Up and up and up
February 15 2012
Picture: Christie's
Christie's Postwar and Contemporary Evening sale yesterday made a total of £80.5m, the strongest since the previously over-heated days of 2008. One of the strongest sellers was Christopher Wool's 'Untitled' of 1990, above, which will forever tell the buyer he is a fool for paying just under £5m for it. The top price was, inevitably, for a Bacon, 'Portrait of Henrietta Moraes', which made £21.3m. More details of the sale here.
Meanwhile, the head of Bonhams contemporary sales has gone public with his frustration at how works are now seen simply for their investment potential:
"A lot of us were frustrated, it is always about the estimates and the deal, not the art. We wanted to talk about the works of art. It's whether the art works are important.
"When I started at Christie's many years ago clients would ask me about the work of art or the artist. In late 2007 they started asking: 'what's it going to cost me and how much will it be worth.' That's when you become a commodities broker."
