Modern art bounces back
Guarantees gave last week’s New York sales an air of the racetrack, says Colin Gleadell
The art market continues to claw its way back from the 2016 downturn. Last week, the all-important Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary auctions in New York reached sales of $1.6billion (£1.23billion). The total was $500 million more than last May, though still adrift of the record $2.74million in May 2015.
As we have come to expect, the earlier period of Impressionist and Modern art came in second with
$537.6 million – approximately half the sum of the Post-war and Contemporary sales, which made $1.064billion. But that is not to say that the Impressionist sales were without substance.
The star lot at Christie’s was a rare lifetime cast bronze head of a sleeping muse by Brancusi that sold for a double-estimate record $53.4million. It was followed by a Picasso portrait of Dora Maar on the outbreak of war in 1939, which sold within estimate for $45million. The painting cost the seller, Dimitri Mavromatis, $29million in 2011 and sold to a Chinese bidder.
At Sotheby’s, there were signs of nerves when its top lot, an early Egon Schiele with a $30million estimate and no guarantee, was withdrawn by the owner at the last minute. A rare 1917 abstraction by Russian revolutionary artist Kazimir Malevich thus went into the top slot, and sold for $21million.
It was notable how many third parties (nine) offered guarantees or irrevocable bids at the last minute, lending an air of racetrack gambling to proceedings, with each guarantor standing to win a cut if the price went higher than predicted. Do these guarantors get wind something will do well, then place their bets? Whatever the case, Christie’s showed the greater desire to win the auction house race, furnishing 55 per cent of the pre-sale value of its main Impressionist sale with guarantees to achieve a $207million total. Sotheby’s had only 37 per cent of its sale value under guarantee, and realised $147million.
But the contemporary sales were always ahead. According to auction analysts Art Tactic, 56 per cent of the value of the three main evening sales was guaranteed, with Christie’s, which staged the most valuable sale at $488million, arranging the highest value of guarantees in correspondence. These ensured most top lots were sold, and that at least nine, including the record $10.5million paid by a Chinese bidder for a Rudolf Stingel self-portrait, sold even though there was no competition. While few substantial gains were made in the Impressionist sales, there were many here. A painting by Jean-michel Basquiat, bought in 1989 for $341,000, sold for $25 million.
Dealers and collectors have been grooming Basquiat for superstardom for years, likening him in stature to Picasso and Warhol, and last week Japanese internet billionaire Yuzaku Maezawa paid $110 million for a huge, totem-like head painting at Sotheby’s. The work had been bought by the seller’s father in 1984 for $21,000. As the contemporary art market bounces back, it is digging into its immediate history on a scale that earlier periods in art cannot.