Art sales: review of 2011

It has been an uneven year for the art market, starting like an express train, but finishing slightly out of puff. The auction houses will not produce their annual sales reports until next year, but figures on Sotheby’s website indicate that there has been a 12.2 per cent rise in its worldwide auction sales to $4.9 billion. However, while sales up to the end of July were generally meeting and sometimes exceeding expectations, since September, in Europe and the UK, they have consistently fallen below their estimates. Although there are exceptions, the trend suggests that the eurozone crisis has taken its toll.

In addition to auction sales, there will also be private sales, an increasingly popular part of the auctioneers’ business that takes place behind closed doors. Last year, private sales accounted for 10 per cent of business at Sotheby’s and Christie’s at $1 billion. During the first six months of this year, Christie’s increased its private sales by 57 per cent, and Sotheby’s by 114 per cent, as it recorded its best first six months ever. In spite of the private sale of four Matisse bronzes for an estimated $120 million in November, it is uncertain whether Sotheby’s will reach the record $6.2 billion for a year, achieved in 2007, but it will be close. The biggest money spinners, as ever, have been modern and contemporary art, but whereas blue-chip Impressionist and modern art dominated the recessionary period of 2009 and early 2010, the market this year has seen a swing back to post-war and contemporary art, especially in New York, where contemporary art sales have surged ahead.

A major feature of the modern market has been the strong prices for surrealist art. In February, a record 13.5 million was paid in London for Salvador Dali’s Portrait of Paul Eluard, as well as a record 2.5 million for a work on paper by Magritte. In New York in May, a Russian buyer paid a record $9 million for a painting by the Belgian Paul Delvaux, and in November a painting by Max Ernst sold for a record $16.3 million.

The biggest flop of the year for the Impressionists was the over-valued Degas sculpture Petit Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, which, estimated at $25 million to $35 million, was passed at Christie’s in New York in November without a bid.

Knowing quite when the new buyers from Asia, Russia or the Middle East would strike was the name of the game. While none fell for the Degas, an Asian buyer did claim the top Picasso, a portrait of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walther, at $21.4 million in New York’s May sales. Russian buyers claimed the top Francis Bacons of the year, including three small portraits of Lucian Freud, for 23 million in London, while competition between Russian and Asian buyers for abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, such as can still be seen in the Richter exhibition at Tate Modern, drove prices to a record $21 million in November.

Two of the top 10 highest prices of the year were paid in London for Old Masters from old British collections. Francesco Guardi’s exceptionally large view of the Rialto Bridge in Venice will be going abroad unless funds can be found to match the 27 million paid for it, while George Stubbs’s sporting masterpiece, Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, sold for 22.4 million, the third highest price ever for an Old Master. Meanwhile, a rediscovered Leonardo is on loan to an exhibition in the National Gallery with a mooted $200 million value attached to it.

The top prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s were for American abstract expressionist and Pop art. The previously underrated Clyfford Still soared to a record $62 million, while a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon-style painting fetched $43 million. In a highly plausible account of the sales, The Economist has suggested that both paintings were guaranteed by the Qatari Royal Family, and then bought by them.

But the most expensive painting at auction was not in London, Paris or New York, but in Beijing. In May, a traditional ink and brush painting by China’s biggest selling artist, Qi Baishi, of an eagle standing on a pine tree flanked by calligraphic scrolls, sold for $65 million at China Guardian Auctions. The Chinese market may have cooled down of late, and may have less reliable standards of reporting concerning sales, but when the analysis is done, it will be shown how close China is to becoming the largest art and antiques market in the world.