Taubman sales at Sotheby's
November 6 2015
Picture: NYT
It's been interesting to see the various takes on Sotheby's handling of the Taubman collection so far. To recap, the late Alfred Taubman was a former owner of Sotheby's, but later went to jail as a result of price-fixing with Christie's (Christie's 'co-operated' with the authorities and nobody from there was jailed). Despite the family connection, Taubman's heirs courted both Christie's and Sotheby's for the chance to sell the collection, eventually ending up with a $500m guarantee from Sotheby's.
This week, the more valuable works from Taubman's collection have been sold, with Modigliani, Picasso et al taking their turns on the rostrum. The headline sale has been felt to be disappointing, taking in $377m with premium, against a $375m lower estimate (which doesn't include premium). And consequently, some are interpreting this as a sign of market 'concerns', or, as the New York Times put it, a 'market chill'.
So, is the music stopping at the top end of the art market? I doubt it. The Taubman sale estimates were already punchy - as you would expect with a collection secured by guarantee. It was always unlikely things would fly away - and market watchers seem obsessed by the idea that art values have to go up; stability is never good enough. 90% of the works sold, which normally is a good result.
Certain circumstances were against Sotheby's. First, it can hardly be said that the Taubman provenance was a plus (whether that's right or wrong is another matter), and nor did the pre-sale chat about various Taubman family spats help matters (the traditional step-mom/widow vs children kind of thing). There's also been a typical New York art world bitch-fest over whether Taubman's 'taste' was any good, as amusingly surveyed here by Marion Maneker. I thought the pictures were perfectly good.
The most interesting question for me, however, is whether Sotheby's were right to place a half billion dollar bet on the collection of the their former owner. Will Sotheby's make money on the deal? It's hard to see at this stage, at least not mega money worthy of a $500m punt. It was perhaps always going to be difficult to do so, and maybe the auction house felt little choice but to stump up - to prevent the PR faux-pas of rival Christie's getting the collection. Here's Sotheby's new (and refreshingly honest) CEO Tad Smith on how they're doing so far on the numbers:
“With more than 400 works still to be sold over the next several months, we are on track to cover most of the total guarantee[...]"
Most.
Update - a reader writes:
Perhaps art market watchers are obsessed with the idea that art prices have to go up, because they know that current prices (and prices paid in the recent past) are entirely predicated on a fallacy of ever-increasing returns. When it comes to twentieth century masters in particular, the market has been locked in a self-reinforcing inflationary spiral in which almost no amount of money was too much to pay for say a Warhol, because it would surely be worth 2x five years in the future. If the market really has plateaued, the implication is: the greatest fool has been found. And that would be a terrible thing for what is, at its heart, a speculation-driven asset bubble.
