Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Art Market

What To Make of The Turner Record?

While much of the art world was in Miami Beach last Wednesday, Sotheby’s in London sold a J.M.W. Turner for a record $47. 4 million, or £30.3 million, including the premium, against a presale estimate of $24.1- to $32.1 million. That’s huge!

TurnerTurner, whose biopic Mr. Turner opens in the United States on Dec. 19, painted the work, Rome, from Mount Aventine, in 1835, and exhibited it the following year at the Royal Academy.

Four bidders wanted to picture, Sotheby’s said, mentioned that the sale “coincided with a wider moment of Turner mania, with the groundbreaking exhibition of Late Turner at the Tate and Mike Leigh’s sensational Mr Turner.” The auction house might also have mentioned the Turner & the Sea exhibit, which was organized by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich last year, and also shown at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.

It must have helped that the work had only changed hands once before, in 1978, when the Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister, bought it and in whose collecetion he has remained ever since. It has never been restored or relined. That, plus the fact that it was one of the few major Turners in private hands increased the competition. That price is also the highest for any pre-20th century British artist ever sold at auction, according to Sotheby’s.

The previous record for a Turner was set in 2010, when the Getty Museum bought his Modern Rome–Campo Vaccino for £29.7 million, ot $44.9 million.

Still, Turner is not universally admired, and the enthusiasm for the category extended past the Turner.

Here’s a passage from the press release announcing the record:

Alex Bell, Joint International Head and Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department said: “…Turner is a revolutionary artist who transformed the way we experience painting, and Rome, from Mount Aventine is one of his greatest achievements. The landmark price the work achieved tonight was driven not only by its exceptional provenance and condition but also by the fact that it was one of the last great masterpieces by the artist left in private hands. Following this summer’s record evening sale, tonight’s auction is a further indication of the growing strength of the Old Master market.  Where there is quality there are buyers, and we are seeing a huge influx of interest, most notably from new entrants into the field who this year accounted for 40% of our buyers.

Boldface mine. Also, 84% of the lots were sold, following a 81% sell-through rate last July. Some 64% of works sold in this Old Master and British pictures sale  sold for prices above their high estimate.

Sotheby’s did not, of course, say who the new buyers are. Could it be possible that some collectors are tiring of the outsized prices in contemporary art and are looking for better values? Have they paid attention to Leonard Lauder, who has said loud and clear that he started collecting Cubist works when everyon else was focused on Impressionism?

I actually hope so.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Spalding Takes On Art’s “Self-Congratulatory In-Group”

I suppose I first became aware of Julian Spalding, the British art museum director, when I went to Glasgow some years ago and visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. I hated it, and I blamed Spalding, who was then the director of art galleries for Glasgow. Kelvingrove’s collections–which include Dali’s  Christ of St John of the Cross, Rembrandt’s A Man in Armour, and works by van Gogh and Monet, among other things–had been reinstalled for maximum tourist appeal, in themed galleries with dumbed-down labels. The lobby was like a playground for kids, who were running around, and the noise level was very high. Forget about a sanctuary; Kelvingrove was like a noisy New York City restaurant that required shouting for communication.

SpaldingNow I see that Spalding, who was said to be responsible for what people termed was this “populist” approach, is far from the knee-jerk person I suspected him to be. My apologies.

In his latest salvo, Spalding takes on the art-world powers in the U.K. In a speech he was set to deliver today, according to The Guardian, he is expected “to launch a ferocious attack on work that ‘rejoices in being incomprehensible to all but a few insiders’.” The article continues:

In a lecture on “the purpose of the arts today”… Julian Spalding...will say that the public purse should only fund work that is “both popular and profound, as truly great art is”. He will also criticise the supporting of works that appeal “to a self-congratulatory in-group”.

By 2015, the Arts Council will have “invested” £2.4bn of funds from the government and the National Lottery over a four-year period. According to Spalding, state arts funding should be restricted to subsidising “peaks in our shared culture” – such as King Lear, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – rather than the “rarefied delights” of artists such as Jeff Koons and Hirst, who he says create “sham, glittering ornaments of an amusement-arcade culture”.

And here’s a passage I like:

Spalding said that great art cannot be predetermined to tick boxes on funding application forms: “No government money should be spent on trying to influence the creation of art. The arts have to be personally felt.”

Right now, in this country, we have a lot of grants being offered to artists making socially conscious art, or art with a social purpose. I doubt, as I think Spalding would, that artists trying to please a funder on this will make great art.

Spalding goes on to blast a few works by name and artists. Read them here. I leave decisions on those works in particular up to each of you.

Overall, though the U.S. has a different system of funding for museums, mostly, I think he makes points well worth heeding here.

 

Sotheby’s Roars Back In American Art

Years ago, when I first started covering auctions, Sotheby’s always had the best American art sales. Lots of people didn’t even bother going to Christie’s to look, I recall.

GO'KJimson WeedBut that changed, and for the last several years, as in most categories, Christie’s has surpassed Sotheby’s in this category, getting the best art and posting the best sales totals.  Not this week. Thanks to three consignments by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Sotheby’s sale today reached $75.4 million, far exceeding it presale high estimate of $46 million–though that figure does not include the buyer’s premium and the grand total does.

