This report with the backstory on auction newcomers Salman Toor and Portia Zvavhera, two of the evening's best performers, as well as the sellers of the Baselitz, Warhol, Hirst and Tillmans, is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

Sales may not have been as buoyant at this year’s Frieze hybrid live-online art fair in London as they were last year, but the accompanying auctions could keep the ball afloat better than most would have expected. Discounting Christie’s single-owner sale from the estate of Jeremy Lancaster, the pre-sale low estimate for the evening and day contemporary art sales staged by Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Phillips and Bonhams last October was £173.2 million. This week, where there are no single owner collections, that estimate is £172.4 million (which could go down if more lots are withdrawn). So the auctioneers have done well to bring the goods in and with relatively few guarantees at time of writing. All that remained to be seen was if vendor’s confidence could be justified.

Phillips’ was first out of the block today and turned in a £26.3 million ($34 million) contemporary art sale today, against an estimate of £21.7 million-£30 million for 36 lots, of which 10 were guaranteed, with a combined low estimate of £8.9 million or around 40% of the low estimate for the whole sale. The equivalent sale last year contained 42 lots, realizing a mid-estimate £25.8 million, including premium, with 60 % of the £17 million low estimate under guarantee.

So much for the basic stats which indicate the market, at first glance, looks to be holding up ok. Now for some details, some of which you won’t find in the catalogue. This was a sale of two different markets— the red hot and the cool, with some lukewarm results in the middle where artists have hit their peak and are treading water.

The sale had started somewhat experimentally, though not for those with their noses to the ground. Alien Shores (2018) was only the seventh work by Emily Mae Smith to come to auction; the first was at Phillips in New York in 2015, since when the market for her colorful, surrealistic paintings has taken off. In July, Christie’s hit a record $187,000, but today Phillips went a few stages better selling Alien Shores for a new record £277,200. 18 bidders vied for the work including a phone bidder from Hong Kong who was the underbidder. Kate Bryan of Phillips said in a post sale press conference that Smith's style "hits all the right notes for buyers and her work is impossible for most to buy on the primary market.” Sounds familiar.

This report on the Sotheby's Rembrandt to Richter sale in July 2020 by Colin Gleadell features important details on buyers, consignors and drinking habits of art dealers which may have had an impact on the outcome of the sales. You won't find information like the consignor of $61.3 million worth of Modern art and the sellers of a Warhol diamond dust shadow painting anywhere else. The report is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.) 

Sotheby’s July 28^th cross-disciplinary sale of Old Masters, 19th Century, Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art, Rembrandt to Richter, contributed £149.7 million pounds to the season’s total ameliorating the much-circulated 49% drop in year-over-year sales calculated by Arttactic (which ended the first half of the year on July 10th even with this last sale scheduled for the end of the month.)

Sotheby’s sale had been estimated to add between £108.2 million and £155.5 million for 65 lots after six lots, with a combined low estimate of £20.6 million, were withdrawn. (Prices include the buyers’ premium, estimates do not.)

Withdrawals have been a common feature of sales since March when lots without presale interest, are pulled at the last hour. This time it affected a none-too-fluid Frans Hals at £2/3 million; a late Portrait of John Edwards by Francis Bacon at an optimistic £12/18 million; an ostensibly very rare Verrocchio drawing; and a potentially record busting Orientalist painting by Gustav Bauernfeind (about which more below).

The TV spectacular sale staged by Patrick Drahi’s Sotheby’s (it is said by a designer from BBCTV’s Strictly Come Dancing) will not be going away after the pandemic subsides. That doesn’t mean live attendees won’t return to the events as they did this week. In another room from the auctioneer’s stage set, London dealer, Thomas Gibson, who was one and underbid a romantic 1928 gouache by Chagall that sold for a double estimate £1.9 million ($2.5 million), sat in “a room full of small thé dansant tables with elaborate flower arrangements and an endless supply of champagne and of really quite good wines” which may have helped that Chagall on its way a bit.

Old Master and 19^th Century

This report on the Christie's ONE sale in July 2020 by Colin Gleadell features important details on buyers, consignors and the decisions made by art advisors that affected the outcome of these lots. You won't find information like the buyer of the Lalanne Hippopotamus and the sellers of Burri, Calder and Wong anywhere else. The report is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.) 

Christie’s ONE sale last Friday was an attempt by the company to pool all its strongest cards together to break the pandemic price ceiling as Sotheby’s had done with its $363 million sale (including a $84 million Francis Bacon) a week earlier.

Impressionists, design and photography were all hauled in, and guarantees made on 37 lots worth some $210 million based on the combined low estimates, most of which were passed on to 3^rd parties. The result, satisfactorily for Christie’s, was a winning $421 million sale over a pre-sale $337 million estimate.  (Prices include the buyers’ premium, estimates do not).

This triggered a quick response from Sotheby’s that its comparable total for Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art last week, including day sales, came to $431 million. And then that the  $411 million it achieved during the week of Hong Kong sales made it the ‘undisputed market leader’ in Asia, a term which Christie’s became particularly fond of in recent years, and one no doubt they will return to again – though they can forget about online only sales where Sotheby’s is streaks ahead.

Before the ONE sale, Christie’s had attempted to inject some dynamism into the proceedings by announcing a new 20/21 department basically wrapping up Impressionist and Contemporary art together. About 15 years ago, they tried something similar by creating 20^th century sales - Impressionists were combined with the 19^th century ( a way of allowing ambitious 19^th C specialists to get their hands on more valuable Impressionist paintings), and the latest contemporary art was separated from the new mammoth 20^thcentury category of modern and post-war art. For various reasons—losing market share in both 19th C and Impressionists to Sotheby’s, and the thinness of their non post-war contemporary art catalogues—the experiment didn’t last long. But now, times have forced a similar restructure, this time with the promise that Impressionists will be included in the 20/21 category, though it still looks like two departments simply pooling resources while the pickings are slim to mount a single substantial sale—like the ‘ONE’ sale.