Eyeblog

London Contemporary art sales set new records

Auction records fell like skittles at the recent London fine art sales as the bull market for Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art showed no sign of abating. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s returned their highest totals ever for their series of sales as London began to challenge New York as the most favourable place to consign important works.

Three factors are driving the current boom.

Firstly, the supply of Impressionist masterpieces has now dwindled to a trickle compared to the last great art boom in the late 1980s when Asian buyers were paying enormous prices for blue-chip works by Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne et al. This has the effect of making any great Impressionist, post-Impressionist or Expressionist painting that comes to market in the current climate seem even more attractive. Moreover, the paucity of great Modernist masterpieces has served to concentrate attention on contemporary art, of which there is obviously no shortage of supply.

Secondly, unprecedented levels of private wealth are now being generated, with hedge-fund managers and financial market traders taking a more active role in the market than ever before. More than ever before, art is now treated as a highly attractive means of diversifying investment portfolios.

Thirdly, the art market is now truly global. As the economies of India, China and Russia expand exponentially, so more millionaires are generated, thereby increasing the number of buyers seeking new ways to conspicuously display their wealth. Art remains one of the sexiest ways of doing that.

Sotheby’s contemporary art sale offered the first indication that buyers were in party mood. White Canoe, a 1990/91 oil on canvas by the contemporary Scottish painter Peter Doig (born 1959), stunned everyone when it sold to an anonymous bidder in the room for £5,732,000 ($11,301,211). Doig’s previous record had been £1.1 million ($2.1m) for Iron Hill at Sotheby’s only last June (2006). The fact that White Canoe had been in Charles Saatchi’s ‘Triumph of Painting’ exhibition in 2005 may have helped, but this was still an extraordinary leap in price for Doig. White Canoe is now the most expensive work ever sold at auction in Europe by a living painter.

Sotheby’s also offered German artist Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild of 1991, which set yet another new auction record when it realised £2,820,000 ($5,559,912), while £1,924,000 ($3.7m) changed hands for British painter Frank Auerbach’s 1977 oil on board Camden Theatre in the Rain. Once again, this was another new auction record for the artist, as was the £1,700,000 ($3.3m) for German photographer Andreas Gursky’s monumental 2001 Cibachrome diptych of the interior of a 99-cent supermarket store entitled 99 Cent II. This became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.

One more record at Sotheby’s worth noting was the £8,756,000 ($17.2m) paid for Russian Expressionist painter Chaim Soutine’s portrait L’Homme au Foulard Rouge of 1921 that provided the highpoint of their evening Impressionist and Modern sale.

A couple of days later, at their 8th February evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s most dramatic moment came when the late Francis Bacon’s 1956 Study for Portrait II — another of the artist’s obsessive re-workings of Velasquez’s 1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X — set a new auction record for the artist.  Fresh from the collection of film star Sophia Loren, it fetched £14,020,000 ($27.5m). 

One or two other interesting prices included £3,396,000 ($10.6m) for Andy Warhol’s 1974 rendering of screen sex-kitten Brigitte Bardot, while at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale on Tuesday 6th February Amedeo Modigliani’s La fillette au beret of 1918, brought £6,068,000 (£$11.8m), and Fernand Léger’s Les maisons dans les arbres of 1914, made £6,292,000 ($12.3m).

Modern and contemporary art is now one of the most precious commodities on earth. How long will the boom continue? Click back here for regular updates. 

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