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Francis Outred Leaves Christies

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Francis Outred by Gautier Deblonde 2018

Francis Outred is leaving Christie’s after nine years as head of Contemporary art in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India. Outred was responsible for the epoch-making consignment of Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud which made $142.4 million at Christie’s New York in November 2013 and sparked a new era of mega sales. Here’s Christie’s release:

After nearly twenty years in the auction world and a decade with Christie’s, Francis Outred, Chairman, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, EMERI, has decided to leave the company.

“It has been an incredible journey and I am proud of all that the teams have achieved over the last decade. We have built a strong, sustainable and profitable business, leading the market with an innovative vision and five of the six highest grossing auctions ever to take place in our field,” said Francis Outred, “but with the team having achieved three of these in the past thirteen months including the record auction in March this year, the time is right for a pause, a refresh and a new beginning. I want to take a break with my family and I am excited to start a new chapter in my career.”

“On behalf of everyone at Christie’s, I would like to thank Francis for his outstanding commitment and contribution. His work has been characterised by creativity, relevance and audacity,” said Guillaume Cerutti, Chief Executive Officer, Christie’s. “He leaves Christie’s as leaders in the post war and contemporary field in Europe with a strong and diverse group in place to continue to serve clients building on recent success and innovations.”

Francis joined Christie’s in January 2009 to oversee the management, strategy and vision of the Post-War and Contemporary Art team in Europe. In July 2014, he was promoted to Chairman and Head of the department in EMERI, following a period of unprecedented development, growth and success. During his career, Francis has overseen five of the six highest grossing auctions ever to take place in his field in Europe.

Known for his innovative approach to catalogues and exhibitions, under his guidance the team have significantly expanded the remit of the department, extending their activities in private sales, digital engagement and other innovative projects. These have included special one-off exhibitions such as House of Cards at Waddesdon Manor and the first exhibition of Peter Doig in China, at Faurschou Foundation, Beijing alongside the launch of the gallery, Christies Mayfair, and landmark cross category exhibitions there such as Reflections on the Self and About the Line.

Francis was also responsible for the consignment of the most expensive work of art ever sold in his field, Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud which achieved $142.4 million at Christie’s New York in November 2013. He has also twice been instrumental in achieving the record for any photographic work of art at auction, both times by Andreas Gursky as well as other records for contemporary artists including Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein and Peter Doig.

London Gives Some Second Thoughts About June Sales

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This wrap-up of the coverage of the June Contemporary 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.

The great surprise of the London Contemporary art sales was not the strong performance of works by younger artists or overlooked historical masters. Taken together, all four auction houses transacted somewhere around £186m with only a few of those works selling above £10m.

That trend within the art market continues to be pronounced and persistent. We'll have a more detailed discussion of the sales composition and performance when we publish our sales analysis in the next week. In the meantime, let's marvel at the unexpected strong performance of the Evening sales of Contemporary art in London just when it looked like these events were getting squeezed out of the calendar.

To be sure, the top of the market is much lower than it has been in the past for these sales. Sotheby's posted the biggest single lot with a guaranteed Lucian Freud reclining nude that sold for nearly $30m. Just below that was the surprise lot of the week, Jean-Michel Basquiat's untitled work sold from an American collection (said to be New Line's Michael Lynne) that composed a significant portion of Sotheby's sale. It made just below $20m but had carried a low estimate nearly half of the final selling price.

The dogged bidding over the Basquiat began with auctioneer Oliver Barker pushing the opening bids toward the low estimate. It wasn't long before two aggressive telephone bidders engaged in pitched campaign to out do each other. Their bids came either without the briefest hesitation or in increments greater than the crying required. The underbidder bowed out several times before finally capitulating.

In the current climate where high-value works are sold with an armature of financial support surrounding them which have a tendency to often but not always dampen bidding, it was a rare show of determination by two collectors.

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Bonhams Contemporary Sale = £4.4m

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Bonhams sale in London made £4.4m with 85% of the 35 lots sold.

  • Figure on a Bed II by Frank Auerbach sold for £1,448,750
  • Mire G 13 (Bolivar) by Jean Dubuffet made £296,750 against its pre-sale estimate of £180,000-250,000
  • Lichtscheibe by Günther Uecker sold for £428,750
  • 14 Steel Row by Carl Andre which made £392,750 
  • M60 by Wojciech Fangor from 1968 (above) estimated at £65,00-85,000 sold for £143,750
  • M90 from 1967 made £137,500. It too had been estimated at £65,000-85,000.

 

Paris Contemporary Auction Analysis: Asian Artists, de Staël Dominate

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This Paris Spring 2018 Contemporary sales analysis 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.

The Paris Contemporary art sales were punctuated by some dramatic sales that drove the overall performance far above expectations. You can see from market share chart (above) provided by our friends at Live Auction Art that both Sotheby's and Christie's were able to exceed their pre-sale estimates by a significant margin. In both cases, the totals were helped by the performance of a single lot.

For Christie's, that was Nicolas de Staël's Flowers which made €8.25m or more than twice the low estimate.  At Sotheby's, the big lot was Kazuo Shiraga's large and historically significant Takao which made more than four times the low estimate to reach €8.7m.

This analysis of the Spring 2018Paris Contemporary art sales results—including a look at market share by artist and a list of the most dynamic lots—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.

We will have a look at the historical sales numbers in Paris in another post. Here, let's look at the composition of the Paris Post-War sales. Artcurial had a number of modern works in their sale which we have set aside so we can look at the Paris Post-War and Contemporary market.

