Sotheby’s takes on galleries with new primary-market channel
All the buzz from Frieze Seoul; UK fair organiser urges new government to undo Brexit hurdles
Sotheby’s starts the art market season with a new sales channel for artists and their galleries. Called Artist’s Choice, the move into the primary market — territory normally guarded by galleries — will ruffle some feathers but has been welcomed by the likes of Casey Kaplan and Jeffrey Deitch. Their respective artists Kevin Beasley and Kennedy Yanko are among the seven included in Sotheby’s New York auction on September 30.
The launch comes on the back of a similar project debuted this summer by the auctioneer Simon de Pury and meets two distinct needs, says Noah Horowitz, Sotheby’s head of gallery and private dealer services. “With the right work, at the right time, artists and galleries can directly capture the upside at auction, which for the most part has not been the case. It is also a useful way for some to set a [public] price for their work, which is helpful to new buyers,” Horowitz says.
Artist’s Choice has a philanthropic bent, with 15 per cent of a work’s hammer price, jointly paid by the artist/gallery and Sotheby’s, going to a charity of the artist’s choosing — something that Horowitz says has helped encourage artist support for the new channel. The other participants this month are Alexandre Lenoir, Vaughn Spann (both Almine Rech gallery), Atsushi Kaga (mother’s tankstation), Katherina Olschbaur (Nicodim Gallery) and Todd Gray (David Lewis), with presale estimates ranging from $15,000 to $120,000
The highly anticipated first edition of the Frieze art fair in Seoul (September 2-5) seems to have paid off, generating heightened cultural activity in the Korean capital and vigorous sales reported from its 110 international exhibitors. Event appearances from the likes of K-pop phenom RM (Kim Nam-joon of BTS) and stars from Squid Game added to the buzz.
Frieze’s decision to piggyback on the longstanding local Kiaf Seoul fair — which fielded 164 exhibitors on the ground floor of the same Coex conference building — unsurprisingly took some of the commercial activity away from the older fair but overall served both fairs well, attendees say. “There were more overseas visitors than usual at Kiaf and many more overseas galleries,” notes Heejin No, an art adviser and curator based in London and Seoul. Only three of the 37 new exhibitors at Kiaf were from South Korea, with others from places as far-flung as Los Angeles and the Philippines, including Galleria Continua, Cristea Roberts Gallery and Rachel Uffner Gallery — plus Axel Vervoordt, who showed at both fairs.
While many of the western exhibitors are keen to diversify their presence in Asia, it will take time for Seoul to match Hong Kong as a market hub. But the presence of the continent’s serious collecting community — from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines as well as South Korea itself — already marks the fair as significant within Asia, according to No. The only fly in the ointment, she says, was that “sales would have been even faster if the US dollar wasn’t so strong.”
Christie’s used the Seoul sense of occasion for the first showing of its latest consignment, David Hockney’s “Early Morning, Sainte-Maxime” (1969), on offer in October for £7mn-£10mn. The striking purple-hued painting, based on photographs taken on a trip to the French Riviera with Hockney’s great love, Peter Schlesinger, previously sold at auction in 1988 for $352,000. Its buyer then has not been named, but the work comes by descent from a UK collection, Christie’s confirms.
The auction house could have a bumper season, having announced last month the consignment of 150 works from the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The potential total haul is touted at more than $1bn, which would make it the biggest single-owner sale ever. All proceeds will go towards philanthropic causes.