impressionist

Super Bowl XLV is just over a week away and the rivalry between Green Bay and Pittsburgh has heated up. The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art have decided to make a friendly wager on the football game. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that each is offering up an Impressionist work of art. If the Packers win the Carnegie Museum will send over Renoir's "Bathers with Crab" for a temporary loan where visitors can see it and not only take in some beautiful art but gloat a bit too. Should the Steelers prove victorious, "Boating on the Yerres" by Gustav Caillebotte will be taking the journey to the Carnegie.

This is the second year in a row that art critic Tyler Green has prompted a bet. Last year the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art squared off which resulted "The Fifth Plague of Egypt", 1800, a landscape by British artist J.M.W. Turner spending a few months in new Orleans where it was displayed with a Lombardi-trophy-shaped sign designating the triumph.

The Impressionist and Modern Art sales on May 4 and 5, 2010 are likely to confirm a continued climb in art auction pricing. We're now six months or so into the badly needed upswing, and there's plenty of room for optimism. Not only are the presale estimates and sales on the way up, but the number of pieces being resold quickly is on the rise, as well. This means that there's a high degree of liquidity in the art market: collectors can sell easily and without worry (as long as the inventory doesn't suck, in which case there's no hope, of course).

The increase in art market liquidity is due in part to the return of guaranteed minimum pricing, in which the auction houses assume some sales risk for attractive or desirable pieces that they feel can beat the numbers and attract buyers and sellers of other strong works. According to ArtPrice, there are "tens of millions of dollars for major works" committed via guaranteed minimum pricing, indicating that confidence is up.

It's the price guarantees that have led to the arrival of some strong pieces at the early may auctions this year, including pieces from the collections of Mrs Sidney Francis Brody, Raymond and Miriam Klein, Bernard Goldberg and Michael Crichton. Brody's works alone could fetch up to $150 million. The high estimate for Christie's is $300 million, a target that doesn't include the top lot, "Nude, Green Leaves" by Pablo Picasso, which as Jared Paul Stern revealed in a recent column is expected to bring in as much as $90 million. Other artists with eight-figure estimates include Henri Matisse, and Alberto Giacometti.

Don't just look for good news – also a expect a few records to b set. Sotheby's has high hopes for pieces by Salvador Dali and Auguste Rodin.

June auction revenues were off 70 percent in London this year, due in large part to job cuts and an unwillingness to guarantee lots. Even the occasional sign of hope had to be taken with a grain of salt, as lower expectations tended to magnify this year's results falsely.

Together, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury pulled in $269.4 million in this summer's sales – off 70 percent from a year ago. In addition to the mechanical drivers of lost jobs and guarantees, the auction houses haven't had an easy time bringing high-profile, high-value pieces to market. Every event in London this summer unloaded at least two-thirds of its inventory, and success rates rose to above 88 percent at the Sotheby's and Christie's events this past June, but lingering in the background is the notion that 2009, at this point, is nothing like 2008.

To some, the current art slump is reminiscent of the early 1990s, in which a bubble in Impressionist art pricing precipitated a general decline, and nobody could get a realistic sense of a piece's value. The market took several years to recover, but it has since passed the levels of nearly 20 years ago. The Impressionists are down 68 percent this year, roughly in line with global trends, with the contemporary market off approximately 73 percent. New York fared no better than London, with contemporary sales at Sotheby's down 75 percent and Christies off 72 percent.

Paintings by Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso may have sold for $20 million, but the overall take of $61 million was off 74 percent from last year's Christie's Impressionist art auction. Forty-four lots came under the gavel last night with results good enough to beat the minimum estimate by ₤250,000 ($400,000) ... but you have to remember that the low end of the estimate is already low-balled. Even though expectations were roughly met, it was a tough night in London.

Last year, 81 lots fetched more than $250 million, close to $100 million of which came from Monet's "Le Bassin aux Nympheas." Monet was among the stars at Christie's this year, too, but at a fraction of the amount. As expected, the number of high-profile pieces coming to auction is down because the auction houses are no longer guaranteeing minimum prices.

Only 68 percent of the lots brought under the gavel moved this year mostly in the range of $450,000 to $900,000. In this "middle market," a third of the lots failed to sell, and only two were able to beat their high estimates. Usually, Christie's is able to hit a sale rate of 80 percent for this sector.

