Art Market Monitor

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London June Imp-Mod Evening Sales Look Back

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Claude Monet, Gare Saint-Lazare ~£22m)

This June there are a few works, valued at approximately $100m, in the Impressionist & Modern London Evening sales that are offered with Estimate Upon Request. That's a common feature of these sales over the last three years, as data from our friends at Pi-eX shows. Ever since the June 2016 Evening sales, there has been a substantial portion of the sales value offered with the flexibility of an unpublished estimate.

That allows the sales teams at the auction houses to gauge the market in the days and weeks leading up to the sale and transmit what they learn back to the consignors or guarantors who will have to make a final decision about when, how, and at what level to sell.

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AMM Fantasy Game for Lodnon Imp-Mod Sales

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The AMM Fantasy Collecting Game for the Impressionist & Modern auctions in London is now open.

How does it work? We put together 64 lots from the sales with nearly £200m. You get a budget of £50m to “buy” at the low estimate the works you think will perform best. Follow the results on our scoreboard and, if your collection totals more on hammer price than the others, you’ll win a cash prize. Top ten collections win.

The game closes June 19 at 6pm BST or 1700 UTC.

Hirst’s Former Manager Sells £10m Collection at Sotheby’s

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Sotheby’s is prepping for the Fall when it will have an interesting collection of 200 works from Frank Dunphy, who is best known as the former business manager to Damien Hirst. It is no surprise that Dunphy is selling through Sotheby’s with whom he organized the (in)famous Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale a decade before. The Dunphy sale, which includes a great deal of material from the YBA artists, comes as bookend to the decade of Hirst’s muted market in the wake of the big bang of the  BIMHF sale. Here’s Sotheby’s on the sale:Continue Reading

Artelligence for June 15, 2018

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Tate Announces 2019 Exhibitions:

The New Museum Announces Sarah Lucas Retrospective in New York:

  • The New Museum is pleased to present “Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel,” on view from September 26, 2018 to January 20, 2019. The first major survey in the United States of the work of British artist Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London, UK.)  Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson, and Margot Norton, the show will bring together more than 150 works in photography, sculpture, and installation to reveal the breadth and ingenuity of her practice. The exhibition will address the ways in which Lucas’s works engage with crucial debates about gender and power, along with the legacy of surrealism—from her clever transformations of everyday objects to her exploration of sexual ambiguity and the tension between the familiar and the disorienting or absurd. …

Bloomberg Profiles a New Museum of Contemporary Art Planned for Moscow: Energy tycoon Leonid Mikhelson has emerged as one of Russia’s biggest buyers of contemporary art, something that would have seemed unfathomable less than a decade ago. His collection, worth an estimated $200 million, includes works by Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool and Rudolf Stingel. Mikhelson, 62, is also building a $130 million center of contemporary art in Moscow.

Auction Analysis: Paris Contemporary Sales, 2007-2018

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We showed you the very strong numbers for the Paris Contemporary art sales. Here we have a broader look over the last 12 years of the Evening sales that shows the dramatic rise this season over previous years. From the chart below prepared by our friends at Pi-eX, you can see that sale totals for both Sotheby's and Christie's Paris Evening sales were fairly consistent over the previous five years. The hammer total oscillated between the low €20m range and the mid-€30m range. This year, the combined Evening sale hammer total was above €50m.

Both houses have benefitted from the growth of this market. Sotheby's much more so than Christie's despite the latter's ownership being based in France. Although these numbers combine both houses, Sotheby's—which has run these sales consistently over the last 12 years—tends to perform better in the market with sales at or above the high estimates (with a few exceptions.)

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Artelligence for June 14, 2018

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Los Angeles Modern Auctions Spring Sale = $2.37m: LAMA set a new auction record for Mary Corse when an untitled work (White Gird Light) from 1988 which was estimated at $60-90k made $312,500. Another untitled work, this time by Ruth Asawa, (S.809) which was estimated at between $100 and $150k also made $312,500. …

Sotheby’s Modern British Week Makes £20.63m: Four sales held across two days saw 221 lots sold for £20,632,000 / $27,539,593 (est. £15.4-23.6 million). Some highlights were:

