Three years ago, after a career at Christie’s and as a private advisor, Hugues Joffre took over the task of establishing a Modern art department within Phillips, auction house noted for its expertise in cutting edge artists.

In this podcast, Joffre talks about the process of winning the kinds of 20th Century consignments that would help drive Phillips’ sales totals higher and position the auction house as a peer and alternative to Sotheby’s and Christie’s not only in Contemporary art but also in the art of the 20th Century.

Along the way, Joffre comments on the way young collectors develop and broaden their tastes, the future of the art market and the taste of the great Greek shipping collectors of the 60s and 70s.

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Does It Matter That Hirst’s Art Doesn’t Sell at 2008 Peak Prices? It was kind of funny to see artist Richard Prince defend Damien Hirst on Twitter against Artnet’s analysis of his market since the now-infamous Beautiful Inside My Head Forever Sale. It was even funnier to see market scourge Jerry Saltz chime in too.

Neither needed to bother. The heart of Artnet’s analysis is that Hirst’s market has suffered ever since the sale. That’s a well-known fact. The volume of Hirst’s secondary sales has remained fairly steady in the years after the auction that took place on the eve of the financial crisis.

Artnet goes on to identify $8m worth of art that was resold publicly (lord knows how much traded from the dealers who felt compelled to buy during the sale) for prices that recouped only a little more than 60% of the auction prices.

• After enticing buyers to spend $8.1 million at “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” the same 19 works only managed to bring in about $5.2 million after they each mounted the auction block a second time—a collective loss of nearly $3 million.

Pointing to the loss only suggests artnet misunderstands how markets work. The real measure of a market is not when someone pays a lot of the “asset.” Overspending in a boom is easy. What’s hard is to sell in down market. Art is even more extreme than many other assets where a sale might allow the buyer to repurpose something of value. Stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities get “puked up” by those who overpaid when they “capitulate” by giving up on any future hope the asset will recover its value.

When buyers capitulate on art, we never see it again. A barrel of oil bought by a speculator who never intends to receive the commodity or refine it can always be sold to someone who has an industrial use for it. That sale may be a loss but it is a sale. An artist nobody wants anymore can no longer be sold. The art is left on the wall or put in storage, sometimes the fate is even worse. At times over the last few hundred years there have been works of art nearly lost forever because no buyers existed save a single, far-sighted (or foolish, depending upon your perspective) patron.

The mere fact that there are buyers for Hirst’s works at 60% of the 2008 value is a validation or Hirst’s market prowess, not a revelation of his fall. Of course, none of this has any bearing on whether Hirst is a “good” artist or whether his works are of lasting art historical value. But Hirst’s market staying power is quite remarkable on the face of it. …

Josh Roth Dies at 40: The Hollywood Reporter has the news that UTA’s Joshua Roth died over the weekend. He leaves three small children and his wife, Sonya, an executive at Christie’s. THR says the cause was heart failure. …

Third-Party Guarantees Eat the Auctions: It’s no secret that the hybrid private/public sale of works supported by a third-party guarantee has had a substantial effect on the very top of the art market. We don’t have great numbers on the use of guarantees until now. Scott Reyburn’s column this weekend contained these interesting numbers:

• Last year, guaranteed works represented more than 40 percent of the estimated value at the Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips evening auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art, according to research by Pi-eX. Almost 90 percent of those guarantees came from third parties hoping either to buy the work, or share the profit above the agreed minimum price, Pi-eX’s report said. […] The Pi-eX research, based on 250 evening sales from 2007 to 2017, showed that returns on third-party guarantees shrank in 2017, making them more attractive to sellers and buyers, rather than to 1031-minded investors.

Glenstone Contractor Sues for Cost Overruns: Hitt Contracting is suing Glenstone over their recent completion of the private museum in Bethesday, MD, according to the Washington Business Journal:

• The Falls Church-based contractor sued Glenstone Foundation Inc. Aug. 30 in the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, blaming the foundation’s “disorganized” approach for the millions of dollars in time and cost overruns it took to complete the $200 million expansion. The foundation delayed making crucial decisions, requested more than 2,400 changes and refused to acknowledge the financial implications of its actions, according to the complaint. …

Maecenas Says It Has Sold Its Warhol, But …: The blockchain-based fractional ownership gambit Maecenas has declared victory in its sale of Andy Warhol’s reversal series 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980). We’re quoting from this blog post in broken English because it contains more detail than the blockchain news outlets:

• “For the first time ever, Maecenas has successfully tokenised a multi-million dollar artwork, a portray by way of Andy Warhol named “14 Small Electric Chairs (1980)”. The beta public sale raised US$1.7m for 31.5% of the artwork at a valuation of US$5.6m. 100 members have been hand-picked to take part in the public sale out of greater than 800+ sign-u.s.from 56 nations. Mostly primarily based in Asia and Europe. Criteria to select members used to be to have a illustration from other geographies and investor profiles. The major purpose of this personal beta used to be to validate the end-to-end strategy of the Dutch public sale and artwork tokenisation the usage of blockchain era. Not simplest we completed that, we successfully reached the investment goal for the public sale. During the public sale length, 36 bids have been gained, out of which, 34 have been a success being perfect bid of $6.5M. 2 bids have been unsuccessful as they have been beneath the reserve worth.”

What Maecenas doesn’t say is that sale was under subscribed. The original intention was to sell 49% of the painting. At 31.5%, the sale fell short by more than a third. That doesn’t bode well for share holders who might want to be able to trade their shares in the works on the perception of a changed value. How the value of a work majority owned by another will change in the future, remains a mystery. …

Ticolat’s Attempts to Regain His $1.4m Don’t Seem to be Going Well: Judging from the fact that the battle between Hong Kong dealer Mathieu Ticolat and Angela Gulbenkian has moved to the pages of the South China Morning Post, Ticolat’s moves in the UK courts haven’t yielded his $1.4m deposit for a Yayoi Kusama sculpture that was never received. …

Sean Kelly Launches a Podcast with Tom Hill Interview:  Sean Kelly launched a new podcast, Collect Wisely, a few months ago which he says he hopes will focus on ‘people who care deeply about art to discuss their passion for collecting.’ The first episode was a discussion with Tom Hill whose private museum is planned for The Getty on West 24th St. in Manhattan. …

Andrew Wyeth Documentary on PBS: The documentary debuts tonight on PBS in the US. It will be available to others later through a variety fo distribution channels:

• WYETH is a documentary film telling the story of one of America’s most popular, but least understood, artists. While his exhibitions routinely broke attendance records, art world critics continually assaulted his work. Through unprecedented access to Wyeth family members, archival materials, and his work, WYETH presents the most complete portrait of the artist ever – bearing witness to a legacy just at the moment it is evolving.