DISCOURAGING RESULTS AT CHRISTIE’S AND SOTHEBY’S MODERN AND IMPRESSIONIST SALES
Carol Vogel reports in the New York Times that last night, works by a wide range of artists—from Manet, Cézanne, and Renoir to Rothko and de Kooning—failed to sell at Christie’s, while many art objects went for far less than what they would have a year ago. “It’s all down to estimates, and people were frightened,” said James Roundell, a London dealer. Early in the summer, Christie’s secured art collections from the estates of two New York philanthropists: Rita K. Hillman, who was president of the Alex Hillman Family Foundation, named for her husband, a publisher who died in 1968; and Alice Lawrence, the widow of Sylvan Lawrence, a Manhattan real estate developer who died in 1981. Since both collections center on late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, Christie’s decided to put the two collections together and hold a special sale named “The Modern Age.” The two collections brought a total of $47 million, less than half of its $104 million low estimate. Of the fifty-eight lots, seventeen failed to sell.
From a sales standpoint, estate items are usually attractive because they are perceived as fresh material that has not been on the market for years. But in this case, the works were not good enough to warrant the estimated prices, given the grim financial climate. “The estimates were from an earlier time, and the market has changed now,” said Christopher Burge, honorary chairman of Christie’s in America and the evening’s auctioneer. Of the thirty works from the Lawrence collection, the highlight was expected to be No. 43 (Mauve), 1960, by Mark Rothko. The dark abstract canvas was estimated at $20 million to $30 million, far beyond the $1.5 million the couple paid for it at Sotheby’s in 1988. Burge opened the bidding at $10 million, but he had no takers.
Bloomberg has also reported that Sotheby’s failed to sell a third of the lots at its Impressionist and modern art auction in New York. Just 64 percent of the seventy lots found buyers, the lowest rate for an Impressionist evening sale at Sotheby’s since May 2001. The $223.8 million tally was a third below the $338 million low estimate. “The market just corrected,” said John Good, a director at Gagosian Gallery, as he and about eight hundred others departed Sotheby’s salesroom. Among the bright spots, Kazimir Malevich’s geometric 1916 Suprematist Composition sold for a record $60 million to a lone bidder. Henry Kravis’s elegant Edgar Degas ballerina pastel made $37 million, also an auction record for the artist. In a press conference following the sale, auctioneer Tobias Meyer cited a “changed financial environment” for what he referred to as a “new market” for art. “You just need to look outside the window to see we’re in a new world,” Meyer told reporters. “But this new world still needs art.”
