| In This Issue |
| Record in France |
The elongated head sculptures of Modigliani are back in the limelight (no pun intended). In France, On June 15, 2010, the sculptured stone head Tête sold for $52.8M including commissions, breaking the record for a Modigliani and the highest record at an auction in France.
| Sotheby’s Evening sale of Modern and Impressionist Art |
No one expected Sotheby’s sale to be nearly as big, without the presence of another blockbuster lot like the Picasso. The sale was led by Matisse's "Bouquet de fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet" which fetched $28.64M and a grand auction total of $204M which was just below the high estimate.
| Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction |
For weeks before the auction there was debate as to whether or not the abstract red Rothko was David Martinez, and alas, despite his protestations before the auction, it is revealed he was in fact the seller.
| Artist Trends |
Everywhere we look people are trying to summarize which artists are having their moment in the market. While Kelly Crow of the WSJ is mostly right (we were rather prescient in calling Calder’s moment last year), Hirst may have slowed down on the auction circuit but he has remained vibrant on the private secondary market. To all these trends we would like to add the serious decline in interest in Contemporary Chinese Art by Europeans, Americans and Russians. One can’t help but be shocked by the lack of Chinese artists present in the important evening sales.
| Phillips du Pury Contemporary Season |
Halsey Minor was forced to part with some of his collection, and since he is on the “no-bid” list at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Phillips handled the sale. Mr. Minor owes money to a Bank of America affiliate for a delinquent loan, Sotheby’s and Merrill Lynch (and probably a host of other people). In fact, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman’s statement stated, “Sotheby’s has a judgment lien on any sales proceeds in excess of the amounts payable to Phillips and Merrill Lynch as a result of an order entered by the court in Merrill Lynch’s action against Mr. Minor.”Mr. Minor’s 33 works (22 of which were sold in the evening sale) included an important Ruscha painting, “Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk,” from 1965 which garnered $3.2M, and a highly desirable 2004 Richard Price Nurse painting which took in $6.5M.
The total for Phillips 2 day sale was $45,674,125, including premiums.
| Next Steps for the Rose Collection of Brandeis University |
Over a year ago, Brandeis University announced they were closing the doors to the beloved Rose Art museum. It seems like they are not going to deaccession the artwork but instead loan the artworks out through Sotheby’s for profit to other museums or institutions.
| RIP Louise Bourgeois |
Louise Bourgeois, the eminent artist has died. Words can do justice to the impact that she had on modern art. She lives through so many paradigm shifts in the art world from pre-war Europe, where she grew up in France to her emigration to America right before World War II. Her constant contemplation of gender, the ubiquity of phallic shapes and her memorable but challenging sculptural forms made her an icon and important artist. She was that rare artist who could both haunt and intellectually challenge the viewer.
| June, 2010 |
Dear Friends,
Happy Summer! Those of us here in New York emerged from May extremely wet from what seemed like interminable rain. It was great seeing many of you at the auctions in early and mid May and we look forward to your visits to our Upper East Side gallery.
June is going to be a hectic month between the international attention on the World Cup and the potentially record breaking sale of Modern and Impressionist works at Christie’s London.
We have a lot of new inventory and Benrimon Contemporary LLC, being run by Leon Benrimon, looks magnificent and has had two fantastic shows thus far. See the images below from the recent Fleurs show just completed.
As always feel free to call or email us with any special requests for purchase or sale.
Yours,
David Benrimon
There must be a slight disconnect across that small little pond we call the Atlantic Ocean. The prints at the end of March in London commanded very serious sums but upon appearing here in New York, the bidders must have been locked off the internet and phone lines down because the results were drastically reduced. While important works by Duchamp beat their high estimate, the majority of prints garnered little attention and even less bidding. The high point was probably Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise (“The Box in a Valise”) which sold for $92,500 despite a $70,000 high estimate.
The three major auction houses, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips du Pury, expected to sell $803M over the two weeks of New York auctions (both Contemporary and Impressionist/Modern), which is substantially more than last year but only 60% of the $1.4B achieved during the market peak two years ago (subscription to Wall Street Journal required).
Whispers in the hallway, “$100 million is not happening tonight.” Yet, the Picasso “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” made the $106.5 including commissions. The buyer is unknown, but this writer agrees with Judd Tully. That buyer overpaid. Not to mention Souren Melikian’s subliminal message that Christie’s marketing team was more instrumental in the record sale than the work’s aesthetics. Melikian went so far as to say that it is an important year and wall space killer, but it was painted in the course of a day (one day’s work of even Picasso is not worth that much) and there are more beautiful Picassos still on the market. We also agree with Mr. Tully that the four big lots were all overvalued, especially the Giacometti sculpture “Grand Tete Mince.” No need to reiterate his research.
To add insult to injury Mr. Saltz, the eminent art critic, took to facebook to lambast the Picasso purchaser with this diatribe, “Dear imbecilic anonymous telephone bidder who paid a record $106 million for a 1932 Picasso @ Christie’s. You think you’re an art lover. Sorry. Had you taken $106 mill. & bought a gigantic building in the West 40s in NYC: 500,000 sq. ft.; & simply rented space ONLY AT COST to 100 good galleries & 100 artist studios you’d... have changed American art & the American art world, forever.” We could not agree more and with budget cuts at museums (including the Seattle Art Museum) and some even closing their doors, a real arts patron should also consider the public good.
In addition, Christie’s was pleased to report a near-perfect record, of the 79 lots only one passed, for the sale of the Brody collection, including an additional 52 items offered in Wednesday’s Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper sale. The Brody lots at the Spring New York sale brought in a total of $225,899,900 with sell-through rates of 99% by value.
Christie’s, which could boast it had sold seven other 1932 Picassos over the past two decades, won the day with an offer that included a complex financial inducement: a guarantee reputedly worth $150M covering all the works, and the involvement of a private collector who guaranteed the three main works in the sale. If the paintings failed to sell, he would pay the guarantee and keep the works himself.
Out of 79 lots, all but 5 sold and many of them well for a total of $232M including commissions. This was above the high estimate of $204M. This also included the fantastic sums paid for works from the Michael Crichton collection, which includes artworks that created artist records for both Jasper Johns and Sam Francis. The recurring theme in the Crichton collection was as Souren Melikian put it so aptly, “The works on offer were so disparate that one would be hard put to find any other common denominator, or indeed any aesthetic explanation, for their unwavering success.”
Yves Klein’s magnificent, conceptual work “"ANT 93, Le Buffle (The Buffalo)," was also set for the auction block and was hammered down at $12.4M including fees.
The bargain of the evening, if anything in this price range can be considered a bargain, was the $5.4M that Mr. Jon Colby paid for Warhol’s “Holly Solomon”. The painting is a 9 image canvas of Ms. Solomon with a low estimate of $7M.
How do we fix the Latin American auctions? There are two quick ways to fix the auction. Either make the evening sales shorter and limit the lots available for purchase to under 60 like the auction houses are already doing for the Contemporary and Modern/Impressionist auctions or drop the Latin American Evening auction altogether. It makes no sense to have works in the evening sale with low estimates of $20,000 or selling for $23,750.
David Benrimon Fine Art
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