Art: in New York, auctions look grim

Fall depressed. Last week, for one of the highlights of the artistic season, New York auctions for impressionist, modern and contemporary art fell 45% from 2018. The leading art market in the world The world is also the most speculative, particularly sensitive to geopolitical developments. However, trade tensions between the United States and China, the riots in Hong Kong, the uncertainties around Brexit and others have cooled the sellers, who have not let go of their finest trophies.

To make matters worse, the “three Ds” – death, divorces, debts -, generating the transfer of major documents, were not there either. This will not be the case in the next New York vacation, with the expected sale of a collection at more than 700 million dollars following the divorce of real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his wife, Linda.

Fragile market

Waiting, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips still collected $ 1.4 billion (1.2 billion euros) and maintained good sales rates, often around 90% of lots sold. If the quantity was there, with more than 2,000 lots on offer, he missed these flagship works creating the buzz such as “Les Meules” by Monet ($ 110.7 million) in May 2019.

In impressionist and modern art, sales have fallen by nearly 40% since last year. Sotheby’s totaled $ 209 million in evening sales – with, among others, “The Bridge of Charing Cross”, by Monet, sold 28 million – while Christie’s collected for $ 191.9 million. But 43 works presented at these two auction giants obtained less than their low estimates, proof of a certain fragility of the market. And Asian collectors were less present than in November 2018, when they had acquired twenty of the most expensive works of Impressionist and modern art.

Including daytime sales Sotheby’s gets $ 262.3 million and Christie’s $ 228.2 million.

Edward Ruscha starred

In post-war and contemporary art, sales have been down nearly 50% since fall 2018. Christie’s posted evening sales $ 325.3 million in sales, with a single lot exceeding the 50 million: “Hurting the Word Radio # 2”, by Edward Ruscha (52.5 million). Sotheby’s, for its part, obtained 270.6 million dollars, in particular thanks to a De Kooning carried away for 30.1 million and the “Blue Over Red” of Rothko sold 26.5 million.

With daytime sales, Christie’s totals $ 442.4 million in this category and Sotheby’s $ 372 million.

The challenger, Phillips, is doing well. Focused on contemporary art, his offer brought in $ 108 million, up 22% over last year: he is a real competitor of Christie’s and Sotheby’s on the intermediate segment of the market in this specialty, such as this “Red Bar” by abstract painter Sean Scully, which sold for $ 1.8 million. At Phillips as at Sotheby’s, the Chinese were definitely more offensive on contemporary art sales than on Impressionist art.

The generally mixed results of these New York auctions also call into question the economic model of the big houses: Christie’s and Sotheby’s have both engaged in aggressive strategies to develop their private sales, which are much more profitable than public sales, which generate costs of colossal marketing (catalogs, exhibitions, etc.). Perhaps behind the scenes, these over-the-counter sales were very active, to the detriment of the hammer-type ones. Neither of these two companies is now listed (Christie’s, property of Pinault and Sotheby’s, of Drahi), difficult to decide the question.

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