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De Staël Explodes in Paris Continuing Market Rise

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Nicolas de Stael, Flowers (3.5-5.5m EUR) €8.25m

Christie’s Evening sale of Contemporary art in Paris yesterday totaled €25.4m with a third of that value coming from Nicolas de Staël‘s Flowers which made €8.25m against an estimate of €3.5-5.5m. Other outperforming lots were Pierre Soulages‘s Peinture 227 x 306 cm, 2 mars 2009 which was estimated at €1-1.5m but made €2.4m; Kazuo Shiraga‘s Chikakusei Dokukakuryu, €1.87m; a small Joan Mitchell work that made €655k; and a Jean Dubuffet, Partition which hit €895k.

The day sale added another €9.33m to the total.

Sotheby’s Paris Sale Led By Zao Wou-ki & Shiraga

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It’s a been a couple of years since we’ve had a big Kazuo Shiraga price in the West. The most recent sales above $3m for the Gutai artist have been achieved in Hong Kong this year and three years ago. But the top three prices for the artist have come in Germany, New York and Paris. The last hosted the outright record at $5.3m four years ago at Sotheby’s. On June 6th in the Paris Art Contemporain Evening sale, Sotheby’s is offering Takao from 1959 with an estimate of €1.8 – 2.5m.

Also in the sale are several works by Zao Wou-ki, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hartung and Nicolas de Staël. Here’s Sotheby’s take on their offerings:Continue Reading

A Quick Look at New York’s Contemporary Evening Sales

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Live Auction Art published the market share figures for Contemporary art pictured above. You can see that Sotheby's pulled off a strong set of sales to finish dead even with Christie's in Contemporary art (though a few stray Rockefeller lots would have given Christie's a negligible few points of market share. Phillips continues to gain its position in the market even if their market share remains far behind the big two.

The top of the Contemporary art market is still down. According to historical numbers gathered by our friends at Pi-eX, the Evening sale totals for Contemporary art for the Spring sales in New York were back below the level of 2013. Over the last six sales cycles, the totals shot above historical levels in 2014 and 2015 before pulling back to their lowest total in 2016 since the 2011 sales cycle. There was a brief rally in 2017 back to that 2013 level. Last week, we saw the numbers pull back slightly.

We'll have a more detailed analysis of the composition of those sales—which on first reaction are quite positive for their depth of value and breadth of new names—when we publish our Contemporary market report next week. In the meantime, let's look at what Pi-eX's numbers can tell us.

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Christie’s Milan Contemporary = $18.1m

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Christie’s had a robust sale of Contemporary art in Milan, according to their release:

The 6th consecutive Milan Modern and Contemporary art auction has achieved a strong total result of €14,693,500 /£12,809,793 / $18,162,635, selling 91% by lot.

 

Top 3 lots:
Lot 11 – Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1958 selling for EUR 2,970,000
It is one of the earliest works of the artist’s series bearing the same name. Never offered before on the art market, in the same collection since 1976 and exhibited in the 2014 retrospective of the artist in Milan, as well as documented in all catalogue raisonnés on the artist, the work attracted international bidding.

Lot 17 – Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Atesa, 1967 selling for EUR 1,687,500
Showing a single clean slash through the red canvas, it was made in 1967, exactly 10 years after the artist introduced the series of tagli. These works were created during a period of exploration in space with the slash sometimes seen as a reference to the unknown, to the spatial dimension.

Lot 6 – Salvatore Scarpitta, Ammiraglio, 1958, selling for EUR 1,015,500
A pivotal piece of Scarpitta’s ‘wrapped’ or ‘bandaged’ series, where he deconstructed the anatomy of a painting, reconstituting its physical components to create a new and direct means of expression.

Six new auction records for Osvaldo Licini (lot 8), Leoncillo (lot 18), Antonio Donghi (lot 29), Piero Dorazio (lot 32), Fausto Pirandello (lot 43), and Claudio Parmiggiani (lot 56) were set.

 

London Mid-Season Contemporary Sales = £5m

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With only a handful of estimates above the five-figure range, the mid-season Contemporary art sales in London at Phillips and Sotheby’s brought in a combined total of £4.997m yesterday. Phillips had the larger of the two sales with £2.794m brought in by 195 lots out of the 235 offered for a an 91% sell-through rate. The top lot was an Antony Gormley sold within estimates at £369k followed by works by Kaws and Yinka Shonibare that also sold within the estimate ranges for £162,500 and £100k respectively. Below that level, a number of works popped over the estimates by Gormley, A.R. Penck, Jonas Wood and Yan Pei-Ming.

At Sotheby’s, we saw something slightly different with £2.2m achieved when 79% of the 163 lots offered were sold. There the bulk of the top lots were sold at prices above the modest five-figure estimate ranges. A Peter Halley work out-performed estimates to become the top lot at £150k; a Banksy work sold for three times the high estimate to make £137.5k; and fitting with this year’s fever for works by George Condo, a mostly estimated early work, Funny Landscape, from 1985 was sold for £112,500. (There’s a bit of a story there which we’ll get into later this week.)

Bonhams London PWC = £5.285m

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Frank Auerbach, Reclining Model, Back View (£120-180k) £872k

Helped along by a clutch of School of London works, Bonhams racked up a strong £5.285m Post-War and Contemporary art sale in London this week. Auerbach led the way with a sale that was more than four times the high estimate. Leon Kossoff also demolished expectations. The sale was helped along by Anish Kapoor, Banksy, Sigmar Polke, and Serge Poliakoff.Continue Reading

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