Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Swann Sells $1m in American Art

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William Glackens, Le Royal Conti-Isle Adam ($12- $18k) $27,500

Swann Galleries’ auction of American Art on June 14 saw a total of $1,108,921 against estimates for the sale as a whole of between $1,009,700-$1,541,800 not including the buyer’s premium. Of the 300 lots offered 81% or 239 were sold. Though the prices were in the low five figures that’s evidence of an active market.

Here’s Swann’s take on their sale:

Nearly a fifth of the auction comprised works by the artist collective PaJaMa, consisting of Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret Hoening French and their various partners and friends. Many of these works came from the collection of Jon Anderson and Philis Raskind-Anderson, including Jared French’s graphite Portrait of Paul Cadmus, 1931, and study for Elemental Play, 1946 ($10,625 and $11,250, respectively). The evocative chalk Nude Reclining on Bentwood Chairs with a Dog, circa 1975, by Paul Cadmus, reached $10,000.

All five works in the sale by Pavel Tchelitchew found buyers, with the 1930 pastel Portrait of Robert Cluzan leading the auction at $32,500. Cluzan was a communist police officer who sold Nazi secrets during WWII. Tchelitchew’s ink and wash Interiors (Skull), 1944, a motif for which the artist is well known, reached $11,250.

The increasingly popular section of sketchbooks saw competition for collectors and dealers seeking background information into beloved artists’ processes. Two sketchbooks by Ashcan artist Mahonri Young, grandson of LDS leader Brigham Young, sold after breakneck bidding for $22,500, a record for a work on paper by the artist, who is primarily known as a sculptor. A sketchbook of diners in Washington restaurants by Peggy Bacon nearly doubled its high estimate to sell for $5,750.

All eight works by Fairfield Porter saw strong results, including two sketchbooks featuring primarily urban scenes, which sold together for $6,750. The highlight was Coastal Scene, a charming pastel view of Maine islands that encapsulates the artist’s oeuvre, purchased by a collector for $20,000. The double-sided watercolorRocky Coastal View, also of Maine, reached $13,750.

An auction record was established for Emilio Cruz, an African-American artist of Cuban descent whose work is gaining recognition: the undated oil paintingFloating Figures, a fine example of his expressive blend of figuration and abstraction, reached $17,500.

  1. 278       Pavel Tchelitchew, Portrait of Robert Cluzan, color pastels, 1930.                                           $32,500 C
  2. 202       Wolf Kahn, Poisonous Yellow-Green, oil on canvas, 2001.                                                      $31,250 C
  3. 36         William Glackens, Le Royal Conti-Isle Adam, oil on canvas, circa 1926.                                   $27,500 C
  4. 12         John Singer Sargent, Head of a Young Girl, pencil, circa 1875-78.                                            $25,000 C
  5. 108       Mahonri Young, two sketchbooks, with approximately 86 drawings, various media.                    $22,500 D
  6. 131        John Steuart Curry, Plowing Before a Storm, oil on canvas, circa 1935.                                     $21,250 D
  7. 87         Rockwell Kent, Reverence, gouache, 1926.                                                                          $20,800 D
  8. 95         Guy C. Wiggins, St. Patrick’s, New York, in Winter, oil on board, circa 1940.                             $20,000 C
  9. 197       Fairfield Porter, Coastal Scene, color pastels.                                                                        $20,000 C
  10. 200*     Emilio Cruz, Floating Figures, oil on canvas.                                                                       $17,500 C

Carlos Cruz-Diez Gets Spotlight at Phillips

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For several years now, works by Venezuelan abstract artist Carols Cruz-Diez have been making their way through art fairs and day sale auctions at greater rates, with higher visibility and prices that keep moving upward. The 94-year-old artist who worked as an art director in New York in the forties has been influencing artists around the world since his first major exhibition in Madrid in 1956. The artist moved to Paris in 1960. Now Phillips is building its Summer exhibition around the works by the artist. Here’s their release:

Phillips’ Summer Exhibition, Carlos Cruz-Diez: Luminous Reality, is set to transform the London galleries of 30 Berkeley Square with an immersive public show from 16 July to 6 September 2018. This marks the first exhibition for PHILLIPS X, the company’s new exhibition platform. Presenting masterworks from throughout the career of Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, the exhibition will include significant and previously unseen artworks, as well as works from important private collections. Considered one of the greatest artistic innovators of the 20th and 21st centuries, this exhibition of Cruz-Diez’s work will focus on his exploration of kinetic-optic art through the use of colour, light and illusion.

Miety Heiden, Deputy Chairman and Head of Private Sales, and Kaeli Deane, Head of Latin American Art, said, “The works highlighted in this exhibition illustrate the artistic achievements of Carlos Cruz-Diez. A visionary and trailblazer at the forefront of kinetic art since the 1950s, Cruz-Diez has dedicated his career to an intense investigation of colour theory and the importance of viewer participation in art.  This unprecedented exhibition in London will include examples from the artist’s most important series, such as his renowned Physichromies as well as a Chromointerferent Environment, a fully immersive installation that embodies Cruz-Diez’s experiments with light. The combination of previously unseen recent works and historic works demonstrating various periods of his career throughout the last century culminate in a broad and rounded exploration of Cruz-Diez’s artistic evolution. We look forward to sharing them with both new and longstanding admirers of his work.”

