The Art Market Post-Pollock
After spring's marquee auctions, we are led to believe that everything in our important art universe is doing just fine. It isn't.
The Pollock sucks up the oxygen. It is the lead story — important, yes, but also misleading. $181.2 million for a great Pollock, wisely held back until the market could carry it. More astonishing, in some ways, than the $451 million Leonardo, which had its own issues and was painted several centuries ago. This Pollock was made in my lifetime.
Not just the Pollock, but a $107.6 million Brancusi. Much of Christie’s evening sale went smoothly, exuberant and beautifully orchestrated.
But not so fast. For in this $1.1 billion evening sale, the number of artworks that hammered below low estimate or went unsold was substantial, roughly 30%, including big-ticket items like Agnes Gund’s Twombly. Plus, many had third-party guarantees, meaning they would not be bought in.
At the Christie’s evening sale of the McNeil Minimalist collection, five of the 12 lots hammered below or at low estimate. One notable strong result was an early Artschwager.
At the Phillips Modern and Contemporary evening sale, over a third of the works hammered below or at low estimate. That was similarly the case at the Sotheby’s Now and Contemporary evening sale, where more than a third of lots hammered at or below estimate (10), went unsold (four), or were withdrawn (two).
These are their marquee events. For the most part, the average of everything sold at night (and to a slightly lesser degree in the day sales) came in between the low and high estimates, which means the auction houses generally do well at pricing work. But there is a bit of social engineering in that too many bidders rely on these estimates to approximate what an artwork may be worth.
What is obvious is that high-quality trophy artworks from prestigious estates — such as S. I. Newhouse, Agnes Gund, Weis, Pritzker, and Leonard Lauder — tend to do well. But there is no great urgency for but a handful of other items. And the estimates of those other items are greatly muted.
Hidden in this is just how conservative estimates are. Auction houses need to sell. They need high sell-through rates. They negotiate fiercely for low estimates, the theory being that starting low incentivizes bigger bids. But the result is that they achieve, on average, near-mid-estimation, which in most instances is well below the price charged by galleries for comparable new works.
Additionally, buyer’s premiums now start at 27–28% until a price point is reached of about $1–2 million, and consignors are charged as much as 10%, meaning there must be substantial disappointment among sellers.
When auction results are posted, the commission is added in. Thus, we see a de Kooning at Sotheby’s estimated at $25–35 million listed as selling for $26,000,000. That means the hammer price (the approximate amount a consignor will receive) is far below the low estimate.
Also, take note: There were scant examples of works by the much-hyped artists of just a few years ago whose prices were subsequently crushed. Gone. Not a single work by so-and-so. What we hardly saw in this iteration was the disastrous declines of recent years.
This season, Christie's took the trophy. What Christie’s got right was the greater quality, good background visuals on the screens, the pacing, and the installations of the works before the sales. There was a room which focused on Minimalist masterpieces, three Donald Judds, all crisp and clean, and the Judd “stack” was luminous. In the middle of the room was a large Nakashima dining room table and chairs. Not for sale, but to create the feeling of a domestic space. These artworks are to be lived with, it said. Quality begets quality. They didn’t fare very well, but the setting could only have helped.
Sotheby's sold their building at York Ave and 72nd to Weill Cornell — lucky Weill Cornell — and moved their sales into the Breuer instead, where even the centerpiece, the Basquiat, suffered from eye strain. Some art was not installed or was on view back at York. Sotheby’s decision will most likely prove far more costly than the savings in the building exchanges.
Just post-COVID, Phillips opened a 55,000-square-foot Park Avenue space spanning 57th Street to 56th. Now, the 57th Street side of the building and the upstairs are jettisoned, and what remains is a cavernous, tough space to showcase art.
Step back from the paddles for a moment. Several bidders were willing to go above $100 million. I am not a social economist, and this is too large an issue to address in a few sentences. But even to a die-hard, life-long collector like me, it is baffling that one painting can cost more than what it would take to feed millions of people.
I am all for the art I own selling for millions. God knows, I took out a three-year loan to buy our third work, an Ellsworth Kelly 1970 “Chatham.” We own a sink, some basketballs, a Bourgeois, a row of vertical light bulbs. If you can bid $150 million, you are worth many billions, and if that is how you choose to spend it, that is your right.
And yet I worry. The share of wealth of the top 1% has never been higher than it is now. It shouldn’t be, and the headlines and optics of these auctions are more vexing than the purchase of a $100 million penthouse, which, after all, is large and costly to build.
I worry. I practiced oncology for nearly 40 years. I worry that pediatricians and primary care doctors make so little. That many cancer drugs cost over $20,000 a month.
I worry about galleries. Last I wrote here, in November of last year, more than half of the galleries on the Lower East Side were gone, according to my own calculus. And more yet in the last half year. Near my gallery, on Grand Street, we are down to under 20% of the galleries pre-pandemic.
At art fairs, so many good galleries have opted out or taken tiny booths. Art Dubai just proceeded, despite a war in the region. Really? And galleries that opted out have their money held towards 2027.
The system is not healthy, and post-Pollock, we are led to believe that everything in our important art universe is doing just fine — great, perhaps.
It isn’t. And these results are so annoying to so many. As though the art market is a playground for the super wealthy. It’s true and not true. The art market has tens of thousands of artists, most struggling, who are making things we didn’t ask for and enriching our lives. We need them, and we need the galleries.
