New Buyers with New Money Push Christie’s Contemporary Sale to New Heights
Christie’s has established a new benchmark for the Contemporary art market, $745m for a single evening sale and $879m for the combined evening sales this week. In many ways, the two sales were one event divided into works for collectors and those for the new buyers entering the market at the very top. These new buyers are snapping up works that have been validated earlier by the market.
Although the headlines are all breathless about the sale totals—and many of the grizzled market pros are quoted expressing dismay about the prices—what Christie’s showed last night is how to run a well-ordered market. More than any other department in any other auction house, Christie’s Contemporary crew has a handle on who will buy what.
Carol Vogel noted the influx of new buyers eager to snap up works by recognizable names:
Tuesday night’s sale, however, was the highest total for a single auction, not accounting for inflation, in Christie’s history, officials at the auction house said, adding that about 30 percent of the buyers were new to Christie’s. Of the 72 works on offer, only four failed to sell.But Dan Duray revealed the prevalence of guarantees dampened a lot of the bidding which made for a more orderly and manageable sale:
Even the record-breaking Barnett Newman, the evening’s top lot, which sold for $84 million (nearly doubling a previous record set at Sotheby’s last May, and impressively topping its $50 million estimate), sold to a standing order in the book, a tepid late sale battle that included just three bidders.One reason the bidding was so subdued is that the new money is coming in over the top of the traditional buyers at auction. Many stalwart names in the art market fled from the auction room frustrated. Judd Tully captured some of that tone:
Such displays felt representative of much of the night, with many lots garnering just two bidders.
“I tried,” said New York dealer Robert Mnuchin, one of the underbidders on the de Kooning. “But I didn’t buy anything.”So who did the buying last night? Christie’s China lead bought 30% of the sale’s value herself, according to Tully’s tally....MORE
That was a refrain expressed by a number of frustrated bidders, blown away by the depth of this market.
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