Growing global notoriety a boost for Canadian art
Unique year sees domestic market reach new heights while signs of contraction materialize elsewhere
In a year in which shifting political and market forces had trading floors sputtering and splurging not weeks apart, the whiplash of Brexit, the resource slump, Trump and all the economic uncertainty that came with them made clear to global players that a shrunken art market will be reality for the foreseeable future.
After global art sales peaked at US$68.2 billion in 2014, they fell seven per cent to US$63.8 billion in 2015 and, while the final tallies are yet to come in, signs point to 2016 being another year of significant contraction.
As of mid-December, the global sales in 2016 for British multinational auction house Sotheby’s, Inc. stood at US$4.1 billion, down 31 per cent from 2015’s haul of US$6 billion. Sotheby’s, which is publicly traded, and its private competitor Christie’s control more than 40 per cent of the world’s auction market.
“The art world globally has gotten very small,” said David Heffel, president of Vancouver-based Heffel Fine Art Auction House, in an interview. “But the Canadian art market is at a new level. Maturity is a thing that comes to mind; collectors are now thinking about new ways to share their collections with the public and we’re also seeing a sophistication develop in our marketplace.”
Heffel, one of Canada’s prestige houses, brought in $42.2 million at its November Toronto auction, almost double its 2015 result of $23.6 million and well beyond presale estimates of $22 million to $32 million.
Heffel said that, while the record results were a boon for business, they will likely not keep up because 2016 was a unique year for Canadian art. Group of Seven master Lawren Harris was the subject of unprecedented international attention when the works of the late landscape master were championed by Hollywood comedian and art collector Steve Martin, and that meant Canadian sales had a oneoff boost.
Martin co-curated a show on Harris’s work that toured Boston and Los Angeles, bringing attention to the artist among the market and the cognoscenti that followed shows of Group of Seven artists and Emily Carr at London’s prestigious Dulwich Gallery in recent years.
Ten works by Harris alone featured in Heffel’s fall auction brought in $16.9 million. His 1928 work Mountain Forms set a Canadian art record at $11.21 million.
“Steve Martin’s Harris show, that’s an example of where there’s a co-ordinated and very professional co-operation between major institutions, celebrities, curators, collectors and a larger ecosystem brought Canadian art to a higher level of international notoriety,” added Heffel. “The symphony of the marketplace working together generated those new records, and it won’t necessarily replicate in 2017.”
In fact, national art markets are often subject to the persuasions and tastes that align with what is most coveted at the highest spending brackets.
For example, the Czech art market turned in its second consecutive record-breaking year in 2016, as the country’s auction houses are expected to rack up a turnover in excess of one billion Czech crowns, or about US$38.8 million. That result, too, was boosted by coveted works coming to market at the right time, with a work by František Kupka setting the Czech art auction record when it sold for 62 million crowns, or about US$2.4 million. Kupka’s masterpiece L’envolee also set an international record for a Czech artist, selling at a Swedish auction house for US$2.7 million.
Meanwhile, Sotheby’s New York contemporary art auction in November earned US$276.6 million, well above estimates but still short of the US$294 million raised in 2015 from fewer lots. That decrease is more indicative of the broader global trend.
“It’s hard,” said Heffel. “The art market is tracked on gross sales results, but the predecessor to that is the pre-estimates and the volume of consignments. Often the prospects of collectors no longer getting a record price may delay consignment. A shift in the marketplace might not represent a hunger among collectors. It can be more to deal with just the great works being consigned.”