After Action Report: Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale + Newhouse Collection

Auction season opens with a neutral sale

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In This Issue

1. The Dial: Neutral

2. About Last Night: The sale felt soft even as the numbers were fairly strong.

3. Results: Works on paper do well, is that a trend?

4. Winners: Hockney, O’Keeffe, Pelton, Rousseau & Renoir

5. Losers: Johns, Picasso, Guston, Morris Louis & Theibaud

6. Notes: Guarantees or Estimates?

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The Dial

Just a brief note on how to read the Artelligence Results Dial™. The combined sales totaled $506.5 million split between a $328 million various owners sale (that included work from several named collections) and the $177 million Newhouse sale. Both sales exceeded the aggregate low estimate but the Newhouse sale labored under its estimates more than the various owners. The hammer ratio which is the combined hammer total of sold lots divided by the aggregate low estimate of all lots offered was 1.05 which is a neutral number. The market is neither advancing nor retreating. The sell-through rate was a strong 86% with 60 lots selling out of 70 offered. Three lots were withdrawn before the sale. The Newhouse sale took four additional 3rd party guarantees before the sale and the various owners took another 10. Of the sold lots, 37% went above and 37% within the estimates; 26% of the lots were sold at compromise prices. 10 lots failed to find buyers.

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About Last Night

Going into the sale, we described the economic context around the art market as a Goldilocks moment—falling inflation, rising interest rates and strong employment. Christie’s first Evening sale of the season comprising the 20th Century and Newhouse collection was not too hot and not too cold, though surely no one felt it was just right. The auction room had more trade participants than have been seen since the beginning of the pandemic three years ago. There was slightly more bidding in the room but most of the action remained on the telephones.

It’s too early to judge the market from one evening but the sale does suggest that the window of opportunity that opened in 2022 is finally beginning to close. The rare Thursday night sale will now give specialists all across New York a few days to discuss reserve prices with consignors in light of Christie’s results.

Selling in this season was always going to be something of a gamble. There was a pause in private market activity in the months between the November sales and the late winter auctions in London. Buyers were waiting for sellers to adjust to a new market environment without cheap credit; sellers were cautiously hoping to capitalize on the demand for high quality works of art and the surprisingly buoyant economy.

Although the season is being driven by estates, there are a number of discretionary sales that suggest consignors are trying to time the market. So far, that has been a mixed bag.

The odd combination of a strong sell-through and a weaker hammer ratio is a testament to Christie’s good sale management. Several works were sold at prices well below the estimate, including all of the Jasper Johns, one Guston, one Morris Louis and one of the Brice Mardens.

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Results

Top Ten

Once again, the top lots are a mix of works bid above estimates, works sold for close to the estimate and works that sold at a sacrifice. This is not unusual after a long run of strong sales which tend to inflate estimates as sellers’ expectations rise. Although the Henri Rousseau sold for a spectacular price of $43.5m, with Philippe Segalot bidding from the center of the room, the result still felt muted. Could that singular work have achieved a breakaway price had it sold in a more aggressive market moment? Or is $43.5m for an artist who rarely trades a triumph? The two Picassos on this list sold for the estimates; the Francis Bacon self-portrait sold for a price close to what its near-twin made 16 years ago. The Ruscha Burning Gas Station never caught fire and the Twombly and Lichtenstein struggled under their estimates. Both David Hockney and Georgia O’Keeffe were stars of these sales. (More on that below.)

Most Dynamic Bidding

The lots with the highest hammer ratios suggest a market driven by keen interest and discovery. Toulouse-Lautrec, Goya and Ken Price are hardly market mainstays and its been some time since Renoir was on the must-have lists of buyers.

Works on Paper

As an almost passing observation, we pulled out the works on paper from the evening’s results and were surprised to see the strength in bidding. It’s not clear whether works on paper are currently in vogue or whether there’s a survivorship bias at work where value is moving toward more works on paper because of the dearth of good paintings. One example that did not make the list is the Picasso etching, Le Repas Frugal. A few weeks ago, an example sold in an editions sale for a quarter of a million dollars. But tonight, this etching pulled before the original plates were dulled by steel facing made more than 18-times the price when it sold for $4.6 million.

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Winners

1. Paul Allen: The additional works from the Allen estate were the bright spots of the sale providing a steady run of lots that sold at prices that were multiples of the low estimates. Estimate expectations were the only issue with the sale’s performance. Had the other estates been priced as the Allen works were, the perception of the market would be very different this morning.

