Christie’s: going, going, almost gone
Christie’s, the biggest name in the auction world, is in danger of losing its interest in real art, its expertise and its reputation, says Huon Mallalieu
Iam a proud Christie’s alumnus. I worked there, from 1969 to 1973, in the English drawings, watercolours and prints department. But, in my time, the firm was Christie, Manson & Woods, fine art auctioneers, not Christies.com, balloon salesmen.
The change has been coming for some years. But it is now fully apparent in the decision to close Christie’s South Kensington (CSK) – the busiest London saleroom, entry point for new collectors and training place for the next generation of expertise. It is making 250 employees redundant in London, Amsterdam and India, one of its vaunted new markets.
This will result in shutting down specialist departments to concentrate on multimillion pound sales in the Contemporary Art department. The long-term effects may well be catastrophic for the London art market, and far beyond. Sotheby’s – another major London, now international, house – has also been divorcing itself from the traditional art and antiques market for some years. The third, Bonhams, has been trying to emulate them.
The whole point of CSK was to foster the future. Until recently, its specialist sales kept the loss-making contemporary market afloat. Christie’s had to cut a special deal to achieve that trumpeted $58.4 million sale of Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog, Orange, in 2013. As the vendor revealed, it not only waived the seller’s commission but gave him a large chunk of the buyer’s premium.
Christie’s seems no longer interested in the art market, but in fashion. For several years, it has starved South Ken of resources and cut down departments. It is now shutting down or cutting back virtually every specialist department, other than Contemporary, in order to concentrate on big sales at its King Street headquarters and New York, and on the China market. The last option may prove an unsafe basket for its eggs.
It also believes online auctions will somehow replace CSK, and service the middle as well as the upper market, but it is not really possible to view and handle online lots and assess them truly.
Hours after the bloodbath was announced, Christie’s held a moderately successful contemporary auction. With extraordinary insensitivity, Francis Outred, head of Contemporary, crowed on Instagram (of course), ‘Many thanks to all those global collectors, professionals, artists and colleagues who helped make last night’s auction such a huge success. You know who you are! Achieving almost £97 million against a pre-sale low estimate of £67 million shows the market is in fine health... Thank you to you all – artists, buyers, sellers – for helping us to love our business!’ It might be politic to post such a diplomat to Shanghai, well away from those colleagues.
The London auction houses have always been ruthless in difficult times, but rarely on this scale. During the 1974 recession, Christie’s dropped 26 staff from a total of 250, while Sotheby’s culled 31. Soon afterwards, as the market recovered and the buyer’s commission was imposed – and CSK successfully launched – many of these people had to be expensively re-hired or replaced.
In those days, there were still great, traditional, British collections to be dispersed. While the death of a duke might not always trigger a contents ‘sale of the century’, it was necessarily followed by a comprehensive probate valuation. To value the contents of a Blenheim or a Stratfield Saye, it is necessary to have specialists of all sorts and at all levels. One wonders whether today’s slimmeddown Sotheby’s and Christie’s could provide the service without strain.
The Sotheby’s and Christie’s concentration on Contemporary (along with jewels and Chinese arts) is problematic. A contemporary artist does not remain contemporary for very long. The grandchildren of today’s Basquiat and Warhol buyers will be about as happy as someone who inherited a Leighton in 1950, and with less hope of an eventual recovery. Cy Twombly is on the slide, and who now remembers Ad Reinhardt, market star of the 1970s?
All this might benefit Bonhams. But it too has closed out-of-london salerooms to concentrate on London and worldwide vintage car sales. The real beneficiaries have been the leading provincial houses. Many have taken on former metropolitan specialists to run thriving departments.
Last year, Christie’s celebrated its 250th anniversary, for the most part in style. The exception was a BBC Two documentary, Sold! Inside the World’s Biggest Auction House, which teetered between reverential and fawning.
It concentrated on just one man, Jussi Pylkkänen, the firm’s global president. It also concentrated almost entirely on 20th- and 21st-century lots. One exception was Rubens’ ‘Lot and his Daughters’. The picture could not be overlooked because it sold in July 2016 for about £45 million, the highest Old Master price in the firm’s history, but less than the record Basquiat and perhaps a quarter of a major Picasso.
Interest in Old Masters is still there, though: there were four serious bidders for the Rubens, and an accompanying Old Master evening sale produced a further £23 million, with no lots unsold.
The documentary left many viewers with a sour taste in their mouths. I don’t blame them. The Christie’s story is increasingly unappetising.