London’s $148M Week, New Money Optimism & Picasso’s Big Year

I’m Marion Maneker, welcome back to Wall Power, where we’re going to preview the June sales in London next week. As the art market swings toward the close of its first semester of 2024, it’s beginning to sink in that many of the buyers who were fellow travelers have left the market—at least for now. (We’re back to the true believers.) I wouldn’t say the first half of the year was bad. And it’s definitely not anywhere near a buyer’s market yet—only a few people have had to puke up works for whatever someone would pay for them. For example, this María Berrío was bought for $1.5 million in 2022 by collector Dow Kim and resold 26 months later for a mere $440,000. Kim seems to have been selling a lot of work lately, but these sorts of sales have been few and far between. Today, I’m going to look at the art on offer at Sotheby’s on Tuesday, especially the Ralph Goldenberg collection. It is the kind of high-quality work from a recognized collector that seems to have been priced relatively conservatively, which is exactly what the market needs right now.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Hublot and Daniel Arsham redefine the pocket watch with the Arsham Droplet: an incredible piece of art that can also be enjoyed as a pendant or table clock.

But first…

The young and rich believe in art: There is a fear in the art market that as a generation of collectors ages out, new buyers won’t fill in behind them. An advisor heavily quoted by The New York Times put it this way in the paper’s Art Basel report earlier this month: “A lot of American collectors who were buying actively over the last 25 years are now aging out of the market.” It should come as a reassurance, however, that among 1,007 wealthy persons (with more than $3 million in assets) who answered a Bank of America survey, 83 percent of those aged 21-43 expressed interest in owning art. And, among those with more than $100,000 invested in art already, 78 percent of the younger group were hoping to buy art in the next 12 months.
Picasso still reigned in 2023 auctions: Art Price released its annual auction report that includes a ranking of the top 100 artists by auction volume. To no one’s surprise, Pablo Picasso remains the clear auction leader, with nearly $600 million in sales. At less than half that volume, Jean-Michel Basquiat was second with $238 million. Zhang Daqian, a Chinese classical painter, came in third at $230 million. Gerhard Richter ($214M), Andy Warhol ($198M), Claude Monet ($197M), René Magritte ($192M), Yayoi Kusama ($189M), Gustav Klimt ($169M), and Qi Baishi ($157M) rounded out the top 10.

A quick programming note…

This newsletter focuses on Sotheby’s Evening sale on Tuesday, June 25. In the next installment of Wall Power, I’ll include results from that sale along with a preview of the highlights of the Christie’s and Phillips sales, which take place on Thursday. Then, on Sunday, June 30, I’ll try to look at the Old Master sales in London. After that, the auction market will be on hiatus until mid-September. Enjoy Antibes, everyone!

Now, let’s get into it…

London Art Fog

The London sales may not have headline lots, but there are still plenty of opportunities for surprises… and this market sure needs surprises.

