FINANCIAL CRISIS DAMPENS LONDON AUCTION RESULTS
Evening sales of postwar and contemporary art by Sotheby’s, Christie’s International, and Phillips de Pury made a combined total of approximately $102 million, against minimum estimates of $179.5 million, according to Bloomberg calculations. They follow a five-day auction by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong this month that raised $141.7 million, also about half the presale estimate, as buyers shunned some top lots for being too expensive. “These are old prices,” said New York dealer Alberto Mugrabi, whose family owns one of the largest Warhol collections, explaining why he let one Warhol work pass at Christie’s. “They would have to be readjusted. It can’t be readjusted for every industry in the world and not for the art market.”
The auctions, coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair, were the first test of the market since governments bailed out more banks and stock markets crashed. Dealers were watching for clues on what will happen at New York sales in November.
The Christie’s evening contemporary-art sale raised $55 million, according to Reuters, a sum that includes buyers’ premiums of 12 percent for the top lots. Christie’s failed to sell 45 percent of the forty-seven lots on offer. There was a hush in the crowded room as auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen knocked down the lots in less than an hour. Pylkkanen looked to Mugrabi for a bid when he offered Warhol’s Nine Multicolored Marilyns from the “Reversal” series, estimated to fetch at least $3.7 million. Mugrabi offered $3.1 million and declined to go up to $3.2 million. The bid didn’t meet the reserve level and the artwork was bought in by the London-based auction house. The Warhol was one of six lots on which Christie’s had promised sellers a minimum price regardless of the outcome. Three of these failed to sell, including Bacon’s Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, 1969. These failed guaranteed lots were expected to fetch approximately $13.5 million.
Meanwhile, Sotheby’s sixty-two-lot sale on October 17 fetched over $37 million with fees. Sotheby’s had estimated that it would raise a total of between $51 million and $72.5 million, according to Bloomberg. Urmee Khan notes in The Telegraph that even the highest-selling lot in the auction, Andy Warhol’s series of ten skull paintings, sold for $1 million less than its lowest estimate at $7.3 million. The composite work, which joined ten previously separate works together, was the highlight of a contemporary art sale at Sotheby’s and was bought by an unnamed US dealer.
Phillips de Pury’s seventy-lot sale on October 18 fetched $8.5 million with fees, against a lower estimate of $31.5 million. Forty-six percent of the Phillips lots failed to find buyers, including works by Murakami and Prince.
