What’s new on the contemporary art market?
Latest sales, trends, main buyers and galleries to follow…
Venice Biennale (May 11 — Nov 24, 2019)
The 58th Venice Biennale includes some of the best global artists under 40. It has a short-term effect on their career, but does not seem to be a game-changing edition.
“…this diffuse biennial, which brings together many of the biggest names in art today but never quite coheres.” Jason Farrago, New York Times, May 20th, 2019
Among the 79 curated artists, all alive, you can find Neïl Beloufa, a young French-Algerian artist ; Njideka Akunyili Crosby, the Nigerian-born painter based in Los Angeles ; Ed Atkins, the British video artist ; and Kemang Wa Lehulere, a rising star of South Africa. It also:
- boosts Laure Prouvost’s career (FR, Turner Prize 2013)
- highlights Cathy Wilkes (UK) with Bruxelles gallerist Xavier Hufkens (selling sculptures at 58K — 232K€)
- features Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz (Switzerland), represented by gallery Marcelle Alix (co-director: Isabelle Alfonsi), selling wig pieces and video installations for 10K — 30K€
- presents for the first time an artist from Madagascar, Joël Andrianomearisoa (5K — 25K€)
- builds the European reputation of Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, represented by gallery Allen (15K€ — …)
- grants the Golden Lion to the Lithuanian pavilion, where Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte are presenting the opera “Sun & Sea (Marina)”, on an artificial beach.
More info: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/lithuania-gets-the-coveted-golden-lion-for-best-national-pavilion-in-venice
TEFAF Maastricht (March 2019)
279 stands, grouped by specialities.
- Renoir, Femme nue couchée, 1903, sold by Christie’s in 2010 for $10.1 million, sold again by Dickinson in the VIP vernissage for an unknown price (probably around $15 million). The impressionist market is in slow decline, except for the prominent names.
- The big galleries la Pace, Kamel Mennour or Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois joined the XXth and XXIth centuries’ section.
- Basquiat, «Onion gum makes your mouth taste like onions», 1983, sold by Christophe van de Weghe for $16.5 million.
- Daguerre, Diorama, sold by Philippe Perrin for 850K€
- Dubuffet, Vache à l’herbage, 1954, proposed by Frank Prazan for estimated €5.6 million
Historic auction sale for Sotheby’s, led by a $50.1M Rothko and a $50.4M Francis Bacon
Sotheby’s New York’s season-ending auction on May 16th brought in $341.9 million, demonstrating the strength of the art market, despite of stock volatility and the US-China trade war.
On 63 offered lots, only 7 failed to sell. It is the 11th-most-expensive contemporary art evening sale in history. Seven artist records were set, with eight lots exceeding $10 million, and two hurdling the $50 million mark.
Sotheby’s precedent sale, in May, had been led by Jackson Pollock’s Number 32, 1949 selling for $34.1 million.
Prices:
* Robert Colescott, Garden Spot, 1989: $704,000
* Wayne Thiebaud, Four Pinball Machines (Study), 1962: $3.62 million
* Julie Mehretu, mural-scale abstraction: $3.02 million
* Cecily Brown, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (2000–01): $3.62 million
* Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, No Words of Gratitude (2012): $680,000
* Dana Schutz, Civil Planning (2004): $2.42 million
* Barkley L. Hendricks, Yocks (1975): $3.74 million
* Helen Frankenthaler, Newfoundland(1975): $2.72 million
* Kenneth Noland’s Blue, 1960: $3.5 million
* Frank Stella, Double Mitered Maze (1967): $4.34 million
* Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic N. 134 (1974): $10.3 million
* Willem de Kooning’s Untitled X (1975): $12.6 million
* Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Head), 1982: $4.1 million
* Christopher Wool painting that spells out FOOL: $14 million
* Mark Grotjahn’s Face №1 (2004): $3.38 million
* Lee Krasner’s, The Eye is the First Circle (1960): $11.7 million (acquired by the dealer Robert Mnuchin, who also bought Jeff Koons’s Rabbit (1987) for $91.1 million, a record for a living artist.)
* Francis Bacon, Study for a Head (1952): $50.4 million (the seventh-most-expensive Bacon to sell at auction)
* Mark Rothko, abstraction, 1960: $50.1 million, sold by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to raise funds to diversify its collection
Surprising exhibit: Napoleonic paintings by Kehinde Wiley and Jacques-Louis David to be united
Jacques-Louis David’s famous Napoleon on Horseback will be exhibited alongside Kehinde Wiley’s works at Château de Malmaison in western Paris this autumn (9 October-6 January 2020), before travelling to the Brooklyn Museum in New York (24 January-10 May 2020).
Kehinde Wiley’s works belong to the series Rumors of War, inspired by historical equestrian portraits. They question France’s colonial past, in an art history perspective, feeding the controversy on Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings.
Trends
ART-RELATED LAWSUITS
The rising prices of contemporary art have led to an increase of art-related lawsuits, in US, Europe and the UK. It included commercial disputes over commissions or delivery delays, but also more opportunistic and speculative suits.
For instance, 75 New York galleries were sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), because their websites were deemed inaccessible to the visually impaired.
Publication on the Lost Art Database (the database of works looted by the Nazis) makes a work unsaleable: quite often, owners would split the proceeds with the plaignants to avoid publication.
Also, art authenticators are at risk: threatened of costly lawsuits if they do not authenticate forgeries, and damned if they do (as happened to the Max Ernst scholar Werner Spies).
RISING INTEREST OF CHINESE COLLECTORS FOR OCCIDENTAL ART
According to a report on contemporary art published at the Maastricht Fair, three Chinese collectors on five say they would like to buy occidental art in the coming five years. Sotheby’s Hong Kong has a 100'sales rate on occidental rate.
For instance, the Chinese entrepreneur Qiao Zhibing opened on March 23th his 10.000m² private museum in Shanghaï, to exhibit the works by Damien Hirst he acquired in 2017, and to curate the exhibit of American artist Theaster Gates (scheduled in 2020).
Chinese investor Liu Yiqian, acquired in 2015 a Modigliani for $170 million, and inaugurated in November 2018 his private museum, the « Long Museum », in Shanghaï, where he organized an exhibit on French artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010).
OTHER THEMES OF INTEREST, TO BE DEVELOPED:
- African and Oceanian works
- New status of female artists
- Comics’ sales
- Is Brexit creating new opportunities on the art market?
- Who are the main buyers in contemporary art?
