Manhattan’s $1.7 billion field of dreams
Colin Gleadell sees New York’s big impressionist and modern auctions soar above contemporary sales
Last week was what the Americans call “gigaweek” in the salerooms because New York hosts the high-value impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales. These bi-annual series (May and November) reached a peak in May 2015 at $2.75 billion (£2.07 billion), but sunk a year later to just over $1 billion (£755 million). Since then, they have been edging back up again, reaching $1.6 billion (£1.2 billion) this May.
For the auction houses – and market confidence in general – it was important that November’s gigaweek maintained the upward momentum – a good reason for Christie’s to include a Leonardo da Vinci (usually the terrain of Old Master sales) valued at $100 million (£75 million).
As it was, the Leonardo made $450 million (£340 million), lifting the week’s takings to $2.18 billion (£1.64 billion). But to assess the real performance of the core impressionist, modern and contemporary markets, we need to disregard the Leonardo because it is an Old Master, reducing the gigaweek total to $1.7 billion (£1.28 billion).
This represents a healthy 30 per cent increase from Nov 2016’s $1.3 billion (£980 million) sales, but when broken down reveals an unexpected imbalance between the two categories of modern and contemporary art. Not only did impressionist and modern art exceed the normally superior contemporary art total at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York, but the upward curve for modern art (plus 75 per cent since Nov 2016) was far greater than for contemporary art (plus 9 per cent since Nov 2016).
At Christie’s impressionist and modern sale, impressive records were set for an early 1913 abstraction by Fernand Léger ($70 million/ £53 million); a surreal landscape by Magritte ($20.6 million£15.5 million); and a classic patterned Vuillard interior ($17.7 million/£13.3 million).
The most conspicuous buying pattern was the strength of Asian bidding, which accounted for about 40 per cent of the value of Christie’s $479 million (£361 million) sale, one of its best ever in this category.
Asian buyers won top lots by van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Chagall, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. The van Gogh of a field worker sold well above estimate for $81.3 million (£61.3 million), close to a record. The Hepworth, a mahogany carving of an abstracted female figure, sold for $1.6 million (£1.2 million)– an increase in value by an average 13 per cent each year since 1993, when it last sold, for $57,500 (£43,380).
At Sotheby’s equivalent, $270 million (£203 million) modern art sale, Asian bidders contributed to nearer 50 per cent of the total, buying top lots by Cézanne, Chagall, Monet and Gauguin. For the top lot, the Chagall classic, Les Amoureux, an Asian bidder pushed a patriotic Russian collector into paying a record $28 million (£21 million).
At Phillips, which straddles the modern and contemporary in one sale, the strongest performer was a drawing by Picasso owned by the family of Julian Aberbach, Elvis Presley’s music publisher, which sold for
$9.3 million (£7 million) – eight times the estimate – to an Asian buyer. But apart from a $32 million (£24 million) Warhol of Mao, a $14.7 million
(£11 million) bronze spider by Louise Bourgeois, and a record $8.9 million (£6.7 million) for an ebullient late work by Hans Hofmann, the abstract expressionist, Asian buyers for highend contemporary work were hard to detect at evening sales.
There were numerous records lower down the price scale, though. African American artists continue to enjoy increasing interest, with new records for Jack Whitten (fresh from a sell out at Hauser & Wirth in London), and Kerry James Marshall, both represented in Tate Modern’s recent exhibition Soul of a Nation.
As a testimony to the queue of buyers at Marshall’s last show at Jack Shainman’s gallery in New York, a painting that was bought two years ago for $750,000 (£565,000) had nine different phone bidders and sold for a five times its $5 million (£3.7 million) estimate. Also shown by Shainman is Britain’s Lynette Yiadom-boakye, who joined the winners with a sixtimes estimate record of $1.6 million (£1.2 million) for a lively dance scene.
In the end, it was superior material and Asian bidding that lifted the impressionist and modern sales above contemporary. There was no real difference between Sotheby’s and Christie’s in the contemporary, and had the Leonardo been sold in an Old Master sale, the slow recovery of the contemporary market would have been clearer for all to see.