Physichromie 1725

Christie’s Scores By Just Getting It Done

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Christie’s £128m Impressionist and Modern Evening sale in London, working off a similar estimate range as its rivals, was demonstration of the value of just getting things right. The two top lots, a Picasso and a rare example of Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare series, sold without much excitement. But they sold at or around expectations which did no damage to the sale’s total. That opened the door for Christie’s to make great gains with two or three works that surprised to the upside.

The two most dynamic lots were a lifetime cast of Auguste Rodin’s Kiss which sold for £12.6m over a £7m high estimate and Franz Marc’s Drei Pferde sold for £15.4m over a £3.5m high estimate. The bidding battle on the Marc was as intense as it was unexpected topped only by the unusual fact that art dealer Jeffrey Loria took the additional step of having Christie’s inform the press that he had bought the work for his personal art collection (drawing a distinction from his other holdings that only raised more questions than it answered.)

The fact that outsized gains came from lots with more modest estimates further emphasizes that the top of the market is both fully priced and potentially spent out after the Rockefeller sale. The $700+m that was spent on Impressionist and Modern art in New York at the Rockefeller sale was effectively another major season of spending in the category inserted into the first half of the year.

The secret to Christie’s sale may have been Asian buyers who were mostly absent from Rockefeller but took up about a third of the London Evening sale, according to the auction house. Continue Reading

Christie’s Improves Its Imp-Mod Category Performance

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This look at the last 12 years of Christie's June Impressionist and Modern Evening sale performance is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

Christie's had a stronger sale than Sotheby's but both events showed that the market for Impressionist and Modern art may have been affected by the tidal pull of the massive Rockefeller sale which featured a full sales season's worth of Impressionist and Modern art just a month before these auctions.

For many years, Christie's was the weaker player in the Impressionist and Modern market with results not unlike those seen at Sotheby's the night before. These last two  June sales cycles were quite different and echo the strong years of 2010 and 2011 when Impressionist and Modern art was seen as a long-term store of value.

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Looking for Signs in Sotheby’s £87.5m London Imp-Mod Evening Sale

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(Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Sotheby’s)

Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Evening sale in London came in under expectations last night with £87.5m in sales where both top lots, a Picasso portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1932 and Giacometti’s cat previously owned by the Brody family in Los Angeles, sold for prices that fit with the tone of recent sales in the category.

The sale was down about a third over the previous year’s event with the very top lots accounting for much of the shrinkage, although in this year’s outing there was a good £20m in lost sales volume due to buyers just not showing up.

The Impressionist and Modern market remains both selective and top-heavy but last night’s sale also seemed to fit into some recent themes where the very top works failed to spark interest. As with the New York cycle of sales, bidders focused on particular works that were not necessarily the most highly valued.

The Picasso sold for £27m ($36m) which is a price in line with recent sales of similar works from the same year like the smaller but more striking Le Repos which Sotheby’s sold for a similar price in May. Although Phillips generated a much higher price ~$57m for another 1932 work just a few months before in London, it is not an uncommon pattern to see very strong prices followed by a declension as successive sales satisfy existing demand rather than generating new buyer interest.Continue Reading

Sotheby’s Evening Sale Fights an Imp-Mod Trend

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Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme de profil. Femme écrivant, oil on canvas, 116.2 by 73.7cm., 45¾ by 29in., Painted in April 1932 (estimate upon request) - Copyright Sotheby's

This look at the last 12 years of Sotheby's June Impressionist and Modern Evening sale performance is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

As we showed you yesterday with charts from our friends at Pi-eX, the June Evening sales of Impressionist and Modern art in London have become highly dependent upon the success of a few highly valued works of art that are often offered without published estimates. Sotheby's results both confirm that trend and show how susceptible a sales cycle can be to a few unlucky lots.

In June of 2016, the choice to offer two superb lots without published guidance in the form of a Modigliani portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne and Picasso's portrait of Fernande Olivier was richly rewarded with a £81m or the vast majority of the evening's sales volume.

Success breeds emulation. The next year, Sotheby's was able to pull in £57m against two works with estimates upon request, a rare Miró Constellation and a Kandinsky near abstract from his pivotal year of 1913. 

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Christie’s Modern British = £26.4m

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In another indication of the shifting art market, Christie’s held a Modern British Art Evening sale that made £26.387m ($34.8m) with 94% of the 48 lots sold. The sale showed a 30% rise over the previous year’s total. Christie’s tells us that bidders were hardly confined to the Commonwealth nations. Instead, the appeal in Modern British art seems to be that it is high quality Modern art that happens to come from Britain. There was bidding interest from 20 countries across five continents.

