Contemporary sales hot up in London’s summer season
Christie’s has always been willing to take a risk
The British summer season is in full swing, and the art world is joining in. To the ritual splendours of Wimbledon, Ascot, Henley and Glyndebourne, London adds the major impressionist, modern, contemporary and Old Master sales, the Masterpiece and Olympia art and antiques fairs, London Art Week (in which dealers in traditional fare mount special exhibitions), and Mayfair Art Weekend (in which the galleries thronging London’s historic arts quarter stay open late and all weekend).
While museum curators from all over the world are arriving in the capital to inspect what is on offer, are the all-important collectors here in force, too?
The June events came hot on the heels of major fairs in New York, plus the May auctions, which soaked up $2billion (£1.5billion) on top of the $800million Rockefeller collection sales at Christie’s, and Art Basel, where $5billion of art was on offer.
Though London’s June sales of impressionist and modern art drummed up a respectable £256million, and there is a healthy supply of Old Master paintings for sale this week, it’s the usually buoyant contemporary art sector that is experiencing some doubt about London’s summer season.
Last year, Christie’s, which has the highest annual turnover of contemporary art at auction globally, pulled out of staging a contemporary art sale in London in June altogether. The reason, it said, was that its June sales had been going down in value, and it wanted to concentrate on the October sales instead, which, because they coincide with the Frieze Art Fair, attracted more contemporary collectors to London. That’s a bit like Roger Federer pulling out of the French Open, perhaps, so as to produce a masterclass at Wimbledon.
It was almost as if London’s summer season was being written off as fuddy-duddy. But the decision was justified when it took £177million over two sales in two days last October, £8.2million more than rival Sotheby’s took in four sales spread between June and October.
This year, however, Christie’s has watched as Sotheby’s mounted a counter attack, with a £125million series for its contemporary art sale (64per cent up on last year) led by Lucian Freud’s £22.5million nude portrait (2002-3) of a young woman sleeping. Phillips, too, mustered a strong £45million series (47.5per cent up on last year), topped by an £8.4million self-portrait by Martin Kippenberger, the unruly German artist, painted in 1996, when he knew he was dying of cancer. In contrast, Christie’s offered two daytime sales that brought just £13.3million.
Francis Outred, Christie’s head of post-war and contemporary art, explains: “Ideally, we want to stage the best quality evening sales possible; to raise our level by compiling masterpiece sales, and I don’t think it is feasible to maintain that aspiration three times a year in London.”
Oliver Barker, his opposite number at Sotheby’s, has a different view. His results this year, he said, reflect “a deep confidence in June”. Ed Dolman, Phillips’ chief executive, was more reserved, describing the market as “resilient”.
Spoiling London’s June party is perhaps not a surprising move from Christie’s: it has always been willing to take a risk, disrupting categories and sales timing if it can see a payback. At the turn of the last century, for instance, it split the impressionist and modern category, pairing impressionists with more academic 19th century art, and the modern with later 20th century art. It didn’t last. More recently, it has pursued crosscategory sales, under the guise of thematic, curated titles such as Looking Forward to the Past. And last November, included the $450million Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, in a contemporary art sale.
Its latest experiment is not set in stone, though, says Outred. “We are not looking to see who does better in which month. It’s more about how we best serve our buyers and sellers on a year-by-year basis, and we will look at that before we decide our 2019 programme.”
Much will depend on October’s results, then. Though Christie’s turnover nudged ahead in March, it now has ground to make up. Outred has a strong sale already in the making, but will it be strong enough to turn over Sotheby’s lead?