THE ART MARKET TREMBLES
Sotheby’s New York sale of Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday evening, Nov. 7, 2007, went bad very quickly. The ninth lot in a long sale of 76 lots, Vincent van Gogh’s The Fields (1890), a harvest-time landscape of rustling wheat sheaves and wild flowers under a turbulent blue sky -- the very place where the depressed artist would attempt to take his own life a few weeks later -- failed to elicit a single bid. The painting carried a presale estimate of $28 million-$35 million, an incredible price, but when Sotheby’s premier auctioneer, Tobias Meyer, opened the bidding for the picture, the room of collectors and art dealers, as well as the phone banks, were consumed by a muffled silence.
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Meyer’s impressive Teutonic tenor, usually so masterful in shaping the tone and energy of the auction, suddenly seemed to be mired in molasses.
As the auction proceeded, other big-ticket lots also failed to sell, notably a Pierre-Auguste Renoir portrait of a girl, once owned by Greta Garbo, and a Paul Gauguin Polynesian landscape. Both were estimated at $9 million-$12 million. Another disappointment was Pablo Picasso’s La Lampe from 1931, a Boisgeloup studio still-life of a plaster bust surrounded by a garland of philodendron leaves, whose low estimate was $25 million. Despite its scandalous back story -- Picasso’s wife, the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, supposedly realized her husband had taken a young lover (Marie-Thérèse Walter) when she saw the work -- the painting found no bidders and went unsold.
The buy-ins had a dramatic effect on the sale’s bottom line. The auction totaled "only" about $270 million, not a bad result for two hours’ work but still rather less that the presale low estimate of $355 million.
At the press conference immediately following the sale, Sotheby’s Impressionist specialist David Norman nobly fell on his sword, saying that the poor results were the fault of the sale -- "our estimates were not accepted by the market" -- rather than indicative of a weakness in the art market as a whole. He wanly pointed out the auction’s successes, which include new records for an Egon Schiele work on paper ($11,353,000), a Jean Corot ($4,745,000), a Franz Marc ($20,201,000) and a Max Ernst painting ($1,945,000) -- but the damage was done.
Nowhere is the relationship between quantities of money and notions of artistic quality more transparent than in the auction market. In press reports on the sale the next day, the unsold van Gogh and Picasso paintings suddenly became "second-rate." But it was the stock market that expressed alarm most vividly, sending the price of a share of Sotheby’s stock from around $50 on Wednesday to below $35 on Thursday. Despite the volatility, the price compares favorably to the historic low of around $15, during the depths of the price-fixing scandal of several years ago.
In a third-quarter telephone conference call on Friday, Nov. 9, Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht said that three clients had expressed interest in the van Gogh, but backed out at the last minute. "The art market has shown considerable strength since the beginning of our fall season," Ruprecht said, suggesting that he saw no reason to predict further difficulties.
Other art professionals seemed optimistic as well. "Next week is the real test," said Chelsea dealer Zach Feuer, who represents several young artists who have proven popular with collectors, including Jules de Balincourt and Dana Schutz.
Some discontent has already been expressed, however, over one highly publicized lot, the 1963 turquoise Andy Warhol portrait of Elizabeth Taylor. Purchased by the actor Hugh Grant for $3.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2001, the painting goes on the block at Christie’s New York on Nov. 13 with a presale estimate of $25 million-$35 million. Detractors have said that the painting is not one of Warhol’s best, and has a "crooked" mouth. Nevertheless, the word on the street is that Christie’s already has at least one bidder for the picture at $25 million commitment on the picture.
Another much-discussed work is a 3,500-pound 3D sculpture of a shiny red valentine by Jeff Koons that is being auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on Nov. 14. Made of stainless steel with a transparent color coating and a yellow brass ribbon, Hanging Heart (Magenta / Gold), as it is called, was completed only last year and purchased from Gagosian Gallery by collector Adam Lindemann. According to a report by Lindsay Pollock for Bloomberg, Lindemann hopes to "flip" the work for as much as $20 million, about five times the amount he paid for it. Such hubris may be more than even the contemporary art market can bear.
By the time of the Christie’s brunch on Sunday morning, Nov. 11 -- a deluxe affair for art consigners and collectors, held from 10 am to 1 pm -- the general mood had brightened. "The sale has more A-plus stuff than ever," said Chelsea dealer Mark Wehby. "Expensive as hell, but beautiful."
With four evening auctions on the schedule, the week of post-war and contemporary sales is unusually busy. Christie’s scored the Allan Stone estate, a trove rich in works by Willem de Kooning, Wayne Thiebaud, Franz Kline and several other Ab-Ex and Pop pioneers, which goes up Nov. 12, 2007. The week ends on Nov. 15 with a sale at Phillips, de Pury & Co. that starts early, at 6:30 pm, to accommodate a special benefit auction for the New Museum. The sales are seeded with some of the most hotly desired artists, many of them relatively new to the auction market, including Rudolf Stingel, Anselm Reyle, Jules de Balincourt and Steven Parrino.
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