So, what does this art auction teach collectors across the market? Hitting low estimates is no sign of recovery. Lower standards that are barely met is far from an upswing. Managing expectations is far from art market managing returns.

British millionaire Sir John Madejski is sending his Tiny Dancer to the auction block at Sotheby's Impressionist art auction on February 3. The bronze sculpture from Degas, Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, is one of Degas's most famous and popular works. The bronze cast is one of only a few remaining in private hands. It is estimated at £9 – 12 million. Sir John Madejski is one of Britain's leading arts philanthropists and the sculpture was on display at the Royal Academy in London since 2004 when he bought this statue for £5 million at Sotheby's in London. Another version sold in 1999 for $12.4 million which is highest price paid for a Degas sculpture.

[via Wealth Bulletin]

As we head into fall auction season in New York, the first results aren't too promising. The Sotheby's auction of Impressionist and modern art on Monday delivered some disappointing results. The official estimate before the sale was $338 million to $475 million but the total was just $224 million and over half of that came from just three paintings, Kazimir Malevich's "Suprematist Composition," which sold for $60 million, Degas' "Danseuse au repos" that brought in $37 million and Edvard Munch's "Vampire" (shown above) which we mentioned earlier this month. It was expected to bring in $35 million but sold for $38.16 million.

These were bright spots in a mostly grim evening in which a full one-third of the lots went unsold. Sotheby's has said they were satisfied with the result since they had been expecting a correction due to the economy. Sellers have been advised to lower their reserve prices and not to expect high prices. In a sale in which pieces from van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Monet and Modigliani went unsold it's hard to predict just what the market will want.

As my colleague, J.P.S. mentioned when talking about an upcoming Christie's contemporary art auction, the economy may be sluggish but we don't think the art market is headed for a crash quite yet. Proof of that could be sen yesterday when Christie's auctioned off "Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil" a painting of a bridge by Impressionist Claude Monet. The painting brought in $41.181 million, setting a new record for the popular French artist and besting the estimate of $35 million to $40 million. The previous record for a Monet painting, $36.5 million for his 1904 "Nympheas," was set just last year. No word on who the buyer and seller are.

[Thanks, Rob!]

Most of us picture art thieves as slinky sleuth types who sneak in under cover of night and quietly disable the alarm system, but apparently that's not what works best in Switzerland. This past Sunday 3 masked men dressed all in black burst into a private museum in Zurich in the middle of the day and took 4 paintings valued at £85 million by simply ripping them off the walls and running. They were in and out of the building and flying down the road in a beater of a white car in less than 3 minutes! Amazing. Sad, and outrageously embarrassing for Switzerland, but amazing.

The truly sad part is that they made off with some major and historic pieces of art: Cézanne's The Boy in a Red Vest, Degas's Viscount Lepic and his Daughters, Monet's Poppies Near Vetheuil, and Van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches. What a tragedy! I hope they get caught before the art is lost underground forever.

Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Evening sale went off beautifully last night to a better result than they had anticipated. The star piece of the auction, a portrait of Picasso's mistress titled Dora Maar au chat, sold for $95.2 million, almost double the guaranteed price of $50 million set by the auction house. It is one of the most expensive paintings ever to be sold at auction, second only to another Picasso, Garcon a la pipe, which sold at a Sotheby's auction in 2004 for $104 million. Another record setting piece was Matisse's Nu couché vu de dos, which was bought for just under $18.5 million, the highest price paid for a Matisse to date. A total of 27 of the 55 offered lots sold for over $1 million. The sales for the auction totaled $207.6 million.

 

Sotheby's New York Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale will be taking place this coming week on Wednesday, May 3rd. To tempt more sellers, Sotheby's has fixed the prices of more of the pieces up for auction, guaranteeing sellers at total of $253.8 million. The star piece of the auction, with a minimum price tag of $50 million, is Pablo Picasso's "Dora Maar au Chat," which is offered for sale by a relative of a Chicago businessman.

Other pieces include "Nu couché vu de dos" by Henri Matisse, "La Danse Grecque" by Edgar Degas and "Arlequine au Baton," also by Picasso, all of which have estimated sale prices over $6 million.