The top lot was Henry Moore’s unique carving Head which sold for£4,621,250 ($6,100,050). Sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Lynn Chadwick and Barry Flanagan dominated the top ten lots.  One work, Barry Flanagan’s Nijinski Hare, has traced a decade-long line through the rising art market to last night’s record price. In 2006, of the five casts of the sculptors dancing rabbit figure was sold for £624k. Three years later, the price for another example had fallen to £505,250; but by 2010 the price had bounced back to £782,500. The next year another example gained some momentum to achieve £998,500. Six years on, in 2017, another work leapt to £1.328m. Today, the price nudged forward a bit to £1,448,750 ($1,912,350.)

Not all of the sculptures sold were from artists who have departed. Emily Young’s Cautha £344,750 ($455,070) made a new record for the artist and Kenneth Armitage’s Striding Figures (Version 2) got £218,750 ($288,750). Other sculptural highlights were Khan by William Turnbull £692,750 ($914,430), Barbara Hepworth’s Tiki £1,808,750 ($2,387,550) and Lynn Chadwick’s Jubilee IV £2,024,750 ($2,672,670).

Amid the British artists there was a record for Scotsman Samuel John Peploe and his Still Life with Tulips at £992,750 ($1,310,430.) An Irish painter living in the US also saw strong sales as Sean Scully’s M.18.04 sold for £488,750 ($645,150), more than three times its estimate of £150,000.

The Taiwanese-born Richard Lin continued to make strong progress as paintings from the collection of the artist’s daughter all soared above their estimates:

  • Painting relief 1965-66 £236,750 ($312,510)
  • September 1974-79 £344,750($455,070)
  • Stripes 1968-70(£272,750 / $360,030 / €310,662)

Bridget Riley’s Shadow Rhythm £1,628,750 ($2,149,950), doubled its high estimate of £800,000. Frank Auerbach’s iconic London street scene Mornington Crescent Looking South II made £608,750 ($803,550). Sir Stanley Spencer’s Portrait of Kate Morrell sold for £536,750 ($708,510.) David Hockney’s Two Pink Flowers got £536,750 ($708,510.)  Pauline Boty’s Portrait of Derek Marlowe with Unknown Ladies achieved £248,750 ($328,350.)

 

How to Build a Chinese Art Museum

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When Enid Tsui asked Valerie Wang Conghui, the advisor working with Zeng Baobao, to build an art collection—already 200 pieces strong—for Fantasia Holding’s museum in Xinjin, China, why a Hong Kong-listed resort operator and property developer would build a museum in Sichuan province, the answer was simple: “Having a museum adds value to a company, both in terms of branding and by spreading good taste and design ideas…”

In the four years since Zeng decided to fill the museum, the two have been on journey of discovery through all of the world’s art fairs and auctions.

“Initially, there was no clear strategy about the museum’s content and we bought what we liked: fun works such as Li Jin’s contemporary ink paintings. But as we spent more time looking, a theme for the museum developed naturally: modern and contemporary art that conveys traditional Chinese aesthetics.”

But to be a museum, Zhi needs art worthy of being loaned out to other institutions. So the pair invested in works by Zao Wou-ki and Zeng Fanzhi. Whether those two artists were sought because of their art historical importance or their price points is something Tsui leaves unclear in the story.

Chinese art museum finally takes shape with big-ticket items bought on a billionaire’s budget  (South China Morning Post)

Peter Brant’s Art Fund with UTA Revealed

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It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard of any art funds launching. The idea has been a perennial, blooming and fading with regularity like the seasons. In concept, art funds would seem to make a great deal of sense. In execution, they’re very difficult to pull off because very smart players (with outside financial backing) already exist in the market. In fact, there are quite a few of them both visible and less-than-visible.

Now Kenny Schachter reveals that UTA Brant—a fund more than year in the making—is launching with UTA raising money and Peter Brant providing the art smarts.

The news is interesting because of where we are in the cycle. Art values have risen a great deal over the last decade and a half. But those same values seem to have plateaued in the last three years. That might make the best case for it being an artist picker’s market. It might also suggest returns will be harder to achieve going forward.

The United Talent Agency and collector/trader Peter Brant are launching the UTA Brant Fine Art Fund, seeking to raise $250 million to speculate on “best-in-class” works by blue-chip postwar (i.e. 1945-70) and contemporary (i.e. 1970-present) artists, with an investment lock-up of seven years or more. UTA has operated an uneventful downtown LA art gallery for the past few seasons, recently relocating it to Beverly Hills, and Brant has played at the art market (spectacularly) for 40 years. […] Brant, who is unequivocally among the world’s most knowledgeable participants in the art market with an enviable, legendary personal hoard, is said to have achieved a 19.18 percent rate of return from his personal art investing from 1996 to 2016, which for some unknown reason grows to 27.41 percent for the same period by the last page of the offering. This is plain sloppy. It also states that Brant guaranteed a total of $100 million of art from 2013 to 2016, with a profit of $6.2 million on the bets.

The other interesting piece of information is that last sentence on guarantees. Who knows how that has been calculated. But remember that this is marketing material and UTA Brant wants you to think of 6.2% yield on guarantees as good money.

Kim Jong-who? At Art Basel, $165 Million Sales and Other Dizzying Disclosures Made the Rest of the World Disappear (artnet)

London June Imp-Mod Evening Sales Look Back

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

This 12-year look at London's Spring Impressionist & Modern Evening sales is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

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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