Art Market Monitor

For many the name Georg Baselitz immediately brings to mind a painter of inverted portraits. That pictorial strategy was born out of the artist’s desire not to be trapped in a recognizable style; but it also became a defining, perhaps distracting, feature of his art. Baselitz’s role as a key figure reviving German Expressionism and connecting Contemporary painting in Europe to American counterparts like Willem de Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat should come back into the foreground when the Centre Pompidou, later this month, opens its six-decade retrospective of the artist’s work, the first in more than a decade.

Curated by the outgoing director, Bernard Blistène, the show Baselitz: The Retrospective opens October 20th and includes significant works like The Big Night Down the Drain (1962-63) and Ralf III (1965), The Girls of Olmo II (1981) and Read in the Cup the Cheerful Yellow (2010).

Here are some of the highlights of Baselitz’s protean career illustrated in the show:

In 1961, East German-born Baselitz emerges in West Germany steeped in earlier non-conforming artists like Edvard Munch and literary figures like Antonin Artaud and Lautréamont. His “Pandaemonium Manifesto” draws from the bleak post-war frustration of German reconciliation. “I had to question everything,” he tells Artforum in 2015. “I had to become ‘naive’ again, to start over.” Baselitz’s work expresses rage at his country’s past but his work provokes its own outrage.

Baselitz’s first 1963 exhibition results in two works—Die große Nacht im Eimer [The Big Night Down the Drain] (1962-1963) and Der nackte Mann [The Naked Man] (1962)— are seized by authorities. A trial for indecency follows.

Baselitz paints a series of self portraits as Oberon (63-64) drawing from Munch’s ‘scream’ images.

Baselitz retreats to a residency in Florence, Italy where he is impressed by Mannerist paintings from the 15th century. He emerges working on a new series of Helden [Hero] paintings depicting poets, partisans and painters walking through devastated forests and landscapes. These works culminate in the Die großen Freunde [The Great Friends] (1965).

Frakturbilder follow next with the introduction of symbolic figures including more heroic figures, dogs and trees. In these works Baselitz is making allusions to imagery that depicts a “transcendent German soul” as well as breaking with some of the conventions of figurative painting. These works begin to foreshadow the inversions that will become so important later in his work.

In 1969, the 30-year-old Baselitz resists both narrative painting and the theoretical freight of abstraction. His solution comes in inverting the image which allows him “the freedom to confront pictorial problems.” The inversions unlock a market for his work. But they also give him the freedom to reinvent his style of painting and subject matter.

Baselitz flirts with abstraction in the mid-1970s with a series of nude paintings that are self portraits or double portraits with his wife.

The artist begins collecting African sculpture in the mid-1970s. Melding the inspiration of these works with German wood sculptures of the medieval period, Baselitz presents Model for a Sculpture in the German pavilion at the 1980 Venice Biennale. The work provokes an uproar of conflicting interpretations but the furor raises the artist’s international stature.

Vivid colors appear in his work with the Girls of Olmo and his work harks back to the expressionism of Germany at the turn of the century. As the 1980s progress, Baselitz paints works inspired by the Austrian Expressionist poet Georg Trakl which are displayed near the Berlin Wall. Later still in the decade when the wall comes down, Baselitz pays tribute through a series of sculptures to the Women of Dresden who cleared the rubble of city after it was bombed in 1945.

In the 1990s, Baselitz experiments with Bildübereins [Picture-Over-Another] series where images are layered over abstractions and ornamentations.

Baselitz revisits his childhood in East Germany through a series of paintings, Russenbilder, made from 1998 to 2005 that engage with the images of Socialist Realism and Communist propaganda.

In 2006, Baselitz begins to reassess his own work and embarks on a series of Remix paintings exploring earlier themes in his own work and the work of artists he admires like Otto Dix.

Eight years later, Baselitz begins work on the Avignon series referencing Picasso’s late work show in the French city in 1971. These works continue Baselitz’s fixation on aging, memory and loss.

Baselitz: The Retrospective (20 October 21 – 7 March 22) | Centre Pompidou

There are three works coming up for sale in London’s Frieze week auctions. Two are works on paper and a third is a portrait of Clyfford Still on canvas. Last week, another work on paper, Adler from 1978, sold for $50,000 at Christie’s, a price right in line with the market. 