  • Sir Stanley Spencer’s Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Punts by the River, appeared on the market for the first time since it was acquired in 1959 – the year after it was painted – and sold for £3,370,000.
  • Ben Nicholson saw the large-scale relief 1966 (IOS) mmake £1,210,000; July 1960 (Green and Black) achieved a triple-estimate £406,000; drawing 1940 (Gouache) also tripled its estimate to make £187,500.
  • Dame Barbara Hepworth’s alabaster Spiralfrom 1959 brought £1,270,000 and Henry Moore’s Rocking Chair No. 2 sold for £910,000.
  • William Roberts’ Barber’s Shop, which sold for £406,000, and two monumental canvases by William Scott both making their auction debuts from important Irish collections, with iridescent Berlin Blues 2 at £730,000 and rich ochre Dark Earth Scheme at £430,000.
  • A new auction record was established for F.C.B. Cadell, the Scottish Colourist, when his painting Reflection from 1915 sold for £874,000. A group of over 30 pictures from one of the most exceptional collections of Scottish Colourist works in private ownership brought a combined total of £4,517,375.
  • The sale saw strong prices for Cadell – The White Room, also painted in 1915, commanded an above-estimate £670,000, while The Pink Azaleas, painted a decade later, made £394,000. Works by Samuel John Peploe performed well, led by Trees, Antibes and Michaelmas Daisies and Oranges which sold for £586,000 and £490,000 respectively.

A Brief Note on Transparency in the Art Market: A group of art market journalists are debating price transparency in the gallery market on Twitter when one journalist adduces Gagosian Gallery’s new viewing room as an example of how galleries will embrace transparency if it helps them sell works. That’s a sensible conclusion … except that what appears in the viewing room is not what Gagosian gallery is actively selling to its client base. We know this because the list of works—with asking prices—that Gagosian sent to Art Basel includes none of the works mounted in the viewing room. Before you ascribe nefarious motives, remember that art is sold through personal relationships between gallerists and clients. Art isn’t a retail business. What a gallery puts on the walls of a booth may or may not be the works the gallery is most interested in selling. Buyer’s like to feel they are getting access to the works that have been held back, the exclusive material, the good stuff. Art journalists tend to bang on about transparency because they want to know more about what’s going on but selling art is a delicate balance between sharing information and vouchsafing an special find.

Joan Mitchell Retrospective Announced from Baltimore Museum of Art and SFMoMA: ARTNews has the story:

  • The Baltimore Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have revealed plans for a major Joan Mitchell retrospective. Currently slated to open in April 2020 at the BMA, the exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in September of that year and then make a stop at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in early 2021.

Fang Statue Leads Christie’s Durand-Dessert Collection in Paris

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Yesterday, a Fang head from Gabon was sold in Paris for €2.5m well above the €1.5m high estimate. Another Fang statue, once owned by dealer Paul Guillaume, estimated at €700k is in Christie’s Durand-Dessert sale on June 27th.

On 27 June Christie’s in Paris will offer 105 African art treasures from the celebrated collection of Liliane and Michel Durand-Dessert, assembled over the course of more than 30 years.

Liliane and Michel Durand-Dessert built their collection of African art over the course of 30 years, and the rich variety of objects and forms represented in the 105 pieces offered at Christie’s in Paris on 27 June represents a significant moment for the market. This is not only because of the analytical and original approach the couple applied in each acquisition, but also because of their visionary take on exhibiting the most radical 20th-century art in their gallery, which was the subject of a 2004 retrospective organised by the Museum of Grenoble.

The most emblematic work in the collection is an extremely rare Mbembe drum figure. Mbembe statues from south-eastern Nigeria are among the oldest and most spectacular preserved wooden sculptures in sub-Saharan Africa; fewer than 20 sculptures are known of this group, which was first introduced to the market in 1974 by Hélène Leloup (formely Kamer).

The exceptional Fang statue shown above was once owned by the Parisian art dealer and tastemaker Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), and is among a group of works considered the epitome of African classicism. In the early 20th century, Fang statuary could be found in the homes of sophisticated European collectors and was widely admired by avant-garde art critics. It has remained one of the most sought-after types of African art ever since. Conceived by a master sculptor as a guardian and protector, statues such as this would sit on top of a bark box containing relics of a clan’s ancestors.

