Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

The Top of the Impressionist & Modern Market, 2007-18

by

This analysis of the 12 years of Impressionist & Modern Art Evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips was made possible with data from our friends at Pi-eX. It is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscriptions begin with a free month for the curious. (Please note: these numbers do not include single-owner and curated sales that have punctuated the market at various times. The point of these charts is to show year-over-year changes and so the single-owner and curated sales are thought to interfere with a consistent comparison.)

There is something going on at the top of the art market. As we’ve seen from our recent posts on the last dozen years in sales information, there is an overall trend over the last three years toward fewer transactions in the Evening sales. This trend is most pronounced and visible in the Impressionist and Modern art field.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about there being three phases to the recent art market: the pre-financial crisis boom, the post-crisis recovery and then the post-2016 correction. In this post-2016 period, especially in the Impressionist and Modern market, the number of works coming to market and transacting has fallen. This fall is significant but not necessarily the cataclysmic event that many feared would damage the Impressionist and Modern market. Indeed, fewer objects transacting is a sign of the market’s health as the value of the works sold in the same period has risen to levels above the previous period of 2009-2015.

Obviously, fewer objects adding up to higher sales volume is a sign that the top of the market is getting more selective and more valuable. Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are contributing to this process by emphasizing the sale of fewer works and looking for the ones that can attract the most value. Continue Reading

Three Phases of the Auction Market, 2007-2018

by

This analysis of the 12 years of Evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips was made possible with data from our friends at Pi-eX. It is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscriptions begin with a free month for the curious. (Please note: these numbers do not include single-owner and curated sales that have punctuated the market at various times. The point of these charts is to show year-over-year changes and so the single-owner and curated sales are thought to interfere with a consistent comparison.)

This is the first of a series of posts on the auction market over the last 12 years. The chart above shows the number of lots sold in the Evening sales in New York and London. These numbers exclude special sales of either single-owner collections or curated sales. What we’re trying to provide here is a year-over-year look at the auction market as it appears in Evening sales in New York and London.

What the data shows is three distinct phases. The first is the peak of the last boom and the fall out of the financial crisis. The second is the asset reflation period from 2010 to 2015 when the art market presented surprising growth in the face of a broader global climate of uncertainty. The third phase we see in these charts is the last three years where total volume of lots sold has been consistently lower than the second phase.

Remember, because we are only looking at Evening sales in Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art in London and New York and excluding special sales, we’re not measuring the entire art market. All this chart shows is that the number of lots sold in New York and London in the Evening sales remains fairly consistent over these periods. The latest phase may simply reflect the recognition that works of art at the top of the market are so valuable these days.  The number of lots sold may reflect the auction houses’ allocation of resources. But because these are sold lots we also have some sense of the demand.

We can see a fair bit more when we shift toward looking at the value numbers.

Continue Reading

The Top of the Auction Market, 2007-2018

by

This analysis of the 12 years of Evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips was made possible with data from our friends at Pi-eX. It is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscriptions begin with a free month for the curious. (Please note: these numbers do not include single-owner and curated sales that have punctuated the market at various times. The point of these charts is to show year-over-year changes and so the single-owner and curated sales are thought to interfere with a consistent comparison.)

Making sense of the last 12 years of Evening sales at the three auction houses in London and New York, it helps to look at the breakdown of auction value by lot value. In other words, how much of the market is attributable to the most valuable lots or to the middle market lots. These are evening sales so the overall value of the lots is very high. Pi-eX has broken the lots down into those over $10m, works that sold for between $4m and $10m, works sold for $1-4m and works below $1m.Continue Reading

Sotheby’s Hints at Strategy to Break Historic Valuation

by

This look at Sotheby’s earnings for the third quarter of 2018 is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed. 

Sotheby’s released its third quarter earnings report yesterday. Spanning the slow Summer months of July, August and September, the quarter rarely provides much in the way of directional information about the tone of the art market or the evolution of Sotheby’s strategy. Paradoxically, the absence of data usually allows or, even, requires Sotheby’s management to use their earnings call as a bully pulpit on their business.

Before we survey the color commentary Sotheby’s provided, there were some numbers worth paying attention to. For the first nine months of 2018, sales are up a solid 20% to $4.04bn. Half of that rise came from a 49% updraft in private sales to $675.4m. That puts the division on track towards a nice round $1bn in private sales. That number surely reflects the new-ish private sales division hitting its stride but also a quietly increasing industry trend away from public auction to private transactions.

Nowhere is that better seen than in the Warhol market where industry players insist four massive private sales have taken place behind the scenes while the 20th Century’s giant has all but vanished from the auction block.

Digging deeper into Sotheby’s numbers, one can see that auction sales are up in 2018 without relying upon Sotheby’s to empty its storerooms as the firm did in 2017. That means Sotheby’s business improved markedly in 2018 without anyone really noticing. In the third quarter of 2018, Sotheby’s sold $6.5m of property that it already owned. These are works previously guaranteed that didn’t find buyers or inventory acquired in other ways. During the same period in 2017, that figure was more than 12 times that amount or $81m. For the nine months of 2018, inventory sales were $62.8m. The year before that figure was almost three times as high or $172m. Overall revenue was down but without an impact on the profit.
Continue Reading

Artprice’s Top 20 Artists of 2018 (So Far)

by

Artprice has released its regular report on the first half of 2018’s sales. They’ve tallied $8.45bn in total auction sales with Christie’s and Sotheby’s making $5.2bn or 61.5% of those sales.

How does 2018 stack up against recent years’ performance? Artprice says it’s an 18% rise in dollar volume against a 2.5% rise in lot volume which reached 262,000 lots worldwide.

These overall numbers suggest a strong year for 2018. The H1 total puts 2018 fourth among the last 11 years Artprice is charting (see below.)

Artprice also charts the top 20 artists by sales volume. (We’ve added average price for each artist to the chart.) Picasso, Monet and Warhol are hardly strangers to the top spots. The market is increasingly familiar with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s position of value.

The $154m for Zao Wou-ki is worth noting because of Zao’s international appeal. Other Chinese artists on the list like Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian have strong positions without straddling collectors in both hemispheres.

Gerhard Richter remains on the list despite a substantial drop in sales volume, especially for his more recognizable works. David Hockney has risen to a position just below him. Their average prices are remarkably close for two living octogenarian artists.

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor