Are New Motivations Driving The Contemporary Art Market? — UPDATED

Is the contemporary art auction world moving to a new plateau, perhaps even new foothills of a higher peak of excess? It is starting to look that way to many people. Last night’s sale at Christie’s, which totalled $388.488 million, may be looked back at as a marker of some sort — with a slightly different dynamic than the past.

It seems to me that some buyers have gone past the notion of paying a lot to buy a masterwork, or just a good painting or sculpture, because they want the piece.

Now they want a work of art because they are paying the record price— in a way that looks discreet but, to their peers, who will see the work sometime soon, is quite ostentatious. “The air is no longer thin at the top,” Allan Schwartzman, a private New York dealer, told The New York Times, and Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s, added, “this is the most popular collecting category we have globally, with the richest and deepest number of buyers.”

Collecting has always been a competitive sport, now these buyers want bragging rights that include paying a record price.

Christie’s press release, meanwhile, was headlined “MOST VALUABLE POST-WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTION EVER” (the Rothko at right) and it announced that “14 New World Auction Records Set” and “41 Works Sell Above $1 million; 9 Works Above $10 Million.” The text said: “Record after record fell throughout the night, as bidders from around the world convened in the saleroom to compete for the sale’s exceptional roster of works by the top artists of the category, including Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Yves Klein, Richard Diebenkorn, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning, among others….”

That’s smart marketing. In many luxury markets, the experts say, you make more sales by raising the price than by lowering it.

At a different art event this morning, I noodled over the sale with a few colleagues — all of whom were aghast at the excess in the room last night. These are people who love art; you have to wonder what people who don’t think.

As I write, the DJ Industrial average is down more than 100 points.

Read the results here.

UPDATE, 5/10: Last night’s Sotheby’s sale adds more evidence — little excitement in the room, only two real records (Lichtenstein and Twombly; the others were for artists that don’t make headlines because the sums are so small (Ligon, Bradford, etc.). No bragging rights with those purchase.