—Anna Louie Sussman
Last night’s Christie’s Impressionist and Modern sale finished with
a within-estimate total of $289.1 million, thanks in large part to strong
showings from two star lots. The result marks the auction house’s best sale in
the category since 2010.
The results were a 17% rise from November’s New York evening sale,
which totaled $246.3 million, and a 104% rise from the prior May, a sign that
the art market’s appetite for the choicest works is undiminished.
“The market is strong,” said Guillaume Cerutti, the house’s new
chief executive. “It never stopped [being] strong on the buy side. Last year it
was more challenging on the sell side.”
He attributed the house’s better fortunes in obtaining consignments
of sought-after works to subsiding political and economic uncertainty, and
noted November’s healthy results likely encouraged buyers as well.
But the sale was sluggish at times, repeatedly punctuated by lots
that failed to find any interest and others that petered out after just a few
bids. Twelve of the 55 lots went unsold, for a sell-through rate of 78% of the
lots. The sell-through rate by value was a much better 96%, thanks to the extraordinarily
high prices of a handful of works. Cerutti called the unsold lots “sign of a
market that’s very selective.”
Monday night’s solid overall results were largely driven by to two
blockbuster sales: Constantin Brancusi’s La muse endormie (1913) and Pablo
Picasso’s Femme assise, robe bleue (1939). Together they sold for over $102
million, comprising more than 34% of total sales. (All prices include the
buyer’s premium, which is not included in estimates.) The sales hammer price
total was $258 million, almost exactly in between the sale’s low and high
estimates of $207 million and $307 million, respectively.
Jessica Fertig, Christie’s senior vice president and head of
Impressionist and Modern evening sale, said 42% of the lots went to Americans,
and 23% to Asian buyers; buyers from 35 countries had registered to bid. The
house did not offer a geographic breakdown by value. She noted 84% of the works
had not been on the market for at least 20 years.
“That is what all of our clients are looking for,” she said.
The Brancusi sale lasted nine minutes and hit a new record for the
artist, coming in at $57.3 million and garnering the only sincere-sounding
applause of the evening. A number of spectators took off after the hammer fell,
and auctioneer Andreas Rumbler found himself offering the last dozen or so lots
to a half-empty room.
La muse endormie (1913), a bronze egg-shaped sculpture of a head
whose partially gilded surface has a matte, mottled effect, in contrast to
Brancusi’s well-known sleek and polished bronzes, handily beat its estimate of
between $25 million and $35 million. The house’s website indicated that this
lot was secured with a third-party guarantee, the late addition of which likely
raised the estimate from its initial $20 million to $30 million indicated in
the printed auction catalogue.
Picasso’s Femme assise, robe bleue (1939; est. $35 million–$50
million), a portrait of his mistress Dora Maar that was once in the collection
of the artist’s friend and dealer Paul Rosenberg and was later confiscated by
Nazis sold for $45 million to an anonymous bidder from Asia, on the phone with
Rebecca Wei, president of Christie’s Asia. It was last sold at Christie’s in
London in 2011 for $29.1 million.
Fernand Léger’s futuristic still-life Nature morte aux éléments
mécaniques (1918) sold on just one bid for $11.4 million with the buyer’s
premium; the hammer price just scraping the low end of its $10 million to $15
million estimate.
The snowy scene depicted by Claude Monet in La route de Vétheuil,
effet de neige (1879) found a taker at $11.4 million with the buyer’s premium.
As with the Léger, the hammer price achieved barely hit the work’s low
estimate, which came in at $10 million to $15 million.
Another Picasso, Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1917–20) found a
handful of early bidders, hitting a lull at around $22 million before resuming
an upwards climb, and ultimately selling for $30.4 million, just above its $20
million–$30 million estimate. The portrait of his wife Olga was started in 1917
but not finished until 1920; begun alongside a more classical depiction of her,
it shows the artist probing the same subject in a Cubist style.
Picasso’s portrait of his then-mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, Femme
couchée (1929), was intended to be the first lot of the auction with an
estimate of $1.2 to $1.8 million, but it was withdrawn before the sale.
Marc Chagall’s painting Les trois cierges (1939) sold for $14.5
million, above a high estimate of $12 million. The work was carried out of
France by Chagall’s daughter Ida to New York. It was donated to the Cleveland
Clinic by Sydell Miller, who bought it in 1998 for $3.3 million.
Works from the clinic’s collection—from which Picasso’s Femme
assise dans un fauteuil was also consigned—totaled $55.7 million on Monday
night; three additional works from the collection will be for sale in the
Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale on Wednesday night.
Overall, 36 lots sold for over $1 million (out of 41 with estimates
of $1 million or more), and seven went for $10 million or above.
While much of the sale may have lacked fanfare, it represents a
strong shift in momentum for the house, which had its worst Impressionist and
Modern sale in a half-decade last May, which fell below-estimate for a total of
$144 million. Christie’s reported total art sales in 2016 of $5.4 billion, down
for the second straight year from 2014’s high of $8.4 billion. The majority,
$4.4 billion, came through public auction sales, and the rest through private
sales ($935.5 million) and online sales ($67.1 million).
Overall sales in the global art market were estimated at slightly
under $57 billion in 2016, according to The Art Market | 2017, a report
recently published by Art Basel and UBS. But last year saw auction sales fall
by a precipitous 26% globally; ultra-high end sales (works priced above $10
million) fell by more than half.
Market observers chalked up the lack of choice consignments to
political and economic turbulence, and cited this lack of supply, not demand,
for the middling results. At least two art market reports described a shift of
high-end sales activity to the dealer sector, where the priciest works could be
shopped around more discreetly.
The week’s sales continue with Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern
sale Tuesday evening, followed by Post-War and Contemporary sales at Christie’s
and Sotheby’s on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, respectively.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-57-million-brancusi-leads-best-christies-impressionist-modern-sale-seven-years
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario