Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Art Market

A Strange Comment On The Richter Market

As we move into week two of the bellwether spring auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, a remark made by Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, keeps rolling around in my head.

First the set-up: Speaking of buyers in the market this season in an article headlined “Sure Bets” in The New York Times on Apr. 29, he said, “tastes are conservative but they want quality, technical virtuosity, beauty and color.”

Then, in a sidebar to that article examining a few choice lots, Gorvy said about Gerard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (798-3), which is on offer at Christie’s tomorrow night and estimated at $14 million to $18 million, “It’s eye candy for the emerging buyer.” (It’s shown at left.)

I found that an odd, especially since Robert Manley, a contemporary art specialist at Christie’s called the painting “one of the most valuable Richters to come to market” in a Christie’s press release. Manley also said it was “one of two unqualified masterworks” by Richter in the sale, the other being a figurative work called Seestüeck (Leicht bewölkt), which is one of a small series of seascapes painted in the late 1960’s, “most of which are in museum collections, including the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Bockmann Collection, Berlin and the Kunsthalle Hamburg.” 

Christie’s is actually selling six Richters this week, and says “This major comprehensive grouping includes works from the  60’s to the 90’s and is estimate to realize more than $40 million.” It headlined the press release “A Landmark Event in the Richter Market.”

Across town, meanwhile, Sotheby’s is offering four Richters, with combined presale estimates of $17.8 million to $24 million. And by the way, last year alone works by Richter brought $200 million at auction, among the highest of Western artists.

Seems a little high for eye candy, don’t you think? I’m puzzled by Gorvy’s comment, which shows disrespect for both the painter and his potential buyers.

 

The Unfortunate Sides Of “The Scream” Auction

With the spring auction season about to move into high gear, everyone’s talking about The Scream, one of four versions Edvard Munch made of the now-iconic image. It comes up for sale on Wednesday night, and like others I did a double-take when I first learned of Sotheby’s titanic estimate — $80 million, the highest presale number Sotheby’s has ever set. (It didn’t even bother with “Estimate on Request,” its normal  but unfortunate practice for such high estimates.)

Like the unnamed art historians cited by The New York Times in today’s Arts & Leisure section, I don’t think the work is worth that, though I know full well that it’s worth whatever someone is willing to pay. Sotheby’s, presumably, has many interested bidders, and we’ll find soon enough if “interest” translates into cash on the table. The Times piece and one in Friday’s Wall Street Journal discuss who might be interested (Russians, Asians, Qataris) and the marketing of the piece.

Unless it fails to sell, The Scream now faces an unfortunate fate, imho: when people look at it, they’ll see dollar signs before they see the art. That’s certainly the case with Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which was purchased by Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie for $135 million in 2006, as well as with other works that fetched stratospheric numbers (particularly if they sold at auction).

This all depends, of course, on if the public is allowed to see it at all, which depends on who buys The Scream; the buyer’s own circumstances will determine whether and when we see it. It has been 22 years since van Gogh’s Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 million to the late Ryoei Saito, and we haven’t seen it since.

How much would The Scream have to fetch to exceed that record, the highest reached at public auction, in comparable dollars? According to the U.S. Inflation Calculator, $82.5 million then would be $144.8 million today.

That, of course, isn’t the record for all sales. If the transaction went through — and there’s talk that it did not – that honor belongs to Cezanne’s Card Players, which reportedly sold to the royal family of Qatar last year for $250 million.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

 

 

SOFA Tries To Mix It Up, But Maybe We’re Faired Out

The 15th annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair — aka SOFA NEW YORK – opens tomorrow at the Park Avenue Armory, but the preview was tonight, and I went. It’s interesting, and I use the adjective purposefully. Only one booth really stood out.

The organizers mixed it up this year, hiring architect David Ling to create a different ambiance — and he did. Visitors enter through a white tunnel, and come upon an open area with seating and, tonight, a bar and a table of nibbles. A few booths hug the drill hall’s perimeter behind the entrance and the rest are on a grid with both vertical and horizonal aisles. White sculptural elements (floating blocks, I think they are called) are hung from the ceiling, effectively lowering it.

All of this creates a more intimately scaled space, although one dealer I spoke with said the booths are the same size as last year’s. To him, and me, they feel smaller.  He wasn’t sure he liked this feeling, but he told me he would reserve judgment until Saturday, to see how collectors felt. (He did not know I was a reporter, so I am not naming him.)

But clearly SOFA realizes that fairs are proliferating, and was trying to differentiate itself. Normally, that’s a good move for a business, so long as customers don’t rebel against it (think New Coke, if you’re old enough). I wouldn’t predict a rebellion here.

But what’s at the fair — again, it’s mixed. I saw no “masterpiece,” no breakthrough in craft, but rather a lot of very routine offerings that everyone has seen a million times before. In a few cases, people one might well imagine that they were in an upmarket gift store and, in one case of jewelry, a local crafts fair.

On the other hand, some booths offered beautifully designed, well-made pieces that I, for one, would be happy to own.  On the right above is a piece by Astrid Dahl that’s not as good as the piece at SOFA (which I could not find an image of) and on the left is a basket by Honda Syoryu — to name just two.

I recall years when SOFA seemed better.

Maybe everyone is all faired-out? Too tired from producing for so many fairs that the artists have little time to innovate and the dealers little time to guide their artists or scout new ones? SOFA is far from alone in having what is, I think, a mediocre fair this year. The Armory Show wasn’t terribly great this year either. While I thought the ADAA Art Show did shine this year, versus the past few years, other critics thought it was ho-hum.

What was the exception? A curated exhibition called Covet by the Ferrin Gallery, with Leslie Ferrin and Sienna Patti doing the organizing. They asked (I think) artists to make works inspired by a museum object. Some were excellent. I wish I could show you the giclee print an artist named Bill Wright made of four children posed like The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by Sargent, in the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston, but in far less affluent circumstances. Giselle Hicks made the other standout — an all-white china piece that drew on A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase by Nicholaes van Veerendael in the Met’s collection. It’s a decorative piece, no question, but beautifully made.

Which brings me back to “interesting.” That’s neither an endorsement, nor a critical blast. Whether or not you should go depends on what your expectations and standards are..

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Astrid Dahl (top) and TAI Gallery (bottom)

 

 

The Online VIP Art Fair Grows And Grows

This will be a really quick post (as I’m really busy elsewhere at the moment), but I want to mention the VIP PAPER fair that runs tomorrow through Sunday. It’s an offshoot of the VIP Art Fair online, which began in 2011 and had, as I recall, an improved edition this past winter.

VIP PAPER, to me, is a better idea than that because buying prints and other works on paper on the Internet is probably a better idea than buying other kinds of work – there’s less difference between the representation and the reality, afterall.  The galleries involved are a good selection.

But one noteworthy thing is that this is simply the first extension of the VIP fair. In June comes the VIP MFA, a juried fair to launch students into the art market; in July comes VIP PHOTO, and in September comes VIP Vernissage, fueled by the fall openings.

How many fairs can be staged before they all run together? Does it matter? Galleries say they do an increasing amount of business at physical fairs, and can’t afford to stay home (more are starting up, too, but that’s another story). These online VIP fairs may well drive even more business to the web, leaving physical galleries for viewing — and possibly leading eventually to closings or shorter hours.

Second, in the runup to the works-on-paper fair, the VIP group has been posting video “Discussions” — walkthoughs with the likes of Morgan Lehman Gallery and Durham Press. I’m not much of an online video-consumer, but I watched two, and found them to be worth my time (with a little multi-tasking on the side).

 Photo Credits: Courtesy of the VIP Art Fair

 

Akron Museum’s Sherman Deaccession: Brave Or Foolhardy?

Christie’s announced a very unusual deaccession the other day: The Akron Art Museum plans to sell one of Cindy Sherman’s most famous images. Dating to 1981, the photo is known officially as Untitled, #96; unofficially as Orange Sweater, and comes from her Centerfolds series. As Christie’s noted in its release, “Another example of this image was sold at Christie’s in May 2011 for $3,890,500, which represents not only a world auction record for Sherman, but also a world record price for any photograph at the time.* The work from the Akron Art Museum is a vintage print in excellent condition and will have a pre-sale estimate of $2,800,000 – $3,800,000.”

Either museum director Mitchell Kahan is brave or foolhardy, I haven’t yet made up my mind.

In its release, Christie’s quotes Kahan saying, “The Akron Art Museum is extremely happy to partner with Christie’s on this sale. The result will be a new acquisitions endowment that generates significant growth for our collection. I am especially looking forward to continuing a commitment to Cindy Sherman by acquiring works made after the famous Centerfolds images.”

I have mixed feelings about this move.

On the “brave” side: Kahan’s goal is admirable — an acquisitions endowment. As I noted recently in an article for The New York Times, too few art museums have sizeable funds to buy art. Moreover, selling a contemporary work is rare. Most museums tend to clean out works from the past when they sell, even though many directors have told me privately that they should be weeding out what they’ve bought since the 1970s. That’s partly because of undiscriminating buying: some museums admit privately to purchasing “one of each” — that is, one example of many artists that somehow got buzz and critical acclaim for a moment, but have since dropped into to the 90 percent of all artists who will be ignored by art history. Little curatorial eye was involved. Now they’re stuck with things in storage that will likely never be shown. But they fear selling for two reasons: they don’t want to offend a living artist and his/her dealer and they fear making a mistake, even if only a public-relations one. 

On the “foolhardy” side: Whatever you may think of Cindy Sherman, the current consensus is that she is an important artist. The Akron museum owns another Sherman work, also from 1981, officially Untitled #93 and nicknamed “The Black Sheets.” But is the one they’re selling better than the one they’re keeping? It is better known. And aren’t collections supposed to have depth? Even if Kahan finds a later work by Sherman, from a different series, might that be less enlightening than showing two from the same series? Meantime, what example is Kahan setting for other museums? Is selling because of the jump in Sherman’s prices so tempting that museums will become active traders? And will other museums miss his subtler message of using the proceeds to acquire in the same area/time period?   

Kahan told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that adding the proceeds from this picture to the Akron museum’s $2 million acquisitions endowment could boost the amount of money it has to buy art to more than $260,000 a year, and added: “What’s the greater community benefit, keeping the ‘Orange Sweater’ and showing it once every five years, or having a few more million dollars generating money in perpetuity to buy more works of art?”