Christie’s cuts means licence to kill CSK
It’s the end for famed South Kensington outlet, says Colin Gleadell
Just as Christie’s was enjoying its highly successful £231.5 million sales of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art this month, changes were announced that suggest a bout of acute costcutting, involving more than 250 job losses, is under way. In Dubai, its annual October sale has been cut. In Amsterdam, the former Maritime Museum building it has owned since 1973 is to be sold, and a reduced schedule of auctions will be staged elsewhere. The future of Christie’s annual sale in Mumbai is also in doubt.
The biggest shock to English hearts is the planned closure of its much loved South Kensington branch (CSK), where it has successfully orchestrated its lower-value sales in a broad number of categories for more than four decades.
CSK set the pace in many of these categories – film or ski posters for instance. The very wealthy, real collectors – Shiekh Saud Al Thani, Paul Getty or Lord Thomson for instance – would buy there, as well as dealers.
It was CSK’s roving valuation events that inspired television’s Antiques Roadshow. In its Sixties heyday, when England’s big houses were selling their contents, pantechnicons would be parked almost permanently outside CSK, with as many as 15 sales a week. One memorable, if macabre, sale was of the collection of Britain’s most prolific hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, in 1998.
But now the noose has tightened around CSK’s neck. As Christie’s focused more on potential gains at the top end of the retail market, sales at CSK were run down. Turnover fell from £139.4 million off 126 sales in 2012 to just £62.1 million last year, off only 55 sales.
Dealer Julian Hartnoll thinks it had become an anachronism because it couldn’t make the step from wholesaler, selling to the trade, to retailer. “Its death was inevitable,” he says, and among the beneficiaries will be Bonhams, and provincial auctioneers such as Bellmans in Sussex and Mallams in Oxfordshire, to which Christie’s tend to send lower-value goods anyway. It will be interesting to see how it all divvies up.
The emphasis now for Christie’s is on building up services in China and Los Angeles, where a new branch is scheduled to open, and investing in the internet.
“We are not withdrawing from London; or from different specialist areas – we are adapting,” a spokesman said. “We have to look at the broader picture and compare the current art market statistics to the situation 10 years ago and assess that evolution. Ten years ago, Europe and New York accounted for around 90 per cent of buyers; today, Asia is at 30 per cent and the Middle East and West Coast America are increasing sharply; Europe and New York are now no more than probably 50 per cent.
“Ten years ago, decorative arts and more classic arts (antiquities, books and manuscripts, Old Masters) made up around 40 per cent of sales; today, 20th and 21st century account for around 70 to 75 per cent of sales. Ten years ago, online sales did not exist; today the landscape has changed and online sale are building every year.”
While it seems clear that Christie’s emphasis is increasingly directed at the high end and Asia, the notion that the closures and redundancies are to fund improvements in online activity does not convince everyone. Online sales have risen rapidly, it is true, from $9.5 million (£7.7 million) in 2011 to $67 million in 2016. But that is still a tiny fraction of worldwide sales.
Christie’s is still to see the pay-off for the $50 million it spent to bolster online sales in 2014. Ironically, online activity is still focused on the lower end, the same market in which CSK has excelled. And at those successful evening sales of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art, there was not one bid over the internet – either at Christie’s or Sotheby’s.
Christie’s appears to be looking over its shoulder at Sotheby’s, which is closing in on its leading sales total position, and with only 1,500 staff compared to Christie’s 2,200 worldwide. To a businessman such as Christie’s owner François-Henri Pinault, that’s a good enough reason to make cuts.