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Artelligence Podcast: Adam Lindemann on Bernard Buffet: Paintings from 1956 to 1999

April 7, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Adam Lindemann discusses his Venus Over Manhattan gallery’s presentation of a survey of Bernard Buffet’s paintings:

The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Estate of Bernard Buffet, marks the first major solo presentation of Buffet’s work in New York in nearly three decades.

While Bernard Buffet (b. 1928, Paris, France; d. 1999, Tourtour, France) was once hailed as the next Picasso in France and internationally, the artist’s work has weathered dizzying cycles of acclaim and rejection. Immensely popular – and always commercially successful – at numerous points in his career, Buffet suffered long spells of vicious critical repudiation, when his work was considered the ultimate embodiment of poor taste. But curatorial attention has returned to his oeuvre in the years since his death, culminating in a major retrospective of his work at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2016, organized by the museum’s director, Fabrice Hergott. At this moment of renewed relevance, Bernard Buffet: Paintings from 1956 to 1999 reintroduces the artist’s oeuvre to a new generation of American viewers, charting a history of the artist’s development through a tightly focused selection of highlights from Buffet’s career.

February Tests Bernard Buffet’s Market Momentum

February 13, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Bernard Buffet, Les Environs de Doelan, retour de al peche (100-150k GBP)
Bernard Buffet, Les Environs de Doelan, retour de al peche (100-150k GBP)

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There is no denying that we’re in the midst of Bernard Buffet market boomlet. It might actually be something bigger than that considering the interest in the artist from Asian buyers and the re-assessment of his life in Nicholas Foulkes new biography and a big retrospective of his work last year in Paris at the Grand Palais.

Last June, in London, Christie’s somewhat unexpectedly featured one of his late paintings of clowns and scored a record price of £1m (~$1.5m, then) for the work. In February, the firm Matsart made almost $1m on their landscape of Paris with the Eiffel Tower; two years earlier, a clown painting made more than $750k at Christie’s Shanghai sale. All three of these prices were near or eclipsed the records previously set for the painter more than a quarter of a century earlier when the artist last saw a boomlet.

In the New York sales in November, there were 13 works on offer in a wide range of prices and styles. Just before the sales, Christie’s had sold a small clown painting in Shanghai for $280k, a solid sale. There was only one small clown painting in New York but its quality and sale price within the estimate range did not provide much to measure the appetite for that body of work. Of the 13 works, a solid 10 sold for a solid 77% sell-through rate. Much more relevant was the fact that all but one of the 10 sold above the low estimate. Four of the 10 works exceeded the estimate range and made prices that were sometimes two or three times the low estimate. Clearly there are bidders for Buffet’s work.

This February, Christie’s continues to lead the way in the Buffet market. They had 11 of the 13 works in November. In a few weeks they will have four more works on offer with estimates in and around six-figures in sterling. Sotheby’s has two works at much lower price points and Christie’s South Kensington salesroom has a bouquet of flowers in the low to mid-five-figure range. The work offered during the London sales cycle with the highest estimate, a painting of Versailles offered at £150-250k, is a reminder to the market that two of his top 5 prices at auction were achieved for works depicting Parisian landmarks.Continue Reading

The Bernard Buffet Resurgence: Where Are The Clowns?

November 14, 2016 by Marion Maneker

Send in the clowns. @christiesinc bringing a lot of Bernard Buffet to market. Grand Palais career retrospective and Nicholas Foulkes biography clearly having an effect.

A photo posted by Art Market Monitor (@artmarketmonitor) on Nov 8, 2016 at 10:26am PST


Three weeks ago the New York Times got on board with the Bernard Buffet boomlet. This week, the follow through has been strong with a number of Buffet’s works on offer at both houses.

The surge of early works, nary a clown painting in site, is also noteworthy.There are 13 Bernard Buffet works on offer this week: 2 at Sotheby’s and 11 at Christie’s. There’s only one clown painting.

There have a been a handful of surprisingly strong sales in the last year; a new biography of the painter was published in part to explore whether Buffet’s reputation as the definition of bad taste was truly deserved; and there was on view in Paris, for the first time, a retrospective of Buffet’s work.

Here’s the Times on the trend:

Fabrice Hergott, director of the Musée d’Art Moderne, decided to put on the Buffet exhibition. Through about 100 paintings — a small sampling of the 8,000 or more this prolific painter and illustrator produced[.…]
Mr. Hergott now sees in Buffet, who killed himself after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and could no longer work, a rare mastery of technique, an inventive approach to subject matter and the striking intensity of his paintings that can, he said, eclipse any other art in the room. “Buffet has painted hundreds of masterpieces,” he said. “His œuvre is one of the greatest of the 20th century.”

That last comment is the eye-opener. It’s a long way from Buffet’s reputation to travel. But that opinion isn’t only held by academics. The market too has begun to have high hopes for Buffet:

“There has been a change of taste, and the new generation of buyers is not looking at Buffet with the same disdain,” said Bruno Jaubert, director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Artcurial[…]

Buffet: A Life of Success, Rejection and Now a Celebration (The New York Times)

There Ought To Be Clowns: The Current Bernard Buffet Market

November 14, 2016 by Marion Maneker

Buffet, Deux Clowns, Saxophone (CNY 3.2-4.5) 4.95m CNY (800k USD)

A brief look at the sales pattern, offers some clues to what’s driving the new Bernard Buffet market:

“There is a recent and well-deserved resurgence of market interest in this artist,” said Jay Vincze, head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s London. “A very global audience is looking at high quality Western art today, and buyers respond to Buffet’s bold, graphic style and expressive colors.” […] “He is considered good value in the market with a lot of room to move.”

All of this is fine and good. The art market thrives on rediscoveries and changes of taste. But the recent boom in Buffet sales ought to be examined more closely. Continue Reading

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