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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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Sotheby’s Brings $30m Pollock to New York

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Sotheby’s will be selling a small but rare Jackson Pollock on May 16th in New York with a $30m estimate. Number 32, 1949has been owned by the same couple for the last 36 years and rarely shown. Despite its size, the work is a candidate to match Pollock’s auction (but not private sale) record of $58.4m which was achieved by Number 19 (1948) five years ago. The Art Newspaper has the announcement:

Number 32 was exhibited in Pollock’s breakthrough show at Betty Parsons Gallery in November 1949 and is in “remarkable” condition, says [Sotheby’s Lisa] Dennison, because it rarely travelled after the owners acquired it from the Robert Elkon Gallery. […]

The fact that the consignors, a New York couple, have decided to part with the work now, sans guarantee, is a vote of confidence in the market, Dennison says. Earlier this month, however, Pollock’s Number 21 (1950), a 22.2-inch square drip painting in enamel and aluminium paint on Masonite, fetched a slightly under-estimate £9.3m ($13m) at Christie’s London; Dennison says this one “had a very different surface quality”.

Sotheby’s press release goes into greater detail:

The production of the artist’s drip paintings of 1948-9 stands as one of the most radical events in 20th-century art, in which the boundaries of painting were pushed and a new aesthetic established. Number 32, 1949 comes from a critical year for the artist and epitomizes the chaotic vibrancy, heroic drama and thrilling vigor that have come to define Pollock’s prodigious legacy. Acquired in 1983 and held in the same esteemed private collection for over 35 years, the work will be unveiled in Hong Kong on 29 March before traveling to Los Angeles and London, with the New York exhibition opening on 4 May.

Jackson Pollock executed his first drip painting in 1947. Over the next two years he would hone this now instantly recognizable, signature technique, producing the monumental Autumn Rhythm (collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Number 1A, 1948 (collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Number 32 is one of a small number of more intimate 1949 paintings in which the artist more fully explored the subtleties of the drip technique. It was featured in the second of two shows that year at Betty Parsons Gallery about which Robert M. Coates wrote in the New Yorker “They seem to me the best painting he has yet done.”

Exceptionally rare, Number 32 is one of a very limited group of 16 drip paintings Pollock created on paper mounted on Masonite or canvas in 1949 and one of only eight that feature the aluminum paint that creates a lustrous shimmer around his elaborate gestural movements. Boasting a fully painted surface with intricate layers of dripped and poured oil, enamel, and aluminum paint, the work has one of the most complete and richly covered surfaces of the entire series; indeed the last time a painting of this composition was offered at auction was in May 2013, when it set a record price of $58.4 million. It is further distinguished by a dense composition of black and silver splatters offset by bursts of brick red, bright orange, sunflower gold, and vibrant sea green that extend to the very edges of the paper. Other examples from this limited group reside in prestigious collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and The Munson-Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, New York.

Sotheby’s to offer Jackson Pollock drip painting in May sale series (The Art Newspaper)

Sotheby’s Has $25m 1932 Picasso ‘Le Repos’ for May

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In case you thought last week’s Picasso madness was an aberration, Sotheby’s is coming back to the Marie-Thérèse market with a small 1932 work estimated at $25m:

Sotheby’s is pleased to announce that Pablo Picasso’s stunning Le Repos from 1932 will highlight of our Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on 14 May 2018. A stunning and intimate depiction of Picasso’s ‘golden muse’, Marie-Thérèse Walter, the work was painted at the apex of Picasso’s artistic production, and captures the rapturous desire of his greatest compositions.

Le Repos is estimated to sell for $25/35 million when it is auctioned this May at Sotheby’s New York. The work will travel to Sotheby’s Hong Kong, London and Los Angeles galleries this spring, before returning to our York Avenue headquarters for public exhibition beginning 4 May.

The sumptuous canvas will appear at auction during a sensational time for related works from Picasso’s oeuvre: the Tate Modern’s first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work, The Ey Exhibition: Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, opens in London this week. Last Wednesday, Sotheby’s sold the artist’s 1937 portrait of Marie-Thérèse, Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée, for an outstanding £49.8 million – a record price (in GBP) for any painting auctioned in Europe. Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “We are thrilled to offer this stunning painting from Picasso’s greatest series this May. As we saw last week in London, there is a vigorous global demand for depictions of Picasso’s golden muse. This classic, dreamy example from his critical year of 1932 is immediately recognizable, and captures the key elements of his work inspired by Marie Therese. Its lush, painterly quality and vibrant colors stand in stark contrast to Picasso’s final portraits of his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, which immediately precede this extraordinary period – generally considered the strongest in Picasso’s entire career.”

