Or what has happened at the latest Evening Auctions in London
Yesterday Sotheby's was handed a tough pill to swallow: its star lot of the Evening Sale - Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild , (1986) - which was estimated to sell for £16 - 24 million, did not sell at all. The entire sale saw lackluster results, generating only £30.1 million against the revised estimates of £39.9 - 57.9 million.
Christie's 20/21 Century Evening auction today was more upbeat, grossing £44.7 million. Although it demonstrated very vividly that merely artworks by blue-chip names are no longer enough. The buyers are selective as ever. It has to be THE work, the best from the oeuvre of that artist, to generate sufficient interest for high-stakes bidding. To put it in perspective, some household names, like Yayoi Kusama, Flame, (1992), est. 1.8 - 2.5 million , Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attesa, (1967), est. £800,000 - 1.2 million and Any Warhol Diamond Dust Shoes, (1980), est. 1.5 - 2 million failed to sell.
Albeit just a night ago, similar work of identical size from the same Diamond Dust Shoes series by Andy Warhol and produced in the same year, 1980, smashed Sotheby's presale estimates of £1.2 - 1.8 million by selling for £3,315,000. What was the difference, you may ask? Color. Cute pinks vs. pale terracotta and blue hues.
The same has happened to Yayoi Kusama, but in that case pink color was working against her. That work was not the strongest and most recognizable from her oeuvre to command millions.
Left: Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, (1980). Sold at Sotheby's.
Right: Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, (1980). Unsold at Christie's.
On the other side of the spectrum, young artists, less familiar to art outsiders, like Pam Evelyn, Louis Fratino and Jonathan Gardner, went well beyond their works' estimates, doubling or even tripling them. The late Salvo has surpassed his more than five (!) times, realizing £693,000 for the painting Il giorno fu pieno di lampi la sera verranno le stelle (The day was full of lightning in the evening stars will come out), (1991) against the estimates of £80,000 - 120,000.
What does this say about the state of affairs in the current art market?
S for selectivity. It is the order of the day. Unless the work in question is stylistically representative of the artist and is the best in his body of work, buyers are quite reluctant to cash out millions, just because the author of it is considered"blue chip".
Partially because of stubbornly high interest rates, ongoing military conflicts and global instability, recycling the same "beat up blue chip" works, in the words of Amy Cappellazzo stopped being profitable. The problem is not with the works' intrinsic value or aesthetic characteristics per se, but with the overblown price expectations of the market. The prices for some of the most well-known artists had become so exorbitantly high, that they went almost from the "store of value" to "drain of value". There's no more room for growth, it would seem like.
Hence, the buyers have shifted their focus to either the best of the oeuvre of blue chip, or more moderately priced, less in the spotlight, young or overlooked artist with potential for future increase in value and fresh visual aesthetic - a reset in the market was needed and brewing not only due to wider economic factors and changing generations of collectors, but because overpriced recycled Blue Chip stopped offering excitement. We have been seeing it too often.
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