Of the works on offer in London, the Elke from 1976 was recently purchased at Bonhams for $41,000. It comes back to the market two years later with a low estimate almost precisely at the price previously paid. The other work on paper, a watercolor from 1983 that was purchased directly from the artist in 1989, has the virtue of having not been on the market before. 

The Clyfford Still portrait from Baselitz’s Devotion series follows another work from the same series depicting Willem de Kooning which sold in May at Christie’s day sale for $687,500. Sotheby’s estimate for the Still is right in line with these numbers. 

Looking at the top prices at auction for Baselitz on LiveArt.ai, we can see that the market focuses on works from either the early 1960s or the early 1980s. The Sixties pictures present Baselitz emerging as an artist and grappling with the effects of a divided Germany’s post-war reconstruction. The works for the early 1980s mark that period’s rediscovery of Expressionism. 

Per Skarstedt took that idea further in 2020 when he showed the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat side-by-side with Baselitz’s own contemporaneous paintings. Both artists had been featured in Documenta 7 in 1982. Skarstedt’s show focused on work made by both artists in the period leading up to that show which also happened to be the moment when Basquiat emerged as an international phenomenon and Baselitz was able to reach a broader audience in Europe and the United States. 

Because the auction market values the work from these two periods above the artist’s other works, there has been according to George O’Dell at Live Art Market, “a trough of value in the later works.” Over the past four years, the private market has witnessed an arbitrage as works sold for prices in the $700,000 range were easily resold within a short holding period for prices above $1 million. 

Some of the interest in Baselitz, like the retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, reflects an interest in a major artist with a long career whose work can be easily triangulated. Among the most significant post-war German painters, Baselitz’s work is far cheaper on the secondary market than his compatriot Gerhard Richter’s work. With a top price of $9 million achieved four years ago, Baselitz has also not seen a run-up in prices caused by the same sort of historical focus that Sigmar Polke’s work has received in recent years.

One issue that might be holding the Baselitz market back is the lack of significant buying from Asia. European and American collectors tend to focus on different periods and bodies of work by the artist. Asian buyers are entering this market. But it remains to be seen if collectors from the East will value the historical works from such a particular moment in European history—Germany’s reconciliation with its past. 

Or, with a growing interest among Asian buyers for works by Expressionist painters like Willem de Kooning or Jean-Michel Basquiat, could Baselitz be just the sort of artist that buyers will perceive as undervalued in the years to come?

Sotheby’s Hong Kong Evening sale of Contemporary art was more notable for the several artist’s records set for Shara Hughes, Nicolas Party, Louis Fratimo, Jadé Fadojutimi and Joel Mesler than for the top lots in the auction. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Red Warrior) struggled to reach the low estimate and Adrian Ghenie’s guaranteed The Death of Charles Darwin failed to elicit bidding. George Condo’s Whistler’s Father too had an uphill battle. Nonetheless, all sold and achieved good prices.

Yoshitomo Nara, Joan Mitchell and Cecily Brown a number of other artists sold well into strength.

Overall, the auction performed as estimated just missing the overall low estimate despite having 5 lots fail to sell. Only 4 other lots were sold at prices below the consignors’ expectations. A full 75% of the sale went to buyers willing to pay the estimated prices or stretch beyond. That included a strong 36% of the lots having been bid up over the high pre-sale estimate.

In an already heated market, these results are far from disappointing.

Sotheby’s opened their Hong Kong sales cycle this Autumn with an ambitious selection of Modern works from Asian and European artists. In many respects the strategy paid off with the top work, a Picasso, achieving HKD 165m. Four of the top ten works were by European masters like van Gogh, Renoir and Georges Mathieu. Additional strong prices were seen for Asian artists who worked in Europe like Sanyu, Zao Wou-ki and Chu Teh-Chun.

Overall, the sales failed to reach the low estimate of HKD 661m though, to Sotheby’s credit, the auction team was able to place nearly 87% of the works.

 

The internal statistics on the sale were more encouraging with 76% of the lots selling within or above the estimate range. A respectable 16% of the lots made superior prices above estimates which was counteracted by the 22% of lots that failed to find buyers or were sold at compromise prices.