If “everything must go” was the strategy employed by Christie’s for its 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on Wednesday, it worked quite well. Of the 66 lots on offer at the two-and-a-half-hour event at the house’s King Street premises, 61 lots, or 92 per cent, found buyers. Five artist records were achieved and several works sold for prices well above their pre-sale estimates.
But on closer inspection, there were also disappointments. There was no many stars with an eight-figure estimate, as if the house’s great rival, Sotheby’s, were shopping on Tuesday. The rare landscape work of Gerhard Richter, darling of the market Grünes Feld (green field) (1969), estimated at £4–6 million ($5–7.4 million), failed to find a buyer. Almost a quarter of the work went to the hammer below the low estimate.
Paul Signac Calanque des Canoubiers (Pointe de Bamer), Saint-Tropez (1896). Courtesy of Christie’s.
The sale reached a hammer total of £51.7 million ($65 million), which fell below the low of expectations of £55 million ($69.8 million) after adjusting for reflect two batches withdrawn. These lots were a 1957 work on paper by Frank Auerbach and an 1886 work on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Including costs, the sale totaled £64m ($81m), down significantly from last June’s £181m ($222m) and June’s £119.3m 2021 ($166 million). A total of 13 lots were under third-party warranty.
“It shows that market participants are much more careful and cautious,” London-based art consultant Olga Ovenden told Artnet News. “There are still stars – Caroline Walker and Louis Fratino – but other young artists who have been ‘hot’ lately have failed to sell.”
“But the correction in the market – what we are currently witnessing – is not a bad thing, after all. Certainly, it will be good for the careers of young artists, who will be able to evolve in a more serene environment, and it will release the field for more serious collectors and not just speculators.
Caroline Walker, Recreation Pavilion (2013). Courtesy of Christie’s.
Wednesday’s sale took place in the pre-pandemic format, whereas the June sales of the past two years have been associated with the Paris auctions, and known as the “London to Paris” sales. But the return to normal did not herald perfect results.
At the top of the sale, the painting by Paul Signac Calanque des Canoubiers (Pointe de Bamber), Saint-Tropez (1896), which cost £6.7m ($8.5m), which was in line with expectations (£8m/$10m including costs). It was sold to a telephone bidder represented by Olivier Camu, Christie’s Vice President for Impressionist and Modern Art in London.
This was followed by 1984 by Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled (Pablo Picasso), presented as part of the portrait theme of the sale, which coincides with the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery in London this month. An Italian collector bought the work for $2 million at a Christie’s sale in London in 2007. It was exhibited at the Barbican in London in 2017.
The work generated some excitement from the public, including a handful of young Asian faces in the room, which was unsurprising given Basquiat’s popularity with Asian buyers in recent years. years. Eventually, an intense bidding war between two parties in the room developed. One was New York dealer Alex Acquavella, who ultimately lost the coin to a high bidder at a hammer price of £5.35 million ($6.8 million) .
Cecily Brown, kiss me stupid (1999). Courtesy of Christie’s.
Certainly, more than a dozen works sold well above pre-sale estimates. Among the most exciting was a painting from 2017 Weltinnenraum (Inner world) by Victor Man, born in 1974, depicting the artist’s pregnant partner. The piece was estimated between £100,000 and £150,000 ($130,000 to $190,000), but after a long war between several bidders, it ended up with a hammer price of £1.4 million ($1 $.8 million), or 14 times the low estimate. The work reached a sale price including fees of £1.7 million ($2.2 million), a record for the artist. Other artist records include Diane Dal-Pra, Chase Hall, Ahmed Mater and the auction debut of Sahara Longe.
Other successes include the painting of Fratino, born in 1993 Listen to a conch (2017), which went for £160,000 ($202,408) and sold for £201,000 ($254,276 including fees). Scottish artist Caroline Walker’s leisure pavilion (2013) fetched £350,000 ($442,769), more than double the low estimate. The work sold for £441,000 ($557,889) including fees.
Hammer prices for works by blue-chip names such as Lucio Fontana, Yayoi Kusama and Cy Twombly, however, fell short of their low estimates. For example, Cecily Brown kiss me stupid (1999) fell under the hammer at £2.9 million ($3.7 million), below the low estimate. But the sale price including fees of 3.5 million pounds ($4.5 million) at least allowed the seller to make a profit, as it was more than five times the sale price when the work was sold. was acquired at a Sotheby’s New York sale in 2008.
The seller of the work on paper of the South African artist Marlene Dumas Chained to bed for 15 years (1986), on the other hand, was not so lucky. It went under the hammer at £90,000 against the low estimate of £200,000 ($250,000). It sold for £113,400 ($143,393) including shipping, about 35% of the selling price (£325,000/$424,171) realized at the 2020 London Phillips sale.
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