MARION MANEKER

The auction houses have already downgraded London’s June sales to a midseason exercise. Sotheby’s, with its £96 million in estimated sales, is the only auction house that really came to play. Christie’s has an aggregate presale estimate of £9.13 million; Phillips has work estimated at £12 million. Alas, while this year’s London sales have almost the same number of lots as they did last year, the overall value has dropped from £253 million in aggregate estimate a year ago to £117 million this week.A big chunk of last year’s total was the £65 million for Gustav Klimt’s stunning Lady With a Fan, which ultimately sold for $108 million. The absence of that huge lot is one main reason that the average presale value of a lot plummeted from £454,000 last year to £209,000 this year. The median lot value was £60,000 in 2023 but fell to £50,000 this year. But there are opportunities for potential pleasant surprises at Sotheby’s, which will define the market—a Basquiat and a Peyton, among others—starting with the Ralph Goldenberg collection. A Chicago trading executive who moved to London in 1999, Goldenberg began collecting art in the 1960s and eventually developed a taste for minimalism. Not a trophy hunter, Goldenberg immersed himself in the biography and oeuvre of the artists he collected, which caused one of his friends to observe that he collected the jewels, not the crown. Although the presale value of Goldenberg’s collection is only in the low eight figures, his reputation as a collector and the volume of works on offer may be well-suited to this sober market moment. Three of Robert Ryman’s works were the centerpiece of Goldenberg’s collection. The most valuable is the 5-foot-square Unfinished Painting, from 1965, which is estimated at £1.5 million. A much smaller, untitled work on linen from 1963 is estimated at £800,000 or almost $1 million. (That work is similar to one piece that just sold in New York for $1.8 million with fees.) A large Blinky Palermo painting from 1969 doesn’t have the color blocks of the German artist’s most valuable works at auction. But it is only estimated at £400,000, not anywhere near the $4 million asking price for a Palermo that just sold at Art Basel, or the $6.3 million record for the artist set at auction just last year. Other gems: Brice Marden’s small ink-on-paper work Hydra, from 1987-88, isn’t cheap at £400,000, but the price is set by a similar work that sold for about £400,000 with fees seven years ago. Presumably, time, inflation and the artist’s recent demise might suggest that’s a conservative estimate. There’s also a small Agnes Martin painting from 2001, untitled (of course!), that is estimated at £400,000. At least one of these little Martins made nearly $800,000 at auction eight years ago. The total volume of auction sales for Martin’s work has increased continually over the previous three years—there’s reason to believe knowledgeable Martin collectors will show up for this one. Lastly, there’s a Cy Twombly, Untitled (Formian Dreams + Actuality), from 1983, that is the same size and in a similar color palette as another work on paper from 1982 that sold for $3 million a decade ago—which was, admittedly, a very different market for Twombly’s work. This one is estimated at £1.2 million, or half the price of that other work. An Ellsworth Kelly, Black Panel With Curve, from 1999, is estimated at £1.4 million with a nod to the similar work that sold in 2018 for $2.6 million with fees. Goldenberg is just the kind of well-respected, long-term collector the market thrives on. Two years ago, the David Solinger collection helped illustrate the depth of demand for high-quality works acquired without too much flash. On a smaller scale, Goldenberg’s art has the potential to do the same.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Hublot and Daniel Arsham redefine the pocket watch with the Arsham Droplet: an incredible piece of art that can also be enjoyed as a pendant or table clock.

Basquiat 2.0

Sotheby’s will also be offering Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, a three-panel work made during his peak year of 1982. The work is estimated at £15 million. The same work was offered two years ago with a $30 million estimate at Christie’s and was withdrawn by the consignor.Unfortunately, the art press has already explained this turnaround as the result of “a significant decline in value.” But that’s pure sophistry, since that’s not how this all works. Estimates are not appraisals, they’re marketing tools, just as gallery and art fair prices are not absolute prices but rather the beginning of a bargaining process. A work of art is only worth what someone will pay for it, and the price tags are just signals. In the auction world, an estimate offers potential buyers a clue about the seller’s reserve price. (You can’t set the reserve above the estimate.) The auction house would prefer that all estimates fall well below the expected current market value to attract bidders, but that would also mean the seller would have to accept, if it came to that, the lower estimate. Two years ago, the art market was raging but no one was interested in bidding $30 million for this Basquiat self-portrait. Now, in a much more subdued market, the £15 million estimate doesn’t seem cheap, but it’s also not unattainable. In fact, Sotheby’s has an irrevocable bid on the work that now makes the painting “worth” £15 million because someone has agreed to pay at least something near that. On Tuesday, we’ll find out if there’s anyone else willing to bid and how far it may go.

