By SOUREN MELIKIAN
NEW YORK — Billionaires worried about plunging stocks are feverishly looking for alternative assets, the pundits told us this week. They want solid, tangible stuff. Luckily, these days contemporary art is becoming incredibly tangible.
Take Christie’s sale on Tuesday, which began with 26 “Works From the Peter Norton Collection.”
One glance at a color spread adorning the Christie’s catalog was enough to tell buyers that those assets with a physical reality that some badly wanted were there. It showed a group of white fiberglass dogs with big floppy ears set up on wooden stilts. Called “Dogs From Your Childhood,” the assemblage was produced by Yoshitomo Nara in 1999 in an edition of three with two artist’s proofs.
Behind the fiberglass pets, an aluminum plate hung on a panel. Four lines in big block lettering read, “Want/To Be/Your Dog.” That was Christopher Wool’s contribution to art in 1992.
Further to the right of the color spread, a tall figure with a tomato in lieu of a head and goggle eyes stared down, pondering the deeper meaning of the scene. The creature dubbed by its maker, Paul McCarthy, “Tomato Head (Green),” was executed in 1994 in an edition of “three unique variants.” Tomato Head solemnly gazing at the droopy white dogs with a panel proclaiming in the background “Want to Be Your Dog” gave the whole installation photographed by Kate Carr in the Milk Studio, Los Angeles, a sense of gravity that touched a chord with bidders.
Mr. Wool’s “Want to Be Your Dog” made $1.53 million, beating by nearly half the high estimate. “Tomato Head (Green),” enthusiastically fought over, climbed to $4.56 million, setting the first of the week’s several world auction records.
Mr. Nara’s droopy dogs were the only work of contemporary art sold at a bargain price — they cost a mere $422,500, well below the low estimate. Perhaps the underprivileged millionaires who go in for the cheaper varieties of contemporary art lacked the vast residences with suitable display space for Mr. Nara’s beasts.
Soon, the works that were physically tangible rose to levels that Christie’s experts themselves never dreamed of.
Mona Hatoum’s “Silence,” made of glass in an edition of five dating from 1994, bears an uncanny resemblance to a piece of furniture. A nursery crib springs to mind. The impracticality of the fragile device alone warns you that this is art. “Silence” climbed to $470,500, three and a half times the high estimate.
The Norton collection neatly sold without a single failure for $25.8 million, substantially exceeding the high estimate of $16 million. This must have made Mr. Norton a happy man, even if he did not spend many years contemplating his beloved artists’ contraptions — there are just so many times you can rapturously gaze at a panel proclaiming “Want to Be Your Dog.”
After the Norton collection, the really, really serious works turned up.
A gigantic bronze Louise Bourgeois “Spider” cast in 1998 in an edition of six made $10.72 million. That was a world auction record for Bourgeois, who died last year. Even if you are insensitive to art, you cannot miss the monstrous arachnid. Having it on the grounds of your residence conveniently allows you to state your wealth without having to spell it out. Instant recognition is guaranteed by the public display of another cast at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 2001, and various exhibitions of other casts in such exalted institutions as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.
Indeed, the impact of the invaluable insurance policy provided by such museum credentials to investors in search of safe havens for their millions cannot be overstated. It was verified again and again in the course of Christie’s two-hour session.
Roy Lichtenstein’s early Pop Art picture of 1961 “I Can See the Whole Room ... and There’s Nobody in It!” resembles the cartoon on which it is based. Its importance in contemporary art is demonstrated by its various appearances at the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fort Worth Art Museum and other great institutions. Accordingly, the outsized comic-strip-style picture set one more world record at $43.2 million.
Consecration over time is the other selling argument that sways those seeking safety. “Contemporary art” never does as well as when it is no longer contemporary — that is, made by living artists.
Andy Warhol has been hailed for so long that doubts concerning the artistic nature of silkscreen ink work based on snapshots would hardly ever arise these days. Add the name of a famous showbiz character and triumph ensues.
“Silver Liz” in acrylic, silver-screen ink and spray enamel on canvas was painted by Warhol in 1963. It looks like a poster for a movie featuring Elizabeth Taylor, which is no surprise: Advertising was Warhol’s thing before he turned to art. The poster-like portrait made $16.32 million.
By the end of Tuesday evening, believers in contemporary art had spent more than $247 million on sundry works. Whether the low 10 percent failure rate reflected their love of white dogs or their monetary worries is a moot question.
On Wednesday, Sotheby’s rode to sweeping victory with a $315.8 million score, its third highest total realized in a contemporary art sale.
Perhaps the most extraordinary prices had as much to do with distrust in the financial markets as with pure passion for art. They invariably greeted artists long sung in the media.
Within the first half hour, a world auction record was set for Clyfford Still with an abstract composition titled “1949-A-No. 1.” The canvas had in its favor monumental size, museum approval — in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979-1980 retrospective — and its six-decade-long career on the national scene.
The next abstract picture by Still also had a cryptic title, “1947-Y-No. 2.” Artists who paint nothing in particular, using the “abstract” label, prefer it that way. So do newcomers.
Abstractionism, easy to look at, does not require meditation, and buyers to whom time is money do not waste it by looking too long at what they settle for. The second Still, while smaller, was vastly superior in its composition and color scheme, but made only $31.4 million. By comparison, the enormous price seems almost modest.
That evening, Abstractionism was propelled to unmatched heights, regardless of school and period. Yet another world record was set when one of Gerhard Richter’s “Abstract Pictures,” dating from 1997, went up to $20.8 million. Huge, the canvas displays a sense of rhythm and color nuances in purplish reds and blues that possibly helped it to rise so high.
Immediately after, though, another of Mr. Richter’s abstract compositions, “Gudrun,” done 10 years earlier, aroused almost as much excitement and made a thumping $18 million. Confused, it does not remotely compare with the record picture.
This week, such differences were evidently irrelevant. Mr. Richter is a true master of the brush, perhaps the only one among the officially acclaimed living artists. But the consecration that his oeuvre has received through the retrospective now at Tate Modern in London is what matters to safe haven seekers.
Names, not art, were the targets this week. Warhol’s “Mickey Mouse” close up, which could not be more different, did well at $3.44 million. With it, however, came a warning. This is perhaps not quite enough to satisfy the consignor who paid $1.91 million for the cartoon painted seven years ago to the day, also at Sotheby’s, New York. With the charges to buyer and vendor, and taking into account the loss of buying power incurred by the dollar, “Mickey Mouse” may not have paid the interest on the capital outlay in real terms.
Add that 11 works were unsold out of the 73 that were offered at Sotheby’s, despite the bullish market, and the alternative assets of contemporary art seem a lot less safe than one might assume.
The recent steep rises in contemporary art are linked to perception. And if one thing is apt to change without warning, that is what the eye can see — or imagines it sees.