Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Zao Wou-Ki, Sanyu Dominate Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary 2020 Sales: Analysis

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Sotheby's Modern Art evening sale Hong Kong. Courtesy Sotheby's.
This report on the Summer auctions is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)  In July 2020, Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary art evening and day sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips brought in HK $2.64 billion ($341 million). French-Chinese artists led this season: Zao Wou-Ki generated HK$617 million, Sanyu HK$505 million and Chu Teh-Chun HK$143 million – the three artists accounted for 48% of the total modern and contemporary sales.
July 2020 Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary Evening Sales Figures
The evenings sales achieved a combined total of HKD 2.2 billion ($289 million), seeing a powerful 95% sell-through rate yielding 143 sold lots from 151 offered. Like the New York modern and contemporary art sales, the top ten percent of the evening sales account for slightly more than half of the total sales volume. Works by Zao Wou-Ki, Sanyu, Liu Ye and David Hockney were among the highest sellers. Five Sanyu works were sold in the evening sales, making a total of HKD 490 million together and accounting for 21% of the evening sale total.

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Joan Mitchell’s Rise Amid the Market’s Reappraisal: Analysis

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Joan Mitchell. 12 Hawks at 3 O'Clock (1960). Courtesy Christie's.
Known for her gestural style, Joan Mitchell was a key member of the second generation of American Abstract Expressionists and is now among the leading market forces in the 20th century. She was unique among her contemporaries, having gained acclaim in the early 1950s at a time when recognition of women artists was sparse. Despite the critical attention, Mitchell’s oeuvre has long been undervalued next to the work of her male peers. As the market exhausts its run with Mitchell's New York school contemporaries, she is now being reevaluated as one of the last artists of the Ab-Ex generation yet to be fully explored, according to curators of her upcoming retrospective. From 2007 to 2019, her auction turnover has increased by 123% from $28 million in annual sales to $62.6 million. Her record price has followed that trend with an increase of 130% from $7 million achieved in 2007 to $16.6 million in 2018. With the rise in prices, the volume of Mitchell's works traded at auction has also increased 130% since 2007.

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Roy Lichtenstein and The Pop Art Masterpiece Market: Analysis

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Roy Lichtenstein in front of one of his paintings at an exhibition in Stedelijk Museum.
This report on the Roy Lichtenstein market using data provided by Pi-eX is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)  No artist is more closely associated with Pop art than Roy Lichtenstein, the painter who helped to usher in post-modernism by elevating mass-culture comic strips into high art. Despite his unquestionable historical importance and broad recognition beyond art collectors and museums, Lichtenstein's market has somewhat lagged even as the art market exploded over the last two decades. His prolific peer Andy Warhol played a central role in the growth of Contemporary art prices that Lichtenstein had not, that is, until relatively recently. From there it has been a slow burn but still a bright one. In 2012, the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate London collaborated on a retrospective that brought the artist new attention. In response, auction results rose. A report published by London-based Pi-eX analyzed Lichtenstein's 2007 to 2019 sales from the evening auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips. (For clarity, Pi-eX uses hammer prices, not prices with the buyer's premium added. Consequently, all prices in this report will be based upon the hammer prices.) Pi-eX found the highest number works (between 25 and 30) traded in 2013, the year following the Lichtenstein survey. The evening sale lots generated $80 million in sales with another $60.5 million taking place throughout the year, according to public auction records.

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Bacon, Picasso, Lichtenstein Top 2020 Global Modern & Contemporary Auctions: Analysis

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Francis Bacon, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, oil on canvas, 1981.
This report on the Summer auctions is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)  After a period of uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic — which was only resolved by a wholesale restructuring of the international auction calendar — the top three houses finally presented hybrid live auctions of their most valuable works early this Summer. Houses merged the modern and contemporary art categories and updated virtual platforms to draw global audience and bidding clients to a week of live-streamed marquee sales held around the world. Sotheby’s offered the first market test on June 29th;  it yielded $363.2 million. Phillips held a modest $41 million sale comprising mostly works by female and non-white artists. Finally, Christie’s staged a complex, four-auctioneer sale spanning their international sales centers that brought in $420.9 million. The series of sales were successful enough to encourage Sotheby's to quickly turn around a second sale, Rembrandt to Richter, to capitalize on the demand. That auction combined a smattering of Old Master works with modern and contemporary art to make $193 million in sales.

Each session proved global demand undiminished by the economic lag. The leading lots of the auctions staged in June and July were by Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, Joan Miró and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The results from 2019 to 2020 is not a direct comparison due to the reformatted sales but key trends in artists' markets are still apparent. In Spring 2019, more than $1.2 billion in contemporary art was sold in the New York day and evening sales. That was a rise of 6.7% over the previous year.

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Manet Makes Estimate

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Carol Vogel gives the rundown on last night’s “lackluster” Impressionist and Modern evening sale at Sotheby’s London. The $165.2 million sale did fall within its estimate of $148.4 million to $217.5 million, and the most highly anticipated lot, a self-portrait by Manet did achieve a new record for the artist ($33 million), but the tone of Vogel’s article indicates that the sale (and the Manet) failed to wow.

She notes that there was only bidder chasing the Manet and quotes dealer Richard Feigen who suggests that the Manet failed to go over estimate because it may be over the heads of many members of the art-buying public:

“The Manet put a damper on the evening,” said Richard L. Feigen, another New York dealer, adding that the painting was not well suited to being sold at auction. “It was a great picture, but he’s not an auction artist,” Mr. Feigen said; the work was too intellectual to have the commercial appeal of paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Giacometti and Modigliani that have brought record-breaking prices over the last few months.

A Lackluster Art Auction in London (The New York Times)

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