Not bad for the circumstances….
The question at the art auctions seems to be “when will the art market show its wounds in a collapsed economy?” So far, as a mangling of the old saying goes, the cup is still partly full.
Piet Mondrian’s Composition in Black and White, Sotheby’s top lot, brought $9,266,500.
Sotheby’s took in $61 million last week in its Impressionist and Modern Art evening sales, about 25 percent of what the auction house took in at a comparable sale 6 moths ago, which means the sale ran behind the stock market. Christies brought in $102 million. Not bad for the circumstances, the conventional wisdom went.
This week’s sales of contemporary art could be a better indicator, since the contemporary field seems to follow the fortunes of those who make (and lose) money quickly, and seems most linked to art fashion. A walk through the galleries at both major auction houses showed that consignors (sellers) are being cautious. The high-priced works are now perennials by Jeff Koons and Martin Kippenberger, yet prices are not as high as everyone assumed they would be.
In last week’s sales, some people had to sell, even in this market – cash-strapped Julian Schnabel, Madoff victims, and the heirs of the Frelinghuysen (Havemeyer) family — so works by Monet and Picasso ended up on the block, and they sold. You might still call this category “labels for less.” The great show of late Picassos, organized by John Richardson at Gagosian Gallery certainly helped build interest in late Picassos.
But why the Tamara de Lempicka paintings? – at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s — which under more prosperous circumstances might have been offered during the day with works of art deco. The German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop sold ten, assuming that the absence of competition would make them look better than they might have looked a year ago. Portrait de Madame M. of 1932 set an auction record for the artist at Christie’s with a price of $6,130,500 – just one night after another Lempicka set an auction record at Sotheby’s. One dealer offered a solution – that a veil be placed over the bare-breasts of a typical Lempicka Amazon and the picture be marketed it in Dubai as “The Muse.” He clearly hadn’t heard that Dubai, where few are buying, is now Du-bust, and that the thousands of expats who lost their jobs (and have thirty days to depart) are abandoning their cars at the airport in such quantities that their vehicles, piled up, look like nude bodies in a Spencer Tunick be-in.
As the art world wonders who might be selling – it’s easier to find out who’s not buying – another question arises. Who’s paying for the new museum buildings that were fast-tracked at a time when contemporary art was moving uninterruptedly upward? What will happen now if the prices of oversized contemporary works for which museums mortgaged themselves hit bottom, or just shrink by 50 per cent? Will the museums bring in Tamara de Lempicka exhibitions? If a share in Lehman Brothers can be worth nothing, why can’t a bad sculpture in an edition of eight lose its value? It’s clearly a crisis of credibility if these works of art, which were presented to justify gleaming new structures, can’t find buyers. What happens if the trustees who sought credibility by funding those buildings lose heart?
We may have a few answers by the end of the contemporary sales this week.
Lempicka’s Portrait of the Duchesse de la Salle ($4.45 million at Sotheby’s last week, and part of Wolfgang Joop’s unloaded 10.)
