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What’s Going On In the Condo Market?

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George Condo, Funny Landscape (20-30k GBP) 112,500 GBP

This analysis of the George Condo’s auction sales results—made possible with data from Pi-Ex and Live Auction Art—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.

George Condo’s market is having a hell of a year. The March sales of Contemporary art were very strong for the artist following on an even stronger showing in New York last November. But no one who follows Condo’s market was anticipating this month’s sale in London when an early work from 1985, Funny Landscape, (above) was on offer for £20-30k.

The painting is not immediately recognizable as a work by the artist. That didn’t dissuade bidders from descending upon the work. When the mid-season auction was over, the lot had sold for nearly four times the high estimate to make £112,500 with fees.

In and of itself, the sale is interesting but neither earth shattering nor authoritatively directional. A number of art market professionals have been casually watching Condo sales over the last year. They’ve noticed the market action and are curious to plumb its depth. This is how an artist’s market works with intermediaries sounding the depths of buyers’ demand and sellers’ interest—trying to determine whether to acquire, bring a work to market or get their clients more fully invested in the artist— through the repeated soundings of sales.

Since November, when a record was set for the artist during a day sale with bidding by prominent market makers, the casual interest in the Condo market has turned serious but cautious. The art market is phenomenological—meaning we never see the forces that drive the market explicitly but only trace the effects of that demand through the phenomena of sales events—always leaving a bit of doubt about whether the visible demand is real or orchestrated in some way.

With that in mind, we’re going to go through some detailed numbers to help describe the shape and trajectory of Condo’s rapidly changing market. So far in 2018, the sales volume for the artist has outpaced consistent sales of the two previous years. Each of those years was twice the level of the previous nine years.

A quick look at the sales history of last week’s Funny Landscape might be a good place to start. Continue Reading

Condo Sets New Price Points with Help from Ames Collection

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Condo, Noble Woman (500-700) 1.006m
Condo, Noble Woman (500-700) 1.006m

This market analysis is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Subscribers are welcome to convert their monthly subscriptions to yearly at any time. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before the end of the first month if you’re not satisfied. AMMpro subscribers also have access to our No-Fee Brokerage. Sign up for AMMpro here. 

It has been a big year for George Condo’s market. Five of his top ten prices—including the works that are in the number one and two slots—were sold 2016. Eight of the top 15 prices came this year too. Half of those in the November sales in New York where the Ames collection provided five of the six works on offer at Sotheby’s. And three of those achieved top 15 prices.

Judging simply from the nearly $2m record price for the artist set during a July charity auction for Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation or the $1.3m paid during a Sotheby’s day sale in May, the demand for Condo’s work has come as a bit of a surprise to auction specialists.

With 10 works on offer—two at Christie’s, two Phillips and the Ames works plus another at Sotheby’s—the November sales were a real market test for the artist. The number of Condo works on stands at Art Basel in Miami Beach a few weeks after the November sales only confirmed what was seen in the auction rooms.

Every one of the ten Condos on offer sold. Only two had to take the low estimate with an additional work landing within the estimate range. The rest were bid above the high estimates with several works subject to intensive bidding.Continue Reading

George Condo Has a Bad Week All in One Day

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Judd Tully reports from Frieze Week that George Condo has taken a few body blows this week putting in the category of clear losers:

One of these was the overly prolific American painter George Condo, whose New Museum-organized survey show opens at the Hayward Gallery here later this month. Both entries, “Cave Painting” from 2008 and “Two Works (1) The Departure, 2004 (ii) The Arrival” from 2004, failed to sell against their respective estimates of £300-500,000 and £300-400,000. There were plenty of Condo paintings on view at Frieze, and the hunger simply wasn’t there to suck these up.

“There has been a lot on the market,” confirmed Phillips contemporary head Michael McGinnis after the sale, adding that the overall result for Phillips may have been a “reaction to so much material on the market.” He added that, “it was definitely an uncertain time coming into this week, and in a climate like this it’s hard to predict what the outcome will be.”

Phillips de Pury’s Tepid $12.9 Million Sale Opens the London Contemporary Art Auctions on a Shaky Note (Artinfo)

Vernissage TV: George Condo at New Museum

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“George Condo: Mental States” at the New Museum is an exhibition, which the artist calls a “conceptual survey” of his work. The show presents paintings and sculptures that George Condo created over the past thirty years. “Mental States” is divided into four sections each of which examines a particular theme or genre central to his work. Most of George Condo’s work has been portraiture, not of living individuals, but of invented characters.

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