Televisie

"Talita Teves is mede-directeur van Amsterdam Auctioneers, de nummer 3 van de Nederlandse kunstveilingmarkt. Ondanks de slechte economische verwachtingen en saneringen bij de Amsterdamse vestiging van Sotheby's verwacht Teves een goed jaar."

Down, down, down (2)

Artinfo reports on the "funereal mood" at the London auctions.

"We obviously need to adjust our pricing," said Christie’s London contemporary head Pilar Ordovas at the post-sale press conference.

Down, down, down

Sotheby's stock price over the last six months:

From London to Moscow

Phillips de Pury, one of the largest auction houses in the world, has been sold to a Russian group, according to a report in the Financial Times last week.

For sale: Art and optimism

The New York Times reports on the high estimates in the upcoming auctions. "You can’t help but wonder just how many of the smartly dressed people sitting night after night at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury over the next two weeks will be serious bidders and how many will be voyeurs hoping to witness an implosion of the multibillion dollar art market. For years collectors and the news media have been speculating about when prices would finally top out. Spring sales estimates don’t suggest pessimism."

The Francis Bacon triptych pictured here has an estimate of about 70 million USD.

Auction houses

"An old saying in the art world is that the difference between the two houses is that Christie's (still in European ownership) are gentlemen that try to act like businessmen, whereas Sotheby's (under primarily US ownership) are businessmen who try to act like gentlemen."

(Clare McAndrew, The Art Economy, 2007)

To boom or not to boom

"Auction rooms will be less fun in the year to come than in the year gone by. Throughout 2007, stories of astonishing sales records tumbled out of the press offices of Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Christie’s boasted the highest half-yearly sales in art-market history; Sotheby's claimed the highest global turnover in the company's history “by a wide margin”. Some enthusiastic players in the game came to believe the boom would go on and on. But it can’t, and it won’t."

The Economist on the art market in 2008.

From the press (2)

The Economist - What crisis? (click here)
IHT - The dangerous game of pushing up prices higher and higher (click here)
Art News Blog - Hirst buys Bacon (click here)

Lot 377

Last Friday, a small English auction house sold a painting attributed to "a follower of Rembrandt". The painting was estimated at around 1000 GBP. Fifteen minutes after the bidding for lot 377 started, it sold for more than 2 million GBP. The bidding frenzy was fueled by beliefs that the work is a real Rembrandt. "If the portrait is accepted as a genuine Rembrandt the buyer will have got a bargain." And what if it isn't?

The fund factor

This summer, Art + Auction published its annual investment guide, edition 2007. Next to must-read articles on fakes, art indexes and auction room practices, it also featured a short interview with Chris Carlson, one of the founders of the Art Trading Fund. The fund "buys and sells pieces directly through its own network of artists, dealers and auction houses, (...) providing downside protection by taking short positions in securities with a high correlation to the art market (think Sotheby's and luxury goods)". Yes, a hedge fund. Carlson: "To say the art market can be made look like another financial market is wrong. To say that we can look at art over time and understand the way in which returns have been generated (...) is absolutely accurate." The minimum intial investment is about $200,000.

Drab mediocrity

The January issue of Art + Auction comments on the big November sales of both Sotheby's and Christie's. Although the Sotheby's evening sale of Impressionist and modern art was one of the most successful of all time, "the impression that the viewing left on most connoisseurs was one of drab mediocrity". According to the editor, there is now such a widespread desire to buy art that "there's no longer much of a correlation between price and artistic merit". More than $8.5m for a minor work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec doesn't raise eyebrows anymore.

One day later, Christie's had its big evening sale, dubbed "a crazed frenzy" by Art + Auction. World auction records were set for Gauguin ($40m), Kirchner ($38m) and Klimt ($88m). Perhaps even more astonishing was, again, the prices paid for some other works. One of the best examples is perhaps this small charcoal-on-paper sketch by Piet Mondriaan (picture). It fetched no less than $3.3m. Art + Auction concludes: "Had aesthetics been the predominant concern that week, certains coups here and there would not have been possible."

Praying for a buyer

On January 25, 'St James the Greater' will go on auction at Sotheby's New York. This Rembrandt masterpiece is estimated to sell for $18m - $25m.

According to the Economist, it will not be easy to find a buyer: "Such an intensely religious picture would appeal to a museum, but few have resources of this kind. One that does, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is saying privately that it will not be bidding, as it has a similar picture already. That leaves private buyers. With year-end bonuses at record levels, more individuals than ever are rich enough to buy at this price. But religious subjects are not to many people’s taste, which makes them especially hard to sell. If the picture fails when the hammer falls, it will be a blow to Sotheby’s."

Read the full article here.