Bargain prices for former YBA hits
hey were the most famous artistic group of the late 20th century, their rise coinciding with a boom period for the art market. But in recent times, the legacy of the YBAS – the group of art provocateurs who came of age in the late Eighties and Nineties, led by the likes of Damien Hirst – has looked shaky, in the auction house at least.
The latest evidence of their market decline came in the contemporary art auctions held at Phillips and Sotheby’s last week that were aimed at new collectors, or those with limited budgets.
The Sotheby’s auction included works selected by celebrity chef Mark Hix, a longtime collector of work from the Britart boom of the Nineties, and the lots did not go well: a photograph by Michael Landy and a painting by Gary Hume, for instance, were both unsold, while a painting by the godfather of the YBAS, Michael Craig-martin, sold below estimate. While, on their own, these examples may not be sufficient grounds to make any solid judgment on the health of the YBA market more generally, it does seem that the appetite for their work is suffering an extended lull.
Ground zero for the YBA market
was the Freeze exhibition in 1988, organised by Damien Hirst and fellow art students at Goldsmith’s College. Shortly afterwards, the term “YBA” (young British artist) was coined by an art critic.
The movement was largely supported and promoted by Charles Saatchi, who ensured it maximum publicity with the Sensation exhibition at The Royal Academy in 1996, and its market peaked in December 2004, when Saatchi sold Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde – The Physical Impossibility of Death
in the Mind of Someone Living – to
US collector Steve Cohen, for $8 million.
The decline began with the banking crisis of 2008. Although Hirst’s one-man sale at Sotheby’s the same year was an apparent success, generating £111,576,800, it did not take long to work out that the prices achieved there would never be recovered. Since then, there has also been a shift in the aesthetic direction of the contemporary art market, with the confrontational, sometimes bawdy attitudes of the YBAS consigned to a moment in history. The question now is not so much whether the YBAS’ popularity can continue, but whether it can be revived.
YBAS aside, though, the standout characteristic of last week’s sales was just how much work could be obtained at a knock-down price. Apart from a handful of works priced between £100,000 and £400,000, which helped to make the events more economic for the salerooms, prices were mostly under £20,000. Forty-two of the lots (around 10 per cent and enough to ornament a decent size house) sold below estimates for under £1,000 each.
They included works by the American video artist Paul Pfeiffer, a work on paper by sculptor Martin Westwood, made shortly after his solo exhibition at Tate Britain in 2005, a drawing by former Turner Prize nominee Lucy Mckenzie, a 6ft steel sculpture by Gary Webb (of whom former Telegraph critic Richard Dorment once said “the most original young artist I have come across”) and an inscribed belt by celebrated French “lettrist” Ben Vautier. One reason the prices were so low was that there were no reserves on a number of lots, meaning there was no agreement between the saleroom and the seller on a minimum price. Though auctioneers publish an estimate of what they think the work is worth, if bids are hard to come by, they will lower the starting price until bidding begins. Bargain-hunters had lain in wait. One got lucky and picked up Webb’s sculpture, estimated at £3,000, for just £200, and Vautier’s painted belt, estimated at £300, for £30.
Another surprising knock down was a large painting formerly owned by Saatchi, of two ships on a dark sea by Whitney Bedford, a young American artist represented in the prestigious private collections of François Pinault in France, Eugenio López in Mexico, and the de la Cruz family in Miami, which sold for £500 against an estimate of £3,000.
But there were also strong prices, seemingly spurred by international online bidding. At Phillips, internet bidders from 35 different countries bought nearly half of the lots, accounting for one third of its £2.8million total. In some cases you could match the artist with demand from a particular location: two drawings by the hot young artist George Condo, whose work was recently exhibited alongside Picasso in Hong Kong, were bought at quadruple estimate prices by internet bidders in – unsurprisingly – Hong Kong.
But the sales were also peppered with warnings for new collectors that their investments could go down as well as up. A spray gun splattered painting by Lucien Smith, who was once the flippers’ favourite, sold for £6,900, a huge fall from the £30,000 it garnered in 2014.
Meanwhile, a set of floral prints by the American photographer, Robert Beck, which sold for £2,000 three years ago, was snapped up for just £125.
The sales were peppered with warnings for new collectors