2. David Hockney: Three Hockneys all made within the first decade of the 21st Century were sold for a combined total of $44.8m. The top lot of the group was simply a large, stunning landscape that accounted for almost half of the total.

3. Georgia O’Keeffe: The three O’Keeffes totaled $42m. The most challenging of the works constituted half of the total selling well above the beautiful but more anodyne White Calico Rose.

4. Henri Rousseau: The $20 million estimate on the Rousseau was the largest number Christie’s could assign to the work based upon the rare number of previous sales. The $43.5 million the work achieved oddly seems both a triumph and a relatively restrained price.

5. Agnes Pelton: Christie’s put a lot of effort into marketing the Pelton. Cannily displaying the transcendental work just outside the Rousseau, the work got plenty of attention. It all paid off. In this case, the aggressive estimate was easily beaten to make $3.4m. Unfortunately, neither Pelton nor Rousseau are likely to generate significant sales in the future.

6. Renoir: The sleepers of the sale were two Pierre-Auguste Renoirs that trounced the estimates. One work had been held in the same family for nearly a century and exhibited throughout that period. A low estimate helped bring in the bidders. But the second smaller and later work was simply a pretty picture that may signal unexpected market interest for the artist and, perhaps, Impressionist pictures in the future.

Losers

1. Jasper Johns: The estimates for the Jasper Johns works had caused concern before the sale for dealers with a stake in that market. Curiously, all three works sold for the same fraction of the low estimate. Advisor Todd Levin complained to the New York Times that he did not participate in the bidding because of the estimates despite attending the sale for two clients (it’s implied but not clear that the clients were interested in the Johns works.) That seems odd when the works sold for attractive prices in line with other works sold at auction recently. That’s the ideal situation for a collector when there’s little competition for a desirable work. And the Newhouse Johns works were certainly desirable.

2. Philip Guston: Dorothy and Alan press had three significant Gustons. The most difficult one failed to sell. The other two achieved very good prices. The hooded-figure work sold for the low estimate. Chair was mysteriously estimated well above the market. Unfortunately, the retrospective hasn’t generated enough interest to have supported that aspirational price. Even with the hurdle of the high estimate, a bidder in the very back of the room conferring on a cell phone in Chinese got the work at a very solid price for the seller. That’s notable becase Guston isn’t an artist with a strong Asian collector base.

3. Pablo Picasso: The sale had six Picassos on offer. Two failed to find buyers. The other works sold at their estimates. The Picasso market doesn’t have a lot of surprise left in it. Some of the works offered were discretionary and might have chosen a better time but as a bellwether these Picassos betrayed some tiredness in the market’s most important artist.

4. Morris Louis: A DC real estate family, according to the catalogue raisonné, offered three Morris Louis paintings. The move seemed to be a bold act of market timing. The results were mixed. The large unfurled painting made a strong price of $2.9 million to achieve the record for that category of work by a few tens of thousands. The stripe painting sold 20% below the low estimate and below other recent examples. The veil painting was bought in.

5. Wayne Thiebaud: The same consignor had another work on offer by Wayne Thiebaud. Christie’s featured it well in their exhibition but the work sold at a 15% discount to the estimate. Another Thiebaud, a work on paper featuring lollipops, was withdrawn from the sale presumably due to lack of interest. With so much Thiebaud on offer, the lack of interest could simply be too much competition.

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Notes

1. It’s the estimates, not the guarantees: The New York Times’s report on Christie’s sale contains this odd interpretation of guarantees. “[B]ecause every item had been guaranteed — essentially presold to buyers who had promised to pay undisclosed minimum prices — adding credence to the increasingly common lament that sales have lost the suspense that used to animate bidding in the room and make auctions exciting.” Christie’s sale may have lacked theater but it wasn’t because of the guarantees. The times seems to be confusing direct guarantees where a collection gets a global result guaranteed with third-party guarantees where a work is presold. A global guarantee gives the auction house an incentive to sell works below the estimates (that happened repeatedly last night.) Third-party guarantees dampen the suspense of an auction, it’s true. And Christie’s announced at the beginning of each sale that they had taken third-party guarantees. But only a quarter of the Newhouse lots had third-party guarantees and half of the the various owners sale. The $505 million dollar night didn’t feel meh because of the guarantees. The problem was the estimates.

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