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London Gives Some Second Thoughts About June Sales

June 29, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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. Continue Reading

Bonhams Contemporary Sale = £4.4m

June 27, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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

June 13, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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.Continue Reading

De Staël Explodes in Paris Continuing Market Rise

June 8, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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

May 29, 2018 by Marion Maneker

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

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