COURTESY SOTHEBY'S
NEW YORK—At the end of a four-day sale series (both evening and day auctions) at Phillips de Pury & Company, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the overall contemporary art total was $769.4 million, compared with $755 million in contemporary sales achieved in fall 2010 and $718 million achieved this past spring.
“It’s unbelievable that something like this can happen in a deep recession like what we are in,” London dealer Nicolai Frahm told ARTnewsletter. “It kind of goes with the predictions that great art is going to be more or less recession proof. This is really one of the best contemporary sale series ever.”
The leader in the contemporary sector was Sotheby’s with a total of $370 million. It was followed by Christie’s, which posted a total of $318.1 million, and Phillips, which realized $81 million—far higher than its $26 million total last November, excluding its special “Carte Blanche” sale results.
Continuing a trend that has gathered momentum in recent seasons, the volume of contemporary sales far surpassed that of Impressionist and modern art, which realized $400.2 million in the recent season. The change reflects both the tastes of younger, wealthy international buyers as well as the decreasing supply of Impressionist and modern masterpieces available, as the best works have been snapped up by major private collectors and institutions.
Said Frahm: “Art has really become one of the safest, if not the safest asset class. People really trust in it in a way they have never done before. Buyers are now from all over the world. It has really become such a global market where everyone wants to get in on the action.”
For the two-week series, which includes the Impressionist and modern sales held in the first week of November, the auction houses realized $1.16 billion compared with $1.29 billion seen last fall.
Sotheby’s had the two highest-value collections including a collection of four works by Clyfford Still, which had belonged to the artist’s widow, and were being sold by the City of Denver to benefit the Clyfford Still Museum. Still’s work is rare because he gifted most of it to Denver. Only 27 paintings have appeared at auction since 1990, according to an auction database. Of these, the highest price was $21.3 million, set in November 2006. Sotheby’s, which had agreed to a $15 million cap on the commission it would receive on the sales, had estimated the four works to fetch at least $51 million—they sold for $114.1 million including premium.
The top lot was 1949-A-No. 1, 1949, which had been used to illustrate the cover of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective exhibition in 1979-80. It sold for $61.7 million (estimate: $25 million/35 million) to a phone bid through Sotheby’s Americas chairman and former Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum director, Lisa Dennison, after a lengthy bidding contest against dealer Christopher Eykyn, seated in the saleroom and speaking to his client via cell phone.
Christie’s mixed-owner part one sale on Nov. 8, totaled $220.8 million including buyers’ premium, against a pre-sale estimate of $215 million/298 million excluding the premium, so, technically, the sale fell below the estimate.
While all but nine of the 65 lots were sold, and seven records were broken, half of the sold lots reached hammer prices on or below their low estimates. Four of the top 12 lots—estimated to fetch $4.5 million or more— were unsold. Six of the top ten selling lots in this sale sold on or below low estimates at hammer prices, all indicating a resistance to compete at the top level. Even combined with the Peter Norton sale lots, the total $247 million was the lowest part one sale for Christie’s since November 2009, ceasing the upward trajectory that had taken place since then.
Still, overall results were healthy, especially considering the state of the global economy. Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop art classic, I Can See the Whole Room, 1961, fetched a new record when it sold to private dealer Guy Bennett for $43.2 million, compared with an estimate of $35 million/45 million. The painting was being sold by Courtney Ross, the widow of the late Time Warner CEO, Steven Ross, who bought it at the Emily and Burton Tremaine sale at Christie’s in 1988 for $2.1 million.
At Phillips, all but seven of the 45 lots sold for a total of $71.3 million, just edging past the lower pre-sale estimate of $66.1 million by virtue of the buyer’s premium.
In any case, 18 works were guaranteed with a combined low estimate of $51.1 million (excluding premium) and sold for a hammer aggregate of $45.3 million ($51.7 million including the premium). The top seven lots were all guaranteed.
Cy Twombly’s late painting, Untitled, 2006, sold within its estimate for $9 million including premium, against an $8 million/12 million estimate—almost in line with retail prices and a record for a late, i.e., post 1970s, painting.