Sotheby's contemporary sale bombs
May 15 2014
Video: Sotheby's
Oops. It all went a bit flat at Sotheby's yesterday, where their contemporary art sale fetched 'just' $364.3m. The day before, Christie's had realised $745m. The Sotheby's total includes buyer's premium, and it was only thanks to this that the sale could be said to have 'beaten' its low estimate of $336.7m, a figure which of course does not include premium. Jeff Koons' Popeye (above) sold to the casino magnate Steve Wynn for $28m.
I saw that Sotheby's Tweets began reporting the sale with much bravado, each result being given the hashtag #aheadofthecurve. These tailed off as the some of the bigger names failed to sell, and it became clear that Sotheby's were slipping far behind their rivals.
Carol Vogel in The New York Times looks into what happened:
After two consecutive nights of sky’s-the-limit bidding, Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art started out on a high, but quickly fell back to earth, with picky buyers passing up paintings and sculptures by major figures like Rothko, de Kooning and Takashi Murakami.
It has been a tough time for Sotheby’s. On the cusp of the spring auction season, Sotheby’s and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager, declared a truce in one of the most bitter corporate fights in recent memory. After a long proxy battle, the auction house agreed to give Mr. Loeb and two allies the board seats they had been seeking and to allow his firm, Third Point, to increase its stake to 15 percent.
Officials at Christie’s, Sotheby’s archrival, are said to have used Sotheby’s troubles in the competition to win art to sell this season. If they did, it worked.
The York Avenue auction house had a hard act to follow. On Monday and Tuesday, Christie’s held contemporary art auctions that topped expectations, selling nearly $745 million worth in less than three hours on Tuesday alone. But despite having eight more works than the Christie’s auction, Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday only managed less than half as much, totaling $364.3 million, just above its low $336.7 million estimate. Of the 79 works up for sale, 12 did not sell.
A set of six Andy Warhol self-portraits sold for $30m, a figure which puts the £10m for Van Dyck's last self-portrait into some perspective. The Warhol portraits were described as 'Utterly compelling, urgent and sensational'. If the NPG in London had used that to describe the Van Dyck, people would have laughed. But the contemporary market is a different world.