Credit O’Keeffe, whose three works fetched a total of $50.4 million–which will go into the museum’s acquisitions fund. O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, brought $44.4 million, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist, and more than seven times the previous auction record for O’Keeffe. Sotheby’s reported:

Seven bidders competed for Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, but it was a prolonged battle between two determined bidders that drove the price to this record height – nearly tripling the work’s high estimate of $15 million. The work is a well-known example of O’Keeffe’s celebrated flower paintings, which in turn stand among the most recognizable images in both art history and popular culture.

The buyer wishes to remain anonymous.

The museum’s other tw0 works On the Old Santa Fe Road, fetched the second-highest price of the day, , nearly $5,1 million against an estimate of $2- to 3 million, and Untitled (Skunk Cabbage) sold for $941,000 against an estimate of $500,000 to $750,000.

Sotheby’s is naturally happy about this. Christie’s American art sale yesterday totaled $46.5 million. The top lot was Norman Rockwell’s Willie Gillis: Hometown News at nearly $4.2 million. But there’s a little catch: the connection to the O’Keeffe Museum is John Marion, Sotheby’s legendary auctioneer, who retired in 1995. His wife, the former Anne Burnett, founded the O’Keeffe museum. Whether Sotheby’s can keep this up without Marion is the key question. But it would be nice to see a return of some razzle dazzle to the American art market.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s 

 

Strategic Timing: Christie’s Gallery Announcement

Last week, just as the bellwether fall sales of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art in New York were about to begin, Christie’s announced that it was going deeper into dealer territory. Not with that headline, of course. The press release was titled CHRISTIE’S OPENS NEW ART SPACE IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER, and it said that architect Annabelle Selldorf, whose work can be seen in many NYC commercial galleries as well the renovated Clark Art Institute, had designed the new galleries. There are four of them, plus five private viewing rooms, occupying a total of 11,000 square feet.

ChristiesWestGalleriesAnd while they may be occasionally seconded to show art on the auction block, these galleries (called the West Galleries, at left) are intended for year-round exhibitions that will encourage private treaty sales.

Christie’s has had exhibition space in Rockefeller Center before, but it was for the shut-down Haunch of Venison gallery on the 20th floor, reached by a separate entrance. These galleries will share Christie’s main entrance on W. 49th St.–underscoring the fact that Christie’s isn’t just an auction house. They’re there when you want to buy or sell art.

I talk about this and go into more detail–such as how this business is steadily, though slowly growing since 2007 shown in a chart that goes back to 2000–in an article I wrote for Art-Antiques-Design.

Vivian Pfeiffer, the director of private sales in the Americas for Christie’s, told me that private sales will be up 20 to 25% in 2014, sending the total to about $1.4 billion. Would that top Gagosian’s gross revenues? I would think perhaps yes.

Pffeifer and Christie’s reveal a few more secrets in my piece, so have a look.

Christie’s will start exhibiting in the new space in late January, with a show on American Modernism. It plans to announce more of its program soon, I was told.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

 

The Perelman-Gagosian Brawl

You may not be avid readers of the business section of The New York Times, so you may have missed an article in Sunday’s paper headlined The Feud That’s Shaking Gallery Walls. In it, Ron Perelman says, “Art is such a beautiful thing. But it’s been sullied by an ugly business. It needs to be fixed.”

ronald-perelmanDo you find it strange that a man who’s been buying and selling art for a very long time suddenly decides he’s had enough or that he was had? After all, he willingly entered into the transaction he has now gone to court to protest.

Here’s the gist: One day in 2011, Perelman wanted to buy a Cy Twombly painting called Leaving Paphos Ringed With Waves, which happened to hang in Larry Gagosian’s Madison Avenue gallery. Gagosian told him it would cost $8 million; Perelman offered $6 million. There was no deal. (The two had been doing business together for years; Perelman “had bought or sold nearly 200 works of art through Mr. Gagosian,”  the piece says.)

Perelman still wanted the picture so he went back “with another offer” (undisclosed). Gagosian said it’s no longer available, but that he could get it back for him at $11.5 million. Meantime, the Mugrabi family had bought it for $7.25 million “paying in part with their ownership stake in artwork also co-owned by Mr. Gagosian.”

Perelman Perelman ultimately buys it for $10.5 million. So the Mugrabis made “a quick $2 million profit and Mr. Gagosian a $1 million commission.” (I know the numbers don’t quite add up, but I’m quoting the article, which by the way makes no mention of sales tax, which could have been, no, should have been, substantial.)

Then they both sued: Gagosian said Perelman never paid the $10.5 million, and in part offered art that wasn’t wanted or worth what he had claimed. Perelman said the whole transaction with the Mugrabis was a “sham,” serving only to get more money out of him.

Gagosian has withdrawn his suit, but Perelman has spent some $3 million pressing his.

…his desire to shine a light on the market went far beyond his Twombly purchase….His lawyers have sent subpoenas to some of the biggest players in the business and sent art experts to galleries and dealers and even to visit artists. He subpoenaed members of the Mugrabi family. …He has also submitted subpoenas to the auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips, according to court filings.

He’s even enlisted a former F.B.I. agent who is well versed in the art business to interview big collectors and dealers, according to two gallery owners. Major artists close to Mr. Gagosian have also been questioned, these gallerists say.

Neither party is sympathetic in this case. But Perelman was no babe in the woods here; he entered into the Twombly transaction of his own free will. One can’t help but think that he is playing some sort of grudge match against Gagosian.

And sadly, the courts have to waste  time on this.

I’m all for more transparency in the art trade, but I don’t think this is the way to get it. Ron Perelman, carrying the torch for other people? Please. When has that ever happened before?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Forbes