Investors fly to contemporary art
State of the economy is reflected in the frenzy at the auction house.
NEVER underestimate the amazing amounts of cash swirling around the world in search of a home. Two weeks ago, close to US$1bil (RM3.06bil) was spent on contemporary art.
When businessmen in dark suits compete wildly over pictures by painters who explicitly cultivated the art of the absurd or spread paint across their canvases with no easily identifiable purpose, this tells you something about the state of the world economy.
At Sotheby’s New York where 58 works of art brought US$375mil (RM1.15bil) on the evening of Nov 14, the session opened with works by Alexander Calder and Franz Kline. Both artists were influenced by the prankish brand of French Surrealism and the ideas of Marcel Duchamp, the intellectual who flung absurdity in the face of the art-collecting establishment.
The American Alexander Calder, who worked in Paris, made nondescript contraptions like Escutcheon II, which opened the proceedings at Sotheby’s and sold for US$842,500 (RM2.58mil). A metal sheet painted black is bent in a manner suggestive of a face with an open mouth. Long wires run out of it, piercing some discs like kebab bits on a spit. Do not look for a special meaning. This was the impish artist’s idea of having fun in 1952.
Yves Klein also drew on Duchamp’s legacy. By way of enlightening bidders, Sotheby’s ran a quote next to his 1961 work titled ANT SU 27: “I remain detached and distant ... the work of art must exert itself.”
Sure enough, Klein, who died in 1962 at 34, did not put hand to work on ANT SU 27. This is a blurry impression left on white linen by one of his female models, who pressed her blue-painted body against it. The wit is in the title, which sounds like some futuristic device out of a comic strip of the 1950s. It merely transcribes the words “en dessous” as pronounced with a Parisian accent in reference to the art “under” the woman’s body.
Sotheby’s thought ANT SU 27 might sell for US$1mil to US$1.4mil (RM3.06mil to RM4.28mil) plus the sale charge. It made US$4.33mil (RM13.25mil).
This set the stage for a session characterised by a rage to buy famous names without any preference for any particular kind of art.
Mark Rothko’s No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue), done in 1954, topped the list at US$75.12mil (RM229.91mil), well above the high estimate.
Jackson Pollock’s Number 4, 1951 sold for a world record US$40.4mil (RM123.65mil), far above his previous record, set at Christie’s in May, of US$23mil (RM70.39mil).
Kline, too, set a shortlived auction record when Shenandoah, painted in 1956, went for US$9.32mil (RM28.53mil). The American artists represent vastly diverging aesthetic trends within Abstractionism.
A third record set at Sotheby’s greeted a realistic figural work that is in turn far removed from the three abstract pictures. Andy Warhol’s Suicide is a 1964 silkscreen on paper based on a 1962 photographic shot. At US$16.32mil (RM49.95mil), it did not just set a record for any work on paper by Warhol. It definitely confirmed the approach to contemporary art that prevailed that week.
The character of the work is irrelevant. What matters is the volume of the echo that it has received in the media. When the consignor selling the Warhol bought it at Sotheby’s in 1992, the price was US$132,000 (RM404,000). In the interval, talk about Warhol increased exponentially.
From Willem de Kooning’s Abstraction of 1949, sold for US$19.68mil (RM60.23mil) to Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Pope) of 1954, which fetched US$29.76mil (RM91.09mil), the publicity received in the media through museum exhibition reviews and its spread over time are the fundamental factors that made them desirable to those looking for financial safety.
A closer look at some of the session mishaps might have warned the buyers that such “safety” is relative. Early in the Sotheby’s sale, an abstract composition in bright colours painted in 1963 by Hans Hofmann was let go by the auctioneer Tobias Meyer on a single US$4mil (RM12.24mil) bid, 20% below the low estimate.
Moments later, an abstract picture in a dark Expressionist manner by Clyfford Still, 1948-H, also went down on a single bid and at US$8.75mil (RM26.78mil), excluding the fees, missed the low estimate by a huge US$6.25mil (RM19.13mil).
Other lots likewise found takers, thanks to lone bidders, highlighting the elusive nature of assigning financial value to even well-known artists. Successful as it was, the Sotheby’s contemporary art sale still left 11 works unwanted.
Christie’s followed up on Thursday with a stunning performance. Perhaps emboldened by the remarkable session at Sotheby’s, bidders jumped into the fray with a zest not witnessed since the recession that began in 2008.
Sales added up to US$412.25mil (RM1.26bil), the highest auction score ever in contemporary art. Remarkably, only six lots remained stranded out of the 73 that came on the block, pointing to an exceptional eagerness to buy.
Four auction records were set. One of Kline’s Untitled abstract pictures in black on white, dated 1957, beat the record for the artist set the day before as it soared to US$40.4mil (RM123.66mil).
Minutes later Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park No. 48 painted in 1971 became the most expensive picture by the artist ever auctioned when it went for US$13.25mil (RM40.56mil), dwarfing the previous record set at Christie’s when an Ocean Park No. 48 painted in 1980 made US$7.69mil (RM23.54mil).
The most striking record though was achieved with Tulips, a stainless steel bunch of brightly coloured elements looking like enormous toys. Credited to Jeff Koons, it was executed in 1995-2004. In the cataloguer’s own words, “five unique versions” are in existence. At US$33.68mil (RM103.07mil), the unique Koons of which other examples were somehow produced, eclipsed the US$25.76mil (RM78.83mil) paid at Christie’s London in June 2008 for Balloon Flower (Magenta) datable to the years 1995-2000.
Koons ultimately echoes Duchamp’s in-your-face creations.
This heightened attention to comical or would-be comical “art” came out right at the beginning. Christie’s expected Calder’s Policeman, an amusing figure of a London bobby wrought in iron wire, to sell for US$1.2mil to US$1.8mil (RM3.67mil to RM5.51mil). It sold for US$3.7mil (RM11.32mil). That brought the full price with the sale charge to US$4.22mil (RM12.91mil), nearly double the record price for a Calder wire figure sold at Sotheby’s London in February 2011.
Some might be tempted to place in the comical category Cy Twombly’s Untitled 1969 picture, with its rhythmical doodling that resembles some exercise on a classroom blackboard. Done in house paint and wax crayon on paper, the Untitled exercise offered at Christie’s looks like dozens of others obsessively repeated by the American artist. But last Thursday, Untitled was treated like an icon of the 1960s. It nearly doubled the high estimate to sell for US$5.01mil (RM15.33mil).
What made the Christie’s sale different from any so far was not just the readiness of bidders to go for virtually anything that came up, but the prolonged competition that involved several contenders over many lots.
Several high value works carried a “guarantee” to the consignor financed by a third party, who had the option of bidding on the work without being identified and would be “rewarded” with an undisclosed proportion of any amount paid above the guaranteed reserve price.
This was duly notified in the catalogue by appropriate symbols and spelled out aloud by Jussi Pylkkanen, chairman of Christie’s Europe, before he opened the session.
The procedure stacks the odds against the bidder. It amounts to an alliance between the auction house and the investor, who effectively operates as a dealer: If the work fails to reach the reserve and remains unsold, the “third party” becomes its owner.
The multimillionaires who went after contemporary art on Thursday enjoy the business acumen required to amass those millions. That these savvy men and women were not deterred from bidding by the guarantee-cum-financing by a third party points to a frantic search for tangible assets. Last Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 185 points.
Perhaps some reasoned that it is better to grab a jokey picture than to keep sinking shares. This gives the buyer a gratifying feeling of cultural enlightenment – as long as the art is taken seriously. — ©2012 The International Herald Tribune