Last year, most collectors didn’t feel confident enough to bid in person at Christie’s or Sotheby’s sales because of the ongoing pandemic. Today, both London auction houses are overrun with buyers and prospects.
Collectors flocked to the world’s leading auction house this spring, taking its total sales for the first half of the year to $4.1 billion, up 17% from the same period a year ago, Christie’s said. This figure includes US$3.5 billion in auction sales and US$600 million in art sales with private intermediaries.
Collectors were eager for the chance to put down their laptops and instead show up to pick up a palette for everything from drawings by Michelangelo to young painters like María Berrío, according to the firm.
A recent report by auction research firm ArtTactic revealed that Sotheby’s auctioned $3.2 billion worth of art during the first half of the year, up 12% from the same period last year.
Charles Stewart, chief executive of Sotheby’s, recently took stock of the world’s art market, in dialogue with the Wall Street Journal, and said he likes the picture he sees. The London sales mark the latest victory for the executive, who joined Sotheby’s after telecommunications giant Patrick Drahi bought the auction house for $3.7 billion three years ago.
Stewart, who previously worked in telecommunications and banking, had barely made the rounds to meet her international team when the pandemic hit. Overnight, he had to cancel hundreds of in-person auctions and have the company operate in a completely online marketplace. The company took a hit in 2020, reporting $5.5bn in sales, but hit $7.3bn last year, a record for the 278-year-old company.
“The art market is still very opaque, so we’re trying to lower the barriers and allow more people to feel comfortable buying art from us,” Stewart told the Wall Street Journal. “I will always be interested in expanding our reach.”
Amid a resurgence in the broader art market, Stewart, 52, said he has applied lessons learned from the telecommunications industry to expand access to Sotheby’s offerings by restructuring its online auctions to make them easier to sell. to find, live stream and click to bid. These moves are paying off now, even as the world reopens.
However, the manager admitted that the sector and that auction house is not immune to global economic problems “I think we are also seeing the importance of the global nature of our business. We have had collectors from more than 50 countries bidding on our sales , and whenever we notice stress or anxiety coming from country X, industry Y, category Z, the bidding is so wide that it offsets these concerns. That keeps prices strong.”
The market has also expanded to include people who are stepping in to bid at all levels, not just at the top. “And I think in general there is more interest in owning tangible physical objects right now. In a world of volatility and uncertainty, people yearn for things that last.”
“A lot of what makes our sales successful is experiencing them,” Bonnie Brennan, president of Christie’s Americas, told the same newspaper. “.
Christie’s returned to live sales last fall, and a series of high-profile auctions held in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong this spring helped revive the kind of adrenaline-fueled theater that typifies sales of art masterpieces. millions of dollars.
When Christie’s New York sold the most expensive painting of the season, an Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe, “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” valued at $195 million, to art dealer Larry Gagosian in May, dozens of people sat near he recorded all their offers with their mobile phones and applauded. after he dropped the gavel.
Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Christie’s, said the return of face-to-face activity combined with continued online participation has so far helped insulate the house from the turmoil seen in financial markets. Cerutti said the house sold 87% of its offers during the first half, a sign that the global market was able to absorb almost everything the house put up for auction at all price levels, not just masterpieces.
Cerutti said the market looks “resilient” over the next six months, but also admitted it has shown some cracks worth monitoring. So far, art has proven largely impervious to the downward pressure currently hitting stocks and cryptocurrency assets, but fears of a potential recession still linger.
The biggest sign of potential trouble has to do with the fact that Asian bidders, who have long dominated bidding on everything from luxury goods to sneakers to Gerhard Richter paintings, appear to be slowing down — a bit. For the first half of the year, Christie’s said Asians made up 22% of its global sales, down from 39% in the same period a year ago.
Add to that ongoing travel restrictions in mainland China, which could also be hitting art hub Hong Kong, where ArtTactic said overall sales at big houses fell 8.6% to $1.2bn during the first half. of the year.
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