Picasso’s paintings of his lover Marie-Thérèse are arguably the finest emblems of love, sex and desire in 20th century art. He executed his major series of paintings depicting her in January 1932, in anticipation of Picasso’s first retrospective that coming June at Galeries Georges-Petit in Paris.

The frank avowal of Picasso’s love for Marie-Thérèse is particularly evident in this work. He depicts his serene model asleep, her head in Grecian profile, and resting on her interlaced fingers. Devoid of the attributes that often accompany her in other compositions, in the present work Marie-Thérèse’s striking facial features are the main focus of the composition. Picasso embraces not only a vibrant palette of primary colors such as yellow, red and green, but also employs sumptuous and curvaceous brushstrokes to convey Marie-Thérèse’s full, passive and golden beauty, which had now become for him the personification of ripeness and fecundity.

Picasso Portait of Jacqueline Leads Christie’s NY Sale in November

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Pablo Picasso, Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) ($20-30m)

Christie’s has a Picasso for the New York sales in November that has never been on the auction market before:

Christie’s will offer Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie (Jacqueline), painted on October 8, 1954 as a central highlight of its Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November in New York. Marking its first time at auction, Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) comes from a private collection, and is estimated to sell for $20-30 million.

The work will be on public view at Christie’s London from 16 – 19 September, and at Christie’s Hong Kong from 28 September – 3 October.

With May Sales in New York, A Pattern Begins to Emerge

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This analysis of the Contemporary sales results in New York 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 New York Contemporary art sales made just a bit more than $1bn combined last month. So, even if the auction houses had not continued to hold all of the New York May sales in a single week, the Contemporary art sales would still have been a gigaweek. Does it matter? Probably not. There has been a great deal of talk in the press about the art market being in a slump based upon the dubious benchmark of the market's absolute peak in 2014.

You can see from the chart above the two years where the Spring sales of Contemporary were effectively identical and loomed 35% higher in total value than last month's sales. But you can also see that matching sale values from year to year has been effectively unheard of. For many reasons, not to mention the art's heterodox qualities (that means few objects that are sold are alike,) sales rarely match up from year to year. More to the point for those looking to normalize art sales levels, those peak years were the culmination of five previous years of rapidly rising art values.

Even a passing familiarity with economic and historical events will explain why that same period was anything but normal. The slumping art sales of 2016 were still reasonably close to the peak years of 2007 and 2008. But now that the sales have recovered, we can also see some similarities to the previous pullback.

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The New Gossip Game Isn’t Who Bought What, It’s Who Guaranteed What

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Kenny Schachter is entranced by the guarantee game. He peppers his Contemporary auction report with several comments on the third-party guarantees. One of the big questions Schachter raises is the relationship between Lévy Gorvy (which Schachter says signed up for a number of Christie’s lots) and Francois Pinault who has often acted as a guarantor to Christie’s sales and has been close to both of the principals at the firm.

Pinault’s balance sheet may not have been necessary. After all, an expanded Lévy Gorvy serving the “masterpiece market” is going to need a few masterpieces in inventory. There’s also competition for that inventory in the form of guarantees as Schachter points out. Filtering the industry gossip, Kenny fingers David Geffen for the guarantee on Basquiat’s La Hara which was being sold by Steven Cohen but went to a buyer above the estimate range instead of the guarantor.

Not so at least one of the major lots which Schachter discovered but doesn’t comment upon. Pay attention to the round number on the Warhol which suggests the buyer was the guarantor:Continue Reading

New York Auction Cycle Makes $1.6bn, Up $500m from 2016

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Colin Gleadell has done a little arithmetic on last week’s sales. He counts a total for the week of $1.6bn which was $500 million more than the year before but $1.14bn less than the high water mark set in 2015.

Gleadell breaks it downfurther into Impressionist and Modern art at $537.6m and Contemporary out-shining with $1.064bn.

As is his wont, Gleadell also has some big scores to report:Continue Reading

Phillips Moves Up a Weight Class with $110m White Glove Sale

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Just before the beginning of Phillips Evening sale last Thursday, an uncharacteristically dressed-down Tobias Meyer stood in the middle of the sale room waiting to wish his former lieutenant Cheyenne Westphal luck in her first sale at Phillips.

