The art market just had the biggest two weeks in its history.
Since Nov. 4, collectors have flocked to the world’s chief auction houses in New York to buy more than $2 billion of art, a historic high in which 23 works sold for more than $20 million apiece. (In 2009, Christie’s International sold only six artworks for that much all year.)
Night after night at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the titans of the world’s far-flung industries squeezed like sardines into packed auction salesrooms to compete for hundreds of artworks created by the world’s best-known Impressionist, modern and contemporary artists.
To win, bidders often had to splurge: Billionaire investor Steve Cohen paid Sotheby’s $101 million for an Alberto Giacometti bronze chariot sculpture; other bidders at Christie’s paid $82 million for an Andy Warhol silk-screen of a gun-toting Elvis Presley and $65 million for Édouard Manet’s portrait of pretty woman with a parasol.
Top Lots at Sotheby’s and Christie’s Contemporary Art Sales
Christie’s International in New York made auction history Wednesday when it sold $853 million of contemporary art.
On Wednesday, Christie’s conducted the biggest auction in history when it sold $853 million of contemporary art in a two-hour span.
Len Riggio , chairman of Barnes & Noble, said he intended to bid on a few items in Christie’s sale, but rivals outpaced him. “I feel like I’m surrounded by gladiators in this shiny big arena,” he said. “Everyone wants to put their money somewhere, but what are these guys going to do, buy another house or keep $3 billion in the bank? No, they all want to put a little bit in art.”
When it comes to what collectors want, Sotheby’s chief executive Bill Ruprecht said they want “blue blue blue,” meaning blue-chip masterpieces by name-brand artists like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol who trade widely and often enough at auction to represent this market’s version of a Dow Jones Industrial Average. Seconds after Christie’s sold Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” for $82 million to a phone bidder on Wednesday, the house sold another Warhol portrait of actor Marlon Brando, “Four Marlons,” for $69.6 million. Both Warhols are wall-power large—“Elvis” stands nearly 7-feet high—and convey the Pop artist’s signature silk-screen style
‘I feel like I’m surrounded by gladiators in this shiny big arena. ’
—Len Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble
Mark Rothko, who painted hundreds of rectangular abstracts, also fared well in these sales, including an untitled indigo version that Sotheby’s sold for $40 million on Monday, twice its high estimate. The following day, the same house sold another Rothko, “No. 21 (Red, Brown, Black and Orange),” for $45 million. (Estimates, unlike final sale prices, don't include the auction houses’ commissions.)
But collectors also glommed onto rarely seen works that stood out like gems, like a placemat-size Jasper Johns “Flag” from 1983 that Sotheby’s sold for $36 million, over its $20 million high estimate. Manet’s 1881 “Spring” portrait of a woman walking in a park also sold well in part because the work was the last painting Manet ever submitted to Paris’s taste-making Salon. The J. Paul Getty Museum paid $65.1 million for it at Christie’s on Nov. 5.
The art market cycles through good years and bad like the broader financial markets—art values notoriously crashed in 1990 and plummeted briefly in 2009—but in recent seasons, art prices have only gone one direction: Up. Dealers say that is because an influx of newly wealthy international buyers, from Chinese tech entrepreneurs to Brazilian bankers to Middle Eastern oil barons, have entered the art marketplace over the past decade. Most arrive seeking to store their extra cash in any art they can find at auctions and art fairs; others hope to reap the social cachet that comes with owning world-class art. Investors and speculators have also joined in, seeking to profit by buying and selling artworks like stocks.
Once the historic domain of merchant princes and popes, fine art has become attainable for the modern-day millionaire—an asset or currency that merits a place alongside stocks in an investment portfolio.Around 76% of art buyers surveyed earlier this fall by ArtTactic, a London-based auction watchdog, and auditor Deloitte Luxembourg said they are “increasingly acquiring art and collectibles from an investment standpoint,” compared with 53% two years ago.
Unlike Europeans, U.S. collectors have long been comfortable discussing art in investment-grade terms, and Americans now buy more art than anyone else on the planet—particularly the trophy pieces in these major seasonal auctions, according to Dublin-based art economist Clare McAndrew. Last year, art sales in the U.S. totaled more than $22 billion, up 25% from the year before, according to Ms. McAndrew’s latest Art Market Report. Moreover, buyers in the U.S. also took home around half the million-dollar artworks offered at auctions world-wide, she added.
China continues to emerge as the next great purchasing power, though. Xin Li, a former model who now works for Christie’s and often represents collectors from mainland China, won for a client a $17.5 million Willem de Kooning and a $16.9 million Gerhard Richter during Christie’s sale on Wednesday. A Lucian Freud portrait, “Julie and Martin,” also sold for $17 million to a young Asian man at Christie’s dressed in a black, silk-lapel suit.
No wonder collectors wishing to sell their art trophies at auction lined up to consign pieces into these November auctions. Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky said he sold a pair of pieces (he declined to say which) in large part because the mood remained reassuringly chipper—and because the auction houses offered to buy his artworks if no one else did. “I thought my works were overpriced,” he said, “but they did well—and there were other things I wanted that sold for too much.”
Longtime New York dealer and former Sotheby’s auctioneer David Nash said the market feels bloated and “hyperinflated” to him, but he saw few signs of a market bubble about to burst—yet. All but five of the 80 lots offered in Christie’s $853 million sale found buyers. On Monday, Sotheby’s sold 100% of the offerings in its estate sale of Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny. Such “white glove” sales are a rarity in the industry.
“Every season, I say the prices can’t get any higher, and then they do,” Mr. Nash said.