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Stars Rise, Stars Set
The art market, in descent, reveals stars both rising and falling. Evening auctions are always great aids at understanding trajectory, and those of Sotheby’s and Christie’s London, in early October, were especially so.
At Christie’s October 4 sale, 31 works from a total auction of 56 were either bought in or sold at or very close to the low estimates or on guarantees. Sotheby’s did somewhat better with 27 out of 67 works bought in or sold at or very close to the low estimates or on guarantees.
FALLING STARS:
Andy Warhol, after having commanded the highest sales records for years, was virtually excluded from the London sales. Sotheby’s had one modest work for sale, Joseph Beuys (Diamond Dust), which eked past its low estimate, whilst Christie’s locked the artist out for the night. Warhol’s market, both private and auction, has been quiet—one could almost say moribund—during
the last 18 months or so.
Christopher Wool sold one picture on a guarantee and a buy-in at Sotheby’s. He also experienced a buy-in at Christie’s.
Mark Grotjahn, the decorative artist whose remarkable rise was fueled by less sophisticated “pretty painting” buyers, found only one place at auction at Christie’s. No bids were evident, other than the house bids: another buy-in.
Rudolf Stingel suffered a double buy-in at Christie’s and hit a single buy-in at Sotheby’s, scoring a negative three for three. Decorative art seems on the outs these days.
Lucio Fontana had a slash painting at Sotheby’s (yes, another buy-in) and another at Christie’s, where it squeaked by and into a buyer’s hands.
Gerhard Richter’s Skull was dead in the water, while a modest painting sold on the guarantee at Christie’s. Sotheby’s left Richter out of the sale; the artist’s market has been trending lower for the last few months, with this auction sealing the coffin.
RISING STARS:
Jenny Saville at Sotheby’s set a new record for a living woman artist: £9.5 million in a £3.0-£4.0 estimate.
Kaws won a big price for a big image at Sotheby’s: £1,030,000 against £250,000–£350,000 estimate.
Albert Oehlen doubled to tripled estimates at Christie’s but had no pictures at Sotheby’s.
IN CONCLUSION:
Nothing is forever. The stars of yesterday sometimes fade in the night, sometimes reilluminate. When the market enters round two, rebound, art sought for quality rather than price progression or style will again be in the winner’s circle. Recognition by price is always short-lived. For success, look at the art, not the price.
There is more than psychic return on investment in this. If you look and learn, you’ll be buying more than décor. You will see greatness sooner than others and then you’ll profit twice.
artnet News: The Art Money 20
The attached article on artists’ increase in prices is, indeed, interesting. Though statistically it is flawed and many of the highest prices are attributable to either erroneous reporting, presales or guarantees at auction (all of which distort the upside). It is interesting to note how modestly the upper end of the art market has performed during the last 20 years.
– Asher Edelman
The Art Money 20: Which Artists Have Performed Best at Auction Since 1995?
(Source: artnet Analytics.)
Which blue chip artists have performed the best from a financial standpoint in the past two decades?
The results might surprise you. Unlike other markets, where values are tied to set parameters—think stocks and bonds—the value of art is far more subjective, not to mention influenced by so many factors all at once: fickle collector tastes; ever-shifting critical and public appreciation; condition of individual works; and of course supply and demand. Take works by Vincent van Gogh for instance, which despite having scored some of the highest prices at auction over the years, rarely actually come on the auction block. (See: Do Riches Await In the Van Gogh Market?).
Using the time period 1993-1997 as a baseline, we looked back at the artists who were already selling for more than $1 million each at auction at that time and then followed their market performance through 2015 by tracking average prices and the compound annual growth rate of average prices. Alberto Giacometti tops the list of performers (see chart above) though some of that track record may be due to recent auction activity, say in the past five years. Though the list is understandably heavy with names of Impressionist and modern artists, it also includes at least one Old Master (Canaletto) and several more contemporary names (Francis Bacon and Roy Lichtenstein). (See: The Old Masters Market Is Restoring Its Image to Make It Sexy and Canaletto, Caravaggio Fail to Sell at Christie’s Worst Old Masters Sale Since 2002.)
In 2010, Giacometti’s record vaulted to $103 million (£65 million) when Sotheby’s London sold the sculpture L’homme qui marche I (1960). The next three highest prices were all set in the years since then or right before (between 2008 to 2010), indicating that the market had been gathering considerable momentum in the past decade alone (See: $101 Million Giacometti Leads At Sotheby’s Sale).
A similar pattern of activity can be seen with Francis Bacon, where auction activity has been extremely robust in the past decade. Bacon is second on our list of best performers as viewed by compound annual growth of average price. Bacon has been a favorite of some of the newer-to-the-game über collectors of contemporary art, particularly from the Middle East and China. The record for the highest price ever achieved at auction was the $142.4 million paid for the triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) sold at Christie’s in November 2013.
Picasso might seem to be the natural choice for first place but his market has been lofty for quite a long time now (see $140 Million Picasso at Christie’s Is World’s Most Expensive Painting at Auction). Artnet Analytics research indicates that between 1993 and 1997, 79 of Picasso’s works sold for at least $1 million each at auction. But in terms of our measure of compound growth in price performance, his name turns up at #17.
Here is the complete list ranked in order from highest to lowest:
1. Alberto Giacometti
2. Francis Bacon
3. John Singer Sargent
4. Rene Magritte
5. Roy Lichtenstein
6. Camille Pissarro
7. Amedeo Modigliani
8. Georges Braque
9. Claude Monet
10. Marc Chagall
11. Fernand Leger
12. Canaletto
13. Wassily Kandinsky
14. Paul Cezanne
15. Joan Miró
16. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
17. Pablo Picasso
18. Alfred Sisley
19. Henry Moore
20. Henri Matisse
Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-money-20-artists-performed-best-auction-since-1995-281454
Major works currently available by Joseph Cornell, Franz Kline, Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Natalia Goncherova, Joan Mitchell, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Frank Stella, Titian and Andy Warhol.