Ignoring convention, the Durand-Desserts used African art to explore the origins of contemporary art.<

Artelligence for June 13, 2018

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Invaluable Says It Was Granted a Patent on Bidding Technology: The Boston-based company announced that it has gotten a patent. Invaluable CEO Rob Weisberg said, “the patent recognizes the unique live auction bidding console technology developed and managed by Invaluable. The Invaluable technology aggregates all online live auction marketplaces and funnels bids to a single auction house clerk utilizing one clerking console powered by Invaluable. This integration spares auction houses from having to use multiple clerks to take bids from several online live marketplaces and sort them in real time during a sale and manage them post-sale.” …

Congratulations! You’re Leonardo: Terence Eden applied for a Verisart blockchain for the Mona Lisa—and got it! “So we’re in this ridiculous situation where an art certifier has permanently and irrevocably told the world that I painted the Mona Lisa.” …

Sotheby’s Modern and Post-War British Sale Was Small (£3.7m) But Had Some Big Pops: This Barbara Hepworth, Mother and Child sold for nearly twice the high estimate with premium at £118k. …

Paris Continues to See Big Sales: In the wake of two big sales of Chinese ceramics in France, Sotheby’s Paris sold this Fang head for €2.57m over a €1.5m high estimate in its African and Oceanic Art sale which saw several similar sales over the estimate range.

Paris Contemporary Auction Analysis: Asian Artists, de Staël Dominate

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The Paris Contemporary art sales were punctuated by some dramatic sales that drove the overall performance far above expectations. You can see from market share chart (above) provided by our friends at Live Auction Art that both Sotheby's and Christie's were able to exceed their pre-sale estimates by a significant margin. In both cases, the totals were helped by the performance of a single lot.

For Christie's, that was Nicolas de Staël's Flowers which made €8.25m or more than twice the low estimate.  At Sotheby's, the big lot was Kazuo Shiraga's large and historically significant Takao which made more than four times the low estimate to reach €8.7m.

We will have a look at the historical sales numbers in Paris in another post. Here, let's look at the composition of the Paris Post-War sales. Artcurial had a number of modern works in their sale which we have set aside so we can look at the Paris Post-War and Contemporary market.

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Artelligence for June 12, 2018

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Zeng Fanzhi Gets Globe Girdling Shows at Hauser + Wirth This Fall: Zeng Fanzhi has been shopping for Western gallery for several years. He tried Gagosian; he tried Acquavella. In March, he signed with Hauser + Wirth. Enid Tsui announces in the South China Morning Post that the gallery will give him three simultaneous shows in London, Zurich and Hong Kong:

  • The theme for all three gallery shows is how Zeng explores different possibilities with painting. In Zurich, the exhibition features new landscapes. In London, the focus is on his figurative works. In Hong Kong, there will be paintings and drawings that draw on both Chinese and Western traditions. …

Not All Chinese Works of Art Get Bid Up by the Chinese: It turns out the buyer of Sunday’s €4.9m Qianlong moonflask in central France was not Chinese, even if the auction house did play the PRC’s national anthem before the sale. The South China Morning Post reports that the buyer is a French woman:

  • The buyer, who bid over the phone during the auction at Artigny chateau in Montbazon, central France, is expected to keep the flask at her flat in Paris but it could potentially be loaned to a museum in future, the auctioneer said. …

Sotheby’s Goes on the Offensive in the Antiquities Market: The antiquities market has become a venue for grandstanding on the part of governments around the world. New York’s district attorney Cyrus Vance has empowered the stunt prosecutor assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdanos. Turkey and Italy have recently launched high profile but murky cases. Now Sotheby’s is fighting back against interference from Greece with a suit seeking to clarify the owner’s rights. Here’s how the Financial Times described the case:

  • The statuette, dating from the eighth century BC and given an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, was due to have been sold in Sotheby’s New York salerooms on May 14 […]. On the day before the auction, Greece’s culture ministry sent the auctioneer a letter demanding it withdraw the bronze from the sale and help with returning it to Greece. […] Sotheby’s rejected the Greek claims, pointing to the 1967 sale of the horse at a public Swiss auction before it passed into Symes’s hands and thence to the Barnets’ collection. Nonetheless, it pulled the statue from the May sale at the eleventh hour, since the existence of the claim damaged its marketability. Arguing that Greece had no right to interfere in the sale and could provide no information as to when or by whom it had been stolen or removed from the country, Sotheby’s said it was asking the court “to clarify the rights of legitimate owners of ancient works of art and protect clients against baseless claims”.

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