The Art Market: The Next Act

Next week we will have the first chance since the November Sales to see what further effect the the deepening economic crisis is having on the high-end fine art market.  Both Sotheby’s and Christies have important Impressionist and Modern Art auctions in London.

Sotheby’s goes first on Tuesday 3rd, but to my mind their show is less attractive than the Christie’s show the next day.  The minimum estimates at Sotheby’s are £41m and the high estimates total £60m, with a Degas sculpture and a Modigliani painting at the top end.

At Christies, the show’s minimum estimate is £46m, maximum £66m, not including the top-rated Monet for which the estimate is private.  Another Monet is also in the top five, along with a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Modigliani, and a Vuillard.

I believe my favourite piece in the two shows is this “La cuirasse d’or” by Kees Van Dongen.  Estimate range is $2.1 million to $3.5 million.

A Bad Night For Christies

The Fall auction circuit continued last night with a disastrous outing at Christies New York.

The auction house had put together similar materials from two well-known collections — the Lawrence Collection and the Hillman Collection — into a show called “The Modern Age”.  The rumours are that, in the summer when life was different, Christies had given the Lawrence Family a significant price guarantee.  However, only about $50 million was raised against pre-sale minimum estimates of more than $100 million, and 17 lots out of 58 failed to sell.  One wonders just how much this show must have cost Christies.

“The estimates were from an earlier time, and the market has changed now,” said Christopher Burge, honorary chairman of Christie’s in America and the evening’s auctioneer.

The highlight of the Lawrence pieces was supposed to be Mark Rothko’s “No. 43 (Mauve)” but no-one bit at the opening $10 million suggestion, not at any lower price indeed, even though the estimate was $20 million to $30 million — a very big hole in the sale’s expectations.  Other major failures were a Cezanne watercolour ($4m to $6m) and a $12m to $18m Manet.

There were some successes:  Magritte’s “Empire of the Lights” sold at $3.1m, just above its high estimate, while Lucian Freud’s portrait of George Dyer (at $6m) and Fernand Leger’s “Study For A Nude Model” (at $2.9m) both sneaked (barely) over their lower estimates.  And, in a perfect illustration that estimates do not mean the same as reserves, one lucky buyer picked up a Toulouse-Lautrec for $4.4 million.  The estimates had been between $6 million and $8 million.  Someone got lucky!

The big sale of the show was Giorgio de Chirico’s “Metaphysical Composition“, a bizarre still life (see image on right), that sold for $6.1m, just above its minimum estimate.

There had been grumblings about the quality of the catalog (“Mutton dressed as lamb,” complained one critic) and even some specific comments about the condition of the Rothko, for example.  But still, this was clearly another example of the current market crisis affecting the art-buying wealthy.  I continue to read “experts” who suggest that the art market is not at all affected by the current recession, but I think they are wrong.

The Sale Begins

The Impressionist and Modern Art Sale at Sothebys in New York has just begun.  And the Henti Matisse that started the sale went for $902,000, well positioned within the range of pre-sale estimates.   So far so good.

The next three lots (Kandinsky, Vlaminck and Beckman with a minimum aggregate estimate of $6.5m) seemed not to have sold.  A small Picasso with a pre-sale estimate of $6m – $8m hammered out just below $5m.  But then….

A work called “Supremacist composition” by Kasimir Malevich has sold for $60 million!   It had a pre-sale estimate that was not made public, so I guess they knew something like this was likely to happen.  Extraordinary for a work of this type (see image at right).

A $7m – $10m Van Gogh just went by without selling, as did a $1.5m estimate Sisley.   Some Monets are up next.

Two Monets, a Pissarro and the first of the Degas fetched at or just below their minimum estimates.  But Degas’ Danseuse au repos fetched $37m against a private estimate.  Two more Degas have just come in a touch below expectations, and two others, with minimum estimates of $10.5m to $14m went unsold.

These failures were followed by another Monet and another Pissarro, both of which hammered down at about 10% below minimum estimates.   This seems to be about the level this sale is reaching.   I wonder if the Malevich was a surpise or expected or whether it, too, failed to meet its private expectations (hard to imagine at $60m for a non-household name).

Edvard Munch’s evocative Vampire has sold for $38m.  The pre-sale estimate was private, so it is hard to guage the success of this particular lot (see image at left).

A colourful still life by Matisse ($8m to $10m) went unsold, but Toulouse-Lautrec’s Bal masque made $4.5m, half a million above its minimum estimate.

The big Modigliani is up next with an estimate of between $18m and $25m.    But — it passes unsold, along with a $6m Picasso, a $12m-$18m Matisse, and a $7m Giacometti.

The Picasso’s also continue to under-perform, with Bouteille de bass et verre missing the $1.2m minimum by almost $300,000, while a Matisse portrait of a woman sitting has crept $200,000 over its $4m minimum.

Now there are three works by Boris Grigoriev that, together have done rather against estimates.  The first made $3.7m (estimated $2.5-3.5m), the second $3.2m ($4 -6m), and the third $1.1m ($600,000-800,000).

…continuing coverage…