http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/81bf36f8-882a-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896.html#axzz3rK2UleWH
Lucio Fontana’s stabbed-through egg-shaped canvas and Louise Bourgeois’s giant bronze spider sculpture set new records at Christie’s postwar and contemporary auction on Tuesday, supporting a solid night in a week of mixed results for the €51bnglobal art market.
The sale, which under star auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen sold 80 per cent of the 66 lots offered, brought in a hammer price of $290m, or $332m including fees.
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The Fontana sold to an anonymous bidder for $29.2m including fees, and the Bourgeouis spider went for $28.2m, against an estimate of $25m-$35m.
The sale followed Monday night’s curated auction at which Christie’s sold a Modigliani nude for a record $170.4m to a Chinese billionaire, as buyers focused on a few masterworks but only 71 per cent of the lots sold. The “hammer total” for Monday’s sale was $435m, just shy of Christie’s $439m low estimate. A Sunday evening auction at Phillips also fell short of expectations.
“This was really the first major test in public markets” after the volatility in financial markets in the summer, Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman of postwar and contemporary art, said after Tuesday’s sale. The high prices and depth of bidding showed “the market is healthy and I think it is selective,” he added.
His comments echo that of rival Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith, who said on Monday that bidders were getting “more discerning” and looking for high-quality pieces.
Tuesday’s biggest ticket item was Andy Warhol’s Four Marilyns, which sold for $36m including buyer’s fees — just two years after selling at Phillips for $38.2m. It was one of six Warhols on offer, but only one of two that sold. The other, a turquoise picture of an electric chair, sold for $11.6m with fees, above a $6m-$9m estimate.
Auction houses hammer it out as competition heats up
Sotheby’s says bidders are ‘sensitive to macroeconomic uncertainties’ despite record sale prices for art
Lucian Freud’s The Brigadier, on which a third party had provided the seller with a guarantee in the region of $30m, fetched $34.9m including fees.
The evening kicked off with a rush of estimate-beating interest in a group of Alexander Calders, several of which sold for multiples of the auction house’s high estimate.
That was driven by a few factors, including “incredibly low estimates, which created excitement and more importantly competition in the auction room and overseas,” as well as a compelling story of the previous owners’ close relationship with the artist, according to Sara Friedlander, the head of the sale. “Each Calder offered this evening was completely fresh to the market, in beautiful condition with excellent provenance and exhibition history”.
“There’s a return to classic art,” dealer Helly Nahmad said after the sale. “Calder and Fontana did extremely well. There was a lot of bidding from all over the world, including China.”
“Some of the younger artists, the estimates have been pushed too fast,” he added. Encouraged by surging prices in recent years, owners of such works have come to demand excessive estimates to entice them to market, but high estimates may make the works stagnate at auction, he said.
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