Sotheby’s set to make record for Surrealist Leonora Carrington
Experiential art gets new support; Hong Kong sales reflect downbeat market; Government Art Collection to buy at London Gallery Weekend
Sotheby’s is set to make an auction record for the British-born Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington with “Les Distractions de Dagobert” (1945), estimated between $12mn and $18mn. The work has been in the same American collection since 1995, when it was bought for $475,500, and is re-offered, guaranteed, in New York next month. Her current record stands at $3.3mn, for “The Garden of Paracelsus” (1957), which sold in 2022.
The 1945 painting’s title references seventh-century king of the Franks Dagobert, “whose taste for sexual excess was matched by a love of luxury”, Sotheby’s says. The fantastical work combines Carrington’s knowledge of the Renaissance, notably Hieronymus Bosch, with ghostly imagery and biomorphic forms inspired by Celtic mythology and the cosmic beliefs that she encountered once she moved to Mexico during the second world war. Carrington died in Mexico City in 2011.
Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and Modern Art, describes “Dagobert” as “the best of works by an unquestionably important and wildly talented artist”. The auction house has priced it according to levels on the private market, he says, noting too the growing institutional and collector demand for female Surrealists, including Carrington, her friend Remedios Varo and their contemporary Frida Kahlo. The work was most recently on show in the 2022-23 Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, and Museum Barberini in Potsdam.
The auction house has another 20th-century female artist in the spotlight at its May sale with a collection of four paintings by the Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell. These span her key periods between 1954 and 1990 and have a combined estimate of $36mn-$51.5mn (guaranteed). The Mitchell works are topped by her colourful “Noon” (1969, est $15mn-$20mn), bought in 2016 for $9.8mn.
This month is the soft launch of VIV Arts, a sales platform to support artists and collectors of a more experiential bent. Founded by Carlota Dochao Naveira and Oliva Sartogo, both previously at the immersive art outfit Superblue, VIV Arts aims to raise money for artists to create in-person experiences through sales of their other works. Their first partnership is with Transmoderna, a collective rooted in electronic music, which has already crossed into the art world with work shown at institutions including the Pompidou-Metz and the Max Ernst Museum. VIV Arts is privately offering their digital work, “Mycoforest” (2024, edition of 35).
“We are betting really big on the future of art being experiences as collectors become active participants rather than passive viewers,” Dochao Naveira says. But she adds, “The whole ecosystem is costly, from the research and development phase to production.” Future projects are still under wraps, with VIV’s official launch due later this year, but the pair aims to offer work from $100 to $30,000 through vivarts.io.
April’s Hong Kong sales totals for Modern and contemporary art at Sotheby’s and Poly Auction were down considerably this year. Sotheby’s sales on April 5 made a total HK$673mn including fees ($86mn), below estimate and nearly half of the 2023 equivalent of HK$1.1bn. Poly’s main sale of Modern and contemporary art was within estimate at HK$68mn (including fees) on April 7, though its equivalent sale last year made HK$148mn.
“There are signs that the overall decline in sales in 2023 and in London’s marquee sales in March has spilled over into the sentiment in the Hong Kong market,” says Anders Petterson, founder and chief executive of research business ArtTactic. He says, though, that news this week that China’s gross domestic product growth performed better than expected in the first quarter of the year could improve the mood ahead of sales at Christie’s and Phillips in Hong Kong next month.
Top lot at Sotheby’s was Yoshitomo Nara’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” (2017), reportedly sold by the Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau, for HK$96mn with fees (est HK$80mn-HK$120mn). Poly Auction’s total was boosted by its top lot, Yayoi Kusama’s acrylic “Red Pumpkin” (1989), which sold for HK$18mn with fees, far above its HK$7.5mn-HK$8.5mn estimate. Among the younger artists making their mark was Chris Huen Sin-kan, whose “Treasure Hunting 2” painting from 2016 sold for HK$900,000 (with fees; est HK$240,000-HK$320,000). Huen currently has a sold-out show at Matt Carey-Williams in London (until May 25).
The UK’s Government Art Collection (GAC) has committed to buy work on display at this year’s fourth edition of London Gallery Weekend (May 31-June 2). Run by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and with an annual capital budget of £330,000, the GAC plans to spend a low five-figure sum during the event, though this could be on a series of works, says its director, Eliza Gluckman.
The GAC, a soft-power player, displays its collection of nearly 15,000 works across 365 government buildings in the UK and overseas, so “we have a lot of walls to fill”, Gluckman says. London Gallery Weekend’s partnership with the Art Fund, which includes supporting travel and accommodation for curators from the UK’s regional museums and galleries, added to the event’s appeal, she says. This year, more than 130 galleries have signed up to the weekend and GAC will announce its chosen acquisition on May 31.
“Young collector groups assume that new collectors are young, but they could easily be in their fifties or sixties,” says the art adviser Josh Baer, who writes The Baer Faxt, a popular newsletter for the industry. He is now launching Collectors Circle, which for $1,200 a year (or $2,000 for a pair of subscribers) gives deeper guidance on how to navigate some of the art market’s quirks and offers the promise of an international network of similar-minded individuals. “I appreciate that my business as an adviser builds on [proprietary] knowledge and not being transparent, but as insiders we can help on how to break down some of the walls,” Baer says.