46 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016
Art Market United Kingdom
BASQUIAT: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S. PASCALI AND RAMA: COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’SLondon. The night before the contem-
porary auctions kicked of during Frieze
week last month, the pound slumped to
a 31-year low, amid speculation about an
impending “hard Brexit” after the UK
voted to leave the EU. Far from harming
the trade, however, the weak pound
appeared to galvanise foreign buyers,
who in efect enjoyed discounts of up to
20% on contemporary works.
Brexit bargains, coupled with entic-
ingly low estimates, meant that the
evening auctions at Christie’s and Sothe-
by’s far exceeded their upper limits.
Sotheby’s achieved £41.2m (£48m with
fees, est £24.1m-£32.7m), up from £36.4m
last year. Christie’s fetched £28.8m
(£34.3m with fees, est £14.9m-£21.8m),
slightly down on the £35.6m made at
last October’s sale, which carried double
the estimate of this year’s auction.
Meanwhile, Phillips just tipped its lower
estimate, bringing in £15m (£17.9m with
fees, est £14.2m-£20.5m), down 43% on
the £31.5m realised last year.
Keeping estimates attractive cer-
tainly paid off for Sotheby’s, where
a 1982 orange oil stick and acrylic on
canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat, titled
Hannibal, sold for £9.3m (£10.6m with
fees, est £3.5m-£4.5m). This was a better
result than the work’s last outing—
remarkably, just under a year ago at
Sotheby’s New York, when it was bought
in on an estimate of $8m to $12m—but
still around 25% cheaper in sterling.
Keen estimations at Christie’s led to
record prices for seven artists, includ-
ing two under 40: Adrian Ghenie and
Lucy McKenzie. Ghenie’s Nickelodeon
(2008) sparked a bidding contest in the
saleroom, more than quadrupling its
high estimate of £1.5m to sell to a Euro-
pean buyer for £6.2m (£7.1m with fees).
The dealer Thaddaeus Ropac was one of
the underbidders.
Less bullish estimates are also the
result of a cooling contemporary art
market. As Edward Dolman, the chief
executive of Phillips, notes: “The froth
that was in the market that was driving
optimistic estimates has gone.”
According to the Belgian collector
Alain Servais, a surfeit of works in the
£5,000 to £200,000 range is pushing sec-
ondary-market prices down. “There’s a
glut of art—there are more artists, more
dealers, more collectors,” he says. “Now
that speculation is over, people want to
clear out the excess, and the auction
houses are doing the cleaning.”
The Los Angeles-based dealer and
artist agent Stefan Simchowitz was an
active buyer across the week, picking up
works by Damien Hirst, Thomas Schütte
and Jean Dubufet. He says: “The market
is healthy and no longer overweight. It
was back to business as usual under
more normal conditions—normal being
relative, of course.”Post-Brexit fears calmed as buyers
take advantage of weak pound
Record resale is a
pain for Ghenie
Adrian Ghenie, the 39-year-old
Romanian star of the London season,
described the high prices paid for his
works to a group of school students,
according to the newspaper Stiri
de Cluj. The article, published in
October, says that Ghenie objected
to the Romanian media’s attempts to
calculate his fortune and complained
of not receiving resale payments on
his in-demand works. “I sold those
paintings for peanuts. Now the
buyers are selling them between
themselves at diferent auction
houses,” Ghenie reportedly said. But
he tells us: “I'm getting my royalties,
which are very little anyway, but I'm
getting them. The Romanian media
doesn’t understand how the art
market functions so they [reported]
it incorrectly, as always.” G.H.AUCTION RESULTS
Phillips
5 OCTOBER
Hammer: £15m
With fees: £17.9m
Estimate: £14.2m-£20.5m
Sold by lot: 86%Christie’s
6 OCTOBER
Hammer: £28.8m
With fees: £34.3m
Estimate: £14.9m-£21.8m
Sold by lot: 90%Sotheby’s
7 OCTOBER
Hammer: £41.2m
With fees: £48m
Estimate: £24.1m-£32.7m
Sold by lot: 91%ITALIAN
Christie’s
6 OCTOBER
Hammer: £15.4m
With fees: £18.7m
Estimate: £18.4m-£25.8m
Sold by lot: 76%Sotheby’s
7 OCTOBER
Hammer: £19.4m
With fees: £23.3m
Estimate: £19.7m-£27.9m
Sold by lot: 85%POST-WAR AND
CONTEMPORARYContemporary collectors may have cap-
italised on the advantageous exchange
rates, but buyers at the concurrent Italian
sales were not nearly as frenzied as they
were a year ago. Sotheby’s total of £19.4m
(£23.3m with fees, est £19.7m-£27.9m)
and Christie’s total of £15.4m (£18.7m
with fees, est £18.4m-£25.8m) were both
a far cry from last year’s results, when
Sotheby’s fetched £40.4m with fees (est
£35.2m-£48.6m) and Christie’s £43.2m
with fees (est £23.6m-£35.1m), a record
for any Italian sale.No currency fluctuation can make up
for such a significant drop in big-ticket
consignments at both houses. Even with
fees, just 12 lots sold for more than £1m,
out of a total of 105 works across the two
evenings. Of nine Lucio Fontana works
at Christie’s, only two were from his
famous slash series; at Sotheby’s, it was
one out of five.
Claudia Dwek, Sotheby’s chairman
of contemporary art Europe and head of
the Italian sale, says: “It was a diferent
catalogue from last year’s, and this is a
delicate moment for the market.”
An arguably overpriced work by
Alighiero Boetti, the large embroideryTutto (1988-89, est £1.8m-£2.2m), and
Alberto Burri’s large and perhaps slightly
gloomy, all-black Nero Legno (1961, est
£1.8m-£2.5m) failed to find buyers at
Christie’s, denting the total figure.
However, the scarcity of major lots
enabled a host of lesser-known artists
to shine. Christie’s more experimental
catalogue set seven new auction records,
including for Franco Grignani, Gilberto
Zorio, Ettore Spalletti, Carol Rama
(whose estate has just been snapped up
by Dominique Lévy) and Pino Pascali,
whose cover lot Coda di Delfino (1966)
sold for £2.2m (£2.6m with fees, est
£1.5m-£2m). Over at Sotheby’s, Salvatore
Scarpitta’s Forager for Plankton (1959)
set a new record at £1.8m (£2.2m with
fees, est £1m-£1.5m), thanks to revived
interest in his work following a flurry
of gallery shows. Work by the Roman
Pop artist Fabio Mauri made its first
appearance in a Sotheby’s evening sale,
with Schermo Imbottito Medio (Il Gen-
erazione) “Una Tasca di Cinema” (1972)
selling within estimate for £100,000
(£125,000 with fees) and setting a new
record for the artist.
While some of these records were
in the low six- and even five-figure cat-
egory, international buyers appear to be
responding to a wider set of artists than
before, signalling a broadening market.
Anny Shaw and Ermanno Rivetti, with
additional reporting by Anna BradyIn London, low estimates and favourable
exchange rates boost contemporary profits...
...but at the Italian sales, fewer stand-out lots
bring results down from last year’s high
Auctioneer Oliver Barker takes bids on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Hannibal (1982), which
sold for £9.3m (£10.6m with fees, est £3.5m-£4.5m) at Sotheby’s
Record-setters in the Italian sale at Christie’s included Pino Pascali’s Coda di
Delino (1966) and Carol Rama’s Presagi di Birman (1994)A lack of major lots
enabled a host of lesser-
known Italians to shinePLEASE NOTE: presale estimates do
not include premiums; refer to auction
houses for their fee structures