Christie’s New York auction of the art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, passed the historic $1 billion mark on Wednesday evening, with works by Van Gogh, Cézanne showering records or Gauguin.
A sign that the art market continues to progress despite the economic uncertainties related to the war in Ukraine and inflation, five paintings entered the restricted circle of works sold at auction for over 100 million dollars during this memorable evening at Rockefeller Center of Manhattan.
The most expensive, “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version)” (1888) by Georges Seurat, a painting considered a masterpiece of Pointillism, another version of which is exhibited at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, fetched 149.24 million dollars including tax, Christie’s said. The company did not provide information on the identity of the buyers, which is customary for auction houses.
Christie’s, controlled by François Pinault’s holding Artémis, had announced that the entire amount of the sales would be donated to charity. Despite his falling out with Bill Gates, his partner in the 1975 birth of Microsoft, American billionaire Paul Allen, had signed his “Giving Pledge” in 2009, pledging to donate most of his fortune.
– Multi-talented billionaire –
While only 60 of the 150 lots were sold on Wednesday – the rest will be Thursday – the value of the collection has already surpassed the previous record of the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, which reached $922 million at competitor Sotheby’s in spring. According to a calculation by AFP, the sale was about $1.5 billion.
Topped the billion mark was lot number 32, a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Woman of Venice III, which sold for $25 million, an almost trivial figure Wednesday night, in the crowded Christie’s auction hall.
From the German-American painter-sculptor Max Ernst, whose sculpture “The king playing with the queen” fetched $24.3 million, to the American Jasper Johns, one of the few living artists in the collection, whose lithograph “Small False Start” , which sold for 55.35 million, passing through Diego Rivera and Lucian Freud, numerous auction records for artists fell one after another.
This avalanche is testament to the quality of the collection amassed by Paul Allen, a billionaire handyman, who had founded a “pop culture” museum in his hometown of Seattle, and who owned several sports franchises, including the Seattle Seahawk.
– Safe investment –
Thus, after “Les Poseuses” by Georges Seurat, a “Montagne Sainte-Victoire” (1888-1890) by Paul Cézanne, announcing Cubism, reached 137.79 million.
Records were also broken for Vincent Van Gogh, whose ‘Orchard with Cypresses’ sold for $117.1 million, or for Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian period painting, ‘Maternity II’ (1899), went to $105.73 million. A work by Gustav Klimt, “Birch Forest”, fetched $104.5 million, another record.
With these sales, and that of a portrait of Marilyn Monroe “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” by Andy Warhol, which started in May for 195 million dollars, the year 2022 should remain one of the most expensive in the history of the art market.
According to auction house experts, art is more than ever a safe investment in the eyes of the wealthiest, despite an uncertain economic context.
“Clients want to diversify their assets, to take advantage of art and because they know that most works continue to increase in value over time,” the co-president of the Impressionists and Moderns Association Christie’s Art Department, Adrien Meyer.
“There are more billionaires than masterpieces” available on the market, he summarized, and “the demand is very diverse”, with an increasingly strong presence of customers from Asia and the Middle East. .
