New York’s US$1.5 billion art auction week could favour the brave
AUCTIONS are often judged solely by the buy side. How many bidders were there? And from how many countries? And how high were they willing to go? But on the eve of New York’s fall megasales, where Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips will attempt to sell roughly US$1.5 billion worth of art in just one week, the true prospects of the market might be gleaned from its sellers instead.
“We are a marketplace that is not forced,” said Alex Rotter, chairman of Christie’s 20th century and 21st century art department. “That means there’s more movement when things are moving up, right? Which makes sense because it’s not that somebody relies on selling a little Warhol in order to feed their children.”
In other words, people sell when they think the market is strong; when it’s not, they often won’t. And so sellers have been holding back for at least a year.
New York’s mega auctions in May were lacklustre; so was Art Basel in Switzerland, widely considered the most important art fair in the world. London’s auctions in October weren’t much to write home about either, and while Paris’ auctions and art fairs last month showed definite signs of life, no one would call the sales frenzied. Overall, Rotter said, the environment leading into the November auctions “was a difficult setup, because it was quite static”.
As a consequence, next week’s auctions contain the season’s two major estates – that of beauty mogul Sydell Miller (at Sotheby’s) and interior designer Mica Ertegun (at Christie’s) –combined with consignments from collectors who’ve seemingly decided that market signals are pointing up.
“It is already the case, and will be played out, that those who decided to sell in this season will be handsomely rewarded,” said Julian Dawes, head of impressionist and modern art in the Americas at Sotheby’s. “Because where there’s great material, there’s going to be more people competing for it than typical.”
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And in fact there are a range of works where consignors seem to have made that very calculation.
Christie’s, which is set to lead the week in value (it has an overall estimate of about US$583 million to US$796 million for roughly 690 lots), is poised to lead the week in big-ticket items. “We thought, ‘Do we go for a safe, low-value sale, or do we go for a sale that still focuses on the masterpieces?’” Rotter says. “Because I need to show something exciting. I feel the market is losing interest. So the only thing that I have is great works of art.”
On Nov 19, Christie’s will auction a highly sought-after work by Ed Ruscha from 1964, Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, informally estimated “in excess of US$50 million” and reportedly being sold by billionaire Sid Bass; and on Nov 21, Christie’s will sell a Jean-Michel Basquiat work on paper from 1982, reported to be from the collection of Peter Brant, which carries an estimate of US$20 million to US$30 million.
Fresh to auction
Sotheby’s will sell just over 700 lots for a total presale estimate of roughly US$479 million to US$659 million. An absence of super-high-priced objects masks the fact “that the average lot value is actually higher – significantly higher – this season than in any season in the last three years,” Dawes said. “And I think that goes to the way I would characterise the sales, which is that we have fewer items, but we have really good ones.”
Leading headlines will be the duct-tape-and-banana artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, which carries a presale estimate of US$1 million to US$1.5 million at the auction house’s Nov 20 evening auction.
Other works are notably fresh to the market – some 70 per cent of the pieces across Sotheby’s evening sales are appearing at auction for the first time.
At the auction house’s Nov 18 modern evening sale, a bust by Alberto Giacometti is estimated between US$10 million and US$15 million; cast in 1954 and sold a year later to the philanthropist Harry Frank Guggenheim, it will be auctioned to benefit the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
And then there’s a Picasso painting estimated between US$9 million and US$12 million, which was acquired by the Chicago mail-order magnate Morton Neumann. “That’s been sitting on the wall of their home since 1951,” Dawes said. “It hasn’t been seen publicly since the 1980s.”
Phillips, whose much smaller sales are estimated to yield about US$86 million to US$127 million for about 275 lots, also has several artworks that are fresh to the market. “The Koons basketball tank has been in the same collection since the 1990s,” said Jean-Paul Engelen, president of the Americas and worldwide co-head of modern and contemporary art at Phillips, referring to a 1985 sculpture by Jeff Koons estimated to sell between US$4 million and US$6 million.
The top-priced work of Phillips’ evening sale, on Nov 19, is a work by Jackson Pollock that was formerly in the collection of Florence Knoll. Estimated “in excess of” US$13 million, that work has also been in the same collection since 1990. “The first reactions this weekend have been very positive, because it’s new material,” Engelen said. “People always get excited about material that is new and fresh.” BLOOMBERG
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