Turns out, she didn’t need luck. Smart sale management showed that Phillips has moved up a weight class and is now a light heavyweight. Judiciously withdrawing two lots—one a high-priced Richter abstract that had been shopped around (and shared the green color scheme of one withdrawn a few years ago in London)—allowed Phillips to sell everyone one of the lots on offer even if, at times, compromises had to be made.

The house’s big bet on Peter Doig paid off with a $28.8m sale.  The late de Kooning from 1980 got out alive after Christie’s withdrew an earlier work with a similar title from its sale. The de Kooning sold below estimates but made $13.1m with fees.Continue Reading

Marina Picasso’s $10.3m White Glove Sale

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Pablo Picasso
Personnages dans une ville du midi
Watercolor, brush and ink and ink wash on paper
Executed in Cannes on July 23, 1933.
Estimate: $30/50,000
Sold for $372,500

Buried beneath all of the big Basquiat news last week was this almost unexpected sale of Picasso works on paper and ceramics from his granddaughter Marina Picasso who is divesting herself of the artist’s work. The sale was 100% sold and made $10.3m against a high estimate of $4.6m:

Scott Niichel, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, said: “The phenomenal results of today’s ‘Picasso Man & Beast’ auction completed our Impressionist & Modern Art sales for the week, with prices far exceeding their pre-sale estimates and achieving rare ‘white glove’ status, with all 111 works on offer successfully sold. Collectors from around the globe aggressively competed for the opportunity to own these works on paper and unique ceramics, all featuring Picasso’s most celebrated styles, genres and subjects. We are grateful to Marina Picasso for again entrusting us with works from her distinguished collection, following the success of ‘Picasso in Private’ held in Sotheby’s London in February 2016.”

Christie’s Has a Lot to Prove … and Does It

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This round-up of the coverage of last night's Postwar and Contemporary Art Sale at Christie's is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions come with a grace period of one month. Feel free to subscribe and cancel if you're not satisfied with our coverage and analysis.

The near universal response to Christie's $450m Postwar and Contemporary Evening sale was one that tried to balance the mammoth total with the dead room. Christie's expertly managed sale saw 96% of the 71 lots sell leaving little or no room for doubt that the auction house would make sure its merchandise transacted in one way or another.

This disconnect between strong totals and weak market temperature is being explained in a number of different ways from surrounding economic and political uncertainty to estimates getting beyond appetites to thinning ranks of potential buyers. All or some of these may be true (and we'll try to address each of them below,) but there is a question that takes precedence.

Why did Christie's bring so much art to auction after a year of sales that were substantially lower than the previous peak years of 2014 & 2015? A $450m evening sale would have fit in those years but seems out of place today. Indeed, the Christie's sale dwarves its competitors at a time when there's a lot of talk in the market about how thin the collector base is at the top end of the market.

Luckily, we don't have to guess. Christie's provided us with not one but two explanations. Now we just have to choose between them. At the press conference after the sale, Christie's CEO Guillaume Cerutti gave us the first explanation. The newly installed CEO seems to have been tasked with renewing Christie's drive to dominate the Contemporary art market as it has since 2012.

When Cerutti addressed journalists he left no doubt that Christie's main corporate concern is projecting strength, as The Art Newspaper's Dan Duray quotes him:

“If we needed the proof of the strengths of the art market, we have it,” said Christie's new CEO Guillaume Cerutti at a press conference after the sale. “If we needed the proof of the strength of Christie’s, we have it. If needed the proof of the strength of our teams we have it.”

The last time Christie's put its foot on the accelerator like this, it ended with the CEOs of both Sotheby's and Christie's sitting on the sidelines. At Christie's, it also resulted in the departure of the firm's long-serving head of Contemporary art. The young team who inherited the department seemed to be signaling in the press conference that they stacked the sale as proof of their business-getting prowess. Nate Freeman captured this in ArtNews:

“I had a lot of people saying to us, ‘Are you going to make it without Brett?’ ” said Loic Gouzer, who last month was named Post-War and Contemporary chairman, sharing that title with Alex Rotter, a rainmaker who Christie’s poached from Sotheby’s last year. “We miss him a lot, but we’re also very happy that we can do it by ourselves.”

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