Frieze cancels major London art fairs
Plus: US grand jury indicts Inigo Philbrick; BA offers first-class Bridget Riley; James Murdoch aims for a slice of Art Basel company
The fate of London’s Frieze fairs was sealed this week when organisers made the unfortunate but inevitable decision to cancel the events planned for October. “Due to considerable logistical challenges regarding Covid-19 (coronavirus), including continued restrictions placed on events and the complications around travel quarantine, we have no choice,” wrote the Frieze directors in an email to exhibitors this week. UK government guidance is slim on the future of mass events but socialising indoors is currently limited to two households while larger gatherings for, say, weddings or funerals are restricted to 30 people.
As has come to be the norm, an online Viewing Room will replace the Frieze London and Frieze Masters tents in Regent’s Park, while conversations are still ongoing about ways to support galleries during the week, a spokeswoman says. There has been talk of a galvanising event through London Collective, a recently pooled group of galleries, but this is still at an embryonic stage.
The PAD London fair has also announced that its October 2020 event has been cancelled while organisers of the coinciding 1-54 African art fair and Photo London, the latter postponed from May, are biding their time. “The alignment with Frieze was important to us, we are thinking about it carefully,” says Photo London co-founder Michael Benson. Many gallerists now doubt that any such major events will happen this side of Christmas.
A US grand jury has indicted the art dealer Inigo Philbrick, recently captured by the FBI on a South Pacific island, on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The criminal indictment, filed on July 13, sets out that Philbrick “knowingly transferred, possessed, and used, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person”, including using the name and signature of an employee of an auction house “to create a false and fraudulent consignment agreement”. Philbrick is required to forfeit any property from the proceeds derived from his alleged offence.
At the time of Philbrick’s arrest last month, the US Attorney Geoffrey S Berman said: “As alleged, Inigo Philbrick was a serial swindler who misled art collectors, investors and lenders out of more than $20 million.” Philbrick’s lawyer Peter Brill tells The Art Newspaper that Philbrick entered a plea of not guilty and is being held by authorities in New York.
Sotheby’s has confirmed the 17 works on offer from the British Airways collection, the first (public) distress sale since the Covid-19 pandemic. In June, the airline announced plans to cut its workforce by up to 30 per cent on the back of the dismal aviation environment.
‘Cool Edge’ by Bridget Riley (1982)
Its offered works are estimated to make up to £1.4m and are topped by Bridget Riley’s “Cool Edge” (1982, est £800,000-£1.2m). This hung in the airline’s first class lounge in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and will be offered in Sotheby’s mixed-category evening sale on July 28. Works by other British artists, including Damien Hirst and Patrick Heron, come to separate auctions during the month.
Judging by Christie’s four-city, $361.6m ($420.9m with fees) relay auction held on July 10, there’s still plenty of appetite to spend money on art. Wealth, particularly in the US, has been protected by governmental stimuli since the Covid-19 pandemic struck. “Despite the anticipated recession and decline in GDP, and record unemployment numbers, equity markets gained during much of April 2020,” notes the latest Capgemini World Wealth Report.
Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France, during the relay auction on July 10
Christie’s livestream sale came within estimate, as did Sotheby’s $363.2m (with fees) equivalent auction on June 29. “I look at where we were just a few months ago and am amazed,” said Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie’s global president and the auctioneer for the London portion of the sale.
Sotheby’s can still boast the more slickly streamed sale, and the highest price for this makeshift season ($84.6m with fees for a 1981 Francis Bacon triptych), but Christie’s had the bigger haul, reflecting a more consistently high-quality offering and a huge chunk of guarantees that boosted buyer confidence. Among the guaranteed works was the sale’s top lot, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Nude with Joyous Painting” (1994), which sold from an American collection for an above estimate $40.5m ($46.2m with fees). It was sold in the New York portion of the auction, which accounted for 71 per cent of the sale’s total. US buyers accounted for 37 per cent of sales.
‘Jade Plant’ by David Hockney (1988) was sold for £4.18m during Christie’s relay auction on July 10 © Christie’s Images Ltd
James Murdoch has confirmed plans to become an anchor investor in Switzerland’s MCH Group, owner of the Art Basel fair and majority owner of London’s Masterpiece.
Through his media and entertainment investment vehicle Lupa Systems, whose portfolio includes the company behind the Tribeca Film Festival and the immersive virtual reality business The Void, Murdoch will underwrite a SFr74.5m ($79m) rights issue that could see him hold up to 44 per cent of the group. If approved on August 3, Murdoch and two other Lupa Systems representatives would be elected to MCH Group’s board. The proposed 15-year relationship agreement includes a commitment to operate Art Basel in its MCH-owned Messeplatz venue in its hometown.
The Murdoch name may send a few shivers down a few spines — and if the German-speaking Swiss media is anything to go by, the overseas investment is by no means a done deal. But MCH needs the money: the group expects sales to fall by up to SFr170m ($180.4m) in 2020, having started the year with liquid assets of around SFr140m ($148.6m).
What is less certain is how Lupa Systems can reverse MCH Group’s fundamental problem: namely, it runs events that were being reassessed prior to the pandemic and have been decimated since. But a cash injection at least buys some urgently needed time to develop what the Swiss group describes as “future-oriented platforms and communities”, whatever that may mean.
‘Femme et oiseau’ by Joan Miró, one of the works from Paul Haim’s garden to be sold by Christie’s in October
Christie’s will show nearly 40 works it has for sale from a French coast sculpture garden in the Paris courtyard of its sister company, the luxury goods business Kering (October 15-22). The sculptures belong to the family of the art dealer Paul Haim, whose personal collection included a bronze by Auguste Rodin (est €700,000-€1m), a totemic 1967 sculpture by Joan Miró (est €5m-€7m) and a mosaic by Fernand Léger (est €300,000-€400,000).
Haim died in 2006, since when the running of his private garden near Biarritz has been overseen by his daughter Dominique. The move to sell the works was “primarily an ecological decision”, says Pierre Martin-Vivier, vice-president at Christie’s France. The gardens are near the Adour river, increasingly subject to flooding. The sale on October 22 is expected to make €15m-€20m, with the majority of works offered without a reserve.