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Out from the ashes

Recent sales of contemporary art reveal a vibrant yet capricious rebound

Feb 17th 2010 | From The Economist online

The contemporary art business has bounced back faster than many expected, but the market still lacks the coherent drive of the boom. Whereas evening sales in 2007 had the exhilaration of a Formula One race, last week's contemporary sales at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips had a rambling feel, as if bidders were driving cross country in a wide range of vehicles.

Sotheby's

Sotheby's kicked off the week with an evening sale on February 10th that brought in £54.1m ($84.5m), the second-highest total for a February contemporary auction and three times more than last year's paltry £17.9m. Of the 79 lots on offer, more than half came from the highly credible but hitherto uncommercial collection of Gerhard and Anna Lenz, who have concentrated on a branch of apocalyptically minimal art called “Zero”. The artworks, which Sotheby's catalogue associated with “a grey emptiness... a cultural cemetery and a knowledge vacuum”, were not what you'd normally think of as surefire auction lots. Nevertheless, most of them were met with enthusiastic bidding and 19 works achieved record prices. Sotheby's European chairman of contemporary art, Cheyenne Westphal, explained that buyers “took great comfort in the time, care and consideration invested by Mr and Mrs Lenz in assembling such a coherent group.”

One historic lot was a rare set of three paintings by Roman Opalka, who has conceived his oeuvre since 1965 as a single continuous work in which he paints white numbers in order from one to infinity on consecutive, mostly grey canvases; each new painting starts the numbers where he last left off (see slideshow below). The “1-∞” paintings were initially offered as three separate lots, but the artist intervened after hearing about the sale and requested they be sold as a triptych. The buyer of the Opalkas told The Economist that the “marriage value” of the three works was worth the £713,250 he paid. “Opalka is one of the great artists of the conceptual era,” he said. “Three consecutive paintings tell the story of the incredible beauty that comes out of this intense labour.”

A 1961 “Fire” painting by Yves Klein entitled “F 88”, which features voids in the shape of naked women, was the most expensive lot of the Lenz consignment, reaching £3.3m. It was bought by a Swiss collector sitting in the room, who also acquired Klein’s “MG 25” for £1.7m and Lucio Fontana's copper relief, “Concetto Spaziale, New York 26”, for £3.1m (see slideshow). Loic Gouzer, a contemporary art specialist at Sotheby's, enthused, “Owning a Klein is like owning a fragment of another planet.”

No contemporary evening sale is complete these days without a Peter Doig. Sotheby's offered “Saint Anton (Flat Light)”, a large-scale snowy mountainscape, consigned by James Van Damme, who had acquired the painting from the Victoria Miro Gallery for £12,000 in 1996. The lot sold for £2.84m to an anonymous telephone bidder. When asked why he was selling, Mr Van Damme admitted that he was keen to buy a Trinidadian summer scene by the artist, adding that “Sotheby's did an amazing job convincing me to sell.” Many were surprised, including Mr Van Damme, when Mr Doig's “Concrete Cabin West Side” (see slideshow), from an earlier, more art-historically relevant series, sold for less—£2.1m—at Christie's the following night. Rumour has it that Roman Abramovich psyched out the competition; no one wants to bid against him.

On February 11th Christie's sold 90% of their 51 lots, bringing in a total of £39.1m—a nice step up from the £8.4m raised in the equivalent sale last year. Lot 1 raised an eyebrow or two: Matthew Day Jackson's 2007 depiction of Richard Buckminster Fuller in psychedelic glasses (see slideshow) soared over its high estimate of £40,000 to sell for £601,250 to Laurence Graff, a diamond dealer, sitting in the front row. Mr Graff had not heard of the young artist until he received Christie's catalogue, but he was “knocked out” when he saw the work up close. “I'm a jeweller. I know about execution and that painting is flawless,” said Mr Graff. “I didn't care what I paid.” Mr Graff went on to purchase a large red “Dollar Sign” painting by Andy Warhol and also the cover lot: Yves Klein's “Anthropométrie (ANT 5)”, a wood panel on which a woman's figure is outlined in the artist’s signature blue pigment, created as part of a series of six just before the artist's death at age 34 in 1962 (see slideshow).

Other triumphant lots included Klein's “Relief Eponge Or (RE 47II)”, which sold for £5.9m, the highest price of the week; Martin Kippenberger's “Fliegender Tanga (Flying Tanga)”, an early five-canvas extravaganza, which fetched £2.6m, the second-highest price ever paid for the artist at auction; and Alighiero Boetti's “Onomino”, a red pen “Biro” work from 1973, which achieved a record £1m for Boetti. As Francis Outred, the director of Christie's postwar and contemporary art department in Europe, saw it, “We've seen growth in the market when we're supposed to have been in recession. The prices of European postwar artists are catching up with their American counterparts.”

Following these sales was one at Phillips de Pury & Company on Friday night. At the end of the week, one needs some entertainment, and Simon de Pury, a flamboyant auctioneer with a rogue sense of humour, always accommodates. He hammered out £6.1m worth of art, mostly by younger artists selling for under £100,000. The top lots all sold for over £500,000—including two Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings, a Donald Judd wall sculpture, an exquisite little Gerhard Richter, “Abstrakes Bild”, and a fabulously perverse George Condo painting called “Father and Son” (see slideshow). Back in 2008 Phillips was thought to be in a precarious financial state, and in 2009 the company weathered some shaky sales, so it was good to see a sell-through rate of 86% by lot, 92% by value. After the sale, Henry Allsopp, who went from being a private dealer to a senior specialist at Phillips just a month ago, said earnestly, “I think the market wants a third auction house—a cooler place where contemporary art is the core business.”