Some More Goodies

Elizabeth Peyton, who often works on a small scale from photographs of famous persons, has seen a revival in her market. This May, her record price of $2.4 million was tied with the sale of Matthew, from 1997. The previous $2.4 million sale took place two years earlier for Nick With His Eyes Shut, from 2003. Her work first crossed the $2 million barrier in 2021, when another small portrait of David Bowie, painted in 2012, sold for a hair above $2 million.Her portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which will hit the block on Tuesday, was painted in 1995 but depicts a much younger Elizabeth in keeping with Peyton’s idealized images of glamour and fame. Adding to the painting’s appeal, the consignor is the only collector to have owned the painting. Estimated at £300,000, we’ll see where this one goes. Tamara de Lempicka was once prized by celebrities and fashion designers. They drove her art deco portraits to peak prices in 2011 that reached $8.4 million. Following that rise in market activity, a painting assumed to be lost, Nu Adossé I, from 1925, was rediscovered and sold for $5.4 million in 2012. A few more of Lempicka’s paintings sold at the $5 million level as late as 2013 and 2015. It is now being sold this week with a £6 million estimate, or about $7.6 million.

Lempicka’s market has rebounded in recent years after a slight scarcity of works on offer. A pair of “confirmation” sales, at $9.4 million in 2020 and $7.8 million in 2021, showed that buyers would still value quality works by the artist at something like the new price level. That was borne out in 2022 when $14.1 million was paid for a 1928 portrait, and again in 2023 when Fillette en rose, from 1928, was bought for $14.7 million. If Nu Adossé I sells for the £6 million estimate, it would result in a 55 percent or so gain in value. By comparison, the $21 million work sold in 2020 had been purchased at auction from fashion designer Wolfgang Joop for $4.9 million. That’s a 300 percent rise in value. Sotheby’s is clearly playing it safe with the £6 million estimate and hoping there will be similar interest in Nu Adossé I.Major works by Paula Rego, the Portuguese-British artist who was also mother-in-law to sculptor Ron Mueck, rarely come to market. The last one to sell, just this past October, was a large diptych that set a new record for the artist at $3.8 million. Often when we see a new record price in an artist’s market, that brings out other high-quality works to test their value. In this case, Sotheby’s has secured Meadow from 1996, a period when Rego’s compositions drew heavily upon imagery from Walt Disney. Although the painting does not use characters from Walt Disney, the composition relies upon those works. This work is already estimated at £2 million, which would make it her second-highest auction price, though the consignor has eschewed both a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, which adds a bit of drama to the sale.

Picasso & Kusama

There’s a surprising absence of works by Pablo Picasso on the art market, even though he was the number one artist in auction sales last year by a large margin. (We’ve seen a similar disappearing act with Andy Warhol in recent years.) To help us better understand what’s going on there, Sotheby’s has conveniently brought a 1922 late Cubist work, Guitare sur un tapis rouge, to market with a £10 million estimate. Twenty years ago, this minor work by the master was sold for $3.2 million. The consignor is offering the work “naked,” no guarantee or irrevocable bid. So we’ll see some measure of the Picasso market. At its estimate of £10 million, the price to the new buyer would be around $14 million with fees. That represents a four-fold increase over the previous sale, a gain realized across two decades. Will the consignor be able to access these gains? I’ll be curious to see.Yayoi Kusama’s fame has never been greater. The 95-year-old artist regularly posts some of the highest attendance numbers for her exhibitions, which take place regularly around the world. Curiously, her most valuable work at auction was a 1959 painting that sold for just under $10.5 million two years ago. Four times in the last 16 years, a white infinity net painting from 1959 or 1960 has set the record price for the artist. Over the last three years, the global auction volume of her art has consistently risen from $102 million to $130 million, well above the previous high-water mark of $70 million set in 2018. So far in 2024, Kusama has sold $64 million at auction and looks to be on pace to beat last year’s totals. At Sotheby’s, the 1990 work The Sea in the Evening Glow (B) Facing the Imminent Death is estimated at £900,000, even though a work of a similar size, color, and date (only five years apart) was sold at Bonhams in May for nearly $6 million. Those two works may not be related, but Sotheby’s pitch is that this work—with its reference to bodies of water, etcetera—connects to some of her most prized works from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which have all sold for prices above $3 million. All of that is auction house marketing, but that’s how markets are made.

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