After a downturn in the global art market in 2023, the major auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s are launching their spring sales in New York on Monday, in a rather optimistic climate after good results in London and Paris.
One of the most popular weeks of the year, however, risks getting off to a bad start: Christie’s, owned by the Artémis holding of French billionaire François Pinault, revealed on Friday that it had been the target of a cyberattack: “A technological security problem has had an impact on our (computer) systems, including our website,” explained a spokesperson.
The prestigious auction house, based in London, New York and Paris, which generates billions of dollars on the art market each year, assured that it “regrets the inconvenience caused to (its) clients” and “does everything to minimize disruptions”, without specifying whether its big swanky evenings on Tuesday and Thursday in New York – also on the internet and by telephone – would be affected.
Like every spring – six months after the sales – the list of works by modern and contemporary European and American painters offered for sale strikes the mind: we find the masters Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Hockney, Bacon, Carrington, Mitchell, Marden, Warhol, Basquiat, Giacometti, O’Keeffe.
Upper fork
Christie’s hopes that its approximately 900 works will bring in $578 to $846 million and Sotheby’s, which is owned by Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, is targeting between $549 and $784 million for its 700 works, a range “slightly” higher than in May 2023. .
Sotheby’s opens the ball Monday evening, after taking the lion’s share in November with $1.1 billion in revenue: Woman with watch (1932) by Picasso was sold for $139 million – the second price ever reached for the Spanish master – and …a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO went for $51.7 million, the second most expensive car ever sold at auction. auction.
“The market is defined more by supply than by demand,” Lucius Elliott, head of contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s, explains to AFP. “We don’t have difficulty selling goods, we have more difficulty convincing people to put them up for sale.”
The expert recognizes that the market has “contracted very, very slightly at the margin” compared to 2022, but he displays his “confidence” given good sales in March in London, another international hub of arts and finance.
Wars
Against the backdrop of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with fewer Russian buyers on the market, global art auction sales reached $14.9 billion last year compared to $16 billion in 2022 (-14.5%), year of exit from the pandemic which had shattered all ceilings.
Half of the buyers come from the United States and Asia continues to drive the market.
At Christie’s, the most emblematic works come from two private collections. In that of Norman Lear, American television producer, director and actor who died at age 101 in 2023, the web A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967) by David Hockney is estimated at between 25 and 35 million dollars.
“If you are looking for the best works today, there is no need to look elsewhere,” Max Carter, vice-president of Christie’s, told AFP, who is delighted with the results “among the most important we have ever had” in London and “acceptable” in Paris at the start of the year.
For Sotheby’s, the gem of the week is a portrait made in 1966 by Francis Bacon of his then partner, George Dyer, estimated at between $30 and $50 million.
Finally, the little thumb of the auction houses, Phillips, is offering 30 lots on Tuesday, including a Basquiat valued at $40 million and a Picasso estimated at between 12 and 18 million.
