leverage to make the kind of score Hoffman imagines.