Newcomers Muscle Into Art Market’s High End
Auction sales for the first half of 2017 reflect an increasingly healthy market where newcomers are vying with veteran collectors for blue-chip art
Collectors spooked by last year’s economic and political tumult are filtering back to the big auction houses, where they are vying with an influx of newcomers for blue-chip art.
The resulting global market looks increasingly healthy, although categories such as rare books and Russian art are in less demand than hot commodities like contemporary and Asian works.
On Tuesday, London-based auction house Christie’s International offered further proof of the market’s strength when it said it sold £2.4 billion (roughly $3 billion) of art during the first half of 2017, up 14% in pounds from a year ago but flat when converted to U.S. dollars. Christie’s auctioned $2.8 billion in art, also up 14% from the first half of last year. Christie’s additionally sold $155.4 million worth of art in privately brokered deals.
Rival Sotheby’s , based in New York, said it auctioned $2.5 billion in art during the first half, up 8% from the year before. Both auction houses said the six-month totals represented sales through June 30. Sotheby’s is scheduled to release its consolidated sales, which include private art sales, next month.
Both houses had an easier time wrangling masterpieces to sell this season, with Christie’s selling 38 works for more than £10 million apiece, or $13 million, during the first half of the year, compared with 14 during the same period the year before. Christie’s also said it saw a 29% boost in the number of new collectors who paid seven figures or more for a single work of art, suggesting new buyers are muscling swiftly toward the upper reaches of the market.
Christie’s priciest work during the first half was Constantin Brancusi’s $57.4 million bronze head, “Sleeping Muse,” which sold in May to art adviser Tobias Meyer. Also in May, it also sold Cy Twombly’s abstract, “Leda and the Swan,” for $52.9 million. In June, it sold Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 “The Reaper (After Millet)” for $30.9 million.
Sotheby’s sold Jean-Michel Basquiat’s untitled turquoise painting of a skull to Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa for $110.5 million in May, the most expensive painting auctioned during the first half of the year. The work also set a new auction record for a U.S. artist. Sotheby’s other hits included a $24 million Roy Lichtenstein 1995 portrait of a “Nude Sunbathing” and a 59.60-carat oval pink diamond. The gem sold to Hong Kong jeweler Chow Tai Fook for $71.2 million, a record for a diamond at auction.
Collectors are showing renewed confidence by taking home a higher-than-usual percentage of the goods on offer at both houses. Typically, an auction is considered successful if at least 80% of the offerings find buyers. This spring, Christie’s said it found buyers for 81% of its goods across the board, compared with a 79% sell-through rate for the first half of 2016. Sotheby’s said it found takers for a robust 90% of its offerings in its $151.5 million jewelry sale in Geneva in May.
Both houses continue to persuade collectors to bid online, with Christie’s conducting 35 online-only sales during the first half of the year. The web auctions were led by a $3 million sale of American art in May that drew 14,000 viewers. Chief Executive Guillaume Cerutti said 44% of those viewers were new to his company, making these online-only sales “a primary channel for recruiting new clients.”
Among the categories, Christie’s $770 million in contemporary art exceeded Sotheby’s $767 million in new art sales for the first half. However, Christie’s lost some ground by canceling its traditional June sale of contemporary art in London. Mr. Cerutti said the decision “will pay off” if the staff can renew its efforts to sell more art in Hong Kong, its third art hub after New York and London.
Christie’s excelled in other areas. It said it sold $889 million worth of impressionist and modern art, American art, modern British art and Latin American art during the first six months of 2017. The sum represents a 43% jump from last year but is down from $1.3 billion two years ago. Sotheby’s didn’t give a combined total for these categories but said it had sold $701 million worth of impressionist and modern art alone in the first half of 2017, up 25% from a year ago.
Christie’s struggled in the categories of old master paintings, Russian art and 19th-century art, with combined sales of $81.2 million, down 37% from a year earlier. Yet its sales of Asian art were up 77% to $548.2 million during the first half, helped by a $263 million sale of Chinese art from Japan’s Fujita Museum in March that included Chen Rong’s $49 million scroll painting, “Six Dragons.” The house also sold a celadon-green Yongzheng amphora for $18 million in Hong Kong in May.
Collectors from the U.S. and Asia outspent all rivals this spring, each winning 35% of Christie’s offerings. Christie’s sold $1.5 billion worth of art in the U.S., up 39% from a year ago.
The art market tends to quiet down in late July and August but will get tested anew at sales this fall in London, Hong Kong and New York.