July 2010 -   The major London sales during June were stacked full of high quality works: an ultra-rare Manet self-portrait, a Fauvist work by André Derain with an extraordinary background and an absinthe drinker from Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ - the results could not fail to better the previous years’ totals.

However, while the month generated a number of new records, it was also marked by disappointment and one major surprise: the best result in the Impressionist & Modern Art sales came not from London… but from Paris.

Selling at its low estimate of £20m ($29m), Édouard Manet’s self-portrait (Portrait de Manet par lui-même, en buste) generated 20% of Sotheby’s total revenue from its Impressionist & Modern Art sale on 22 June 2010 (£98.87m) The return of such precious masterpieces appears to have saved the prestige sales in London. In fact, £20m represent 68% of the total revenue from the same Sotheby’s sale in June 2009! One of only two self-portraits by Manet generated £6m more than his previous record that dates back to the end of the 1980’s (La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, Christie's, 14 November 1989). Several minutes later, Bouquet de Pivoines by the same artist fetched £800,000 more than its high estimate at £6.8m.
Manet was not the only artist to attract intense bidding. The story surrounding André Derain’s Arbres à Collioure also appears to have whet buyers’ appetites. The Romanesque story of the work – which belonged to Ambroise Vollard before being forgotten in a bank safe for 40 years – acted as a formidable bidding stimulant. Selling for £14.5m, the work beat Derain’s previous record by £7m (Barques au port de Collioure fetched $12.5m, [£7.6m] on 4 November 2009 at Sotheby's in New York). Sotheby’s also generated a new record for Pierre Bonnard with a luminous and intimate work entitled Le petit déjeuner, radiateur. Going under the hammer for £5.5m, the piece fetched £2m more than its high estimate. However, Henri Matisse’s 1928 Odalisque jouant aux dames only just reached its low estimate of £10m ($15.5m). Manet, Derain, Bonnard and Matisse: these four lots generated more than half of Sotheby’s auction revenue on 22 June. But with 31.3% of the works remaining unsold, the auctioneer might have expected a better overall revenue total, especially if Claude Monet’s Fleurs à Vétheuil and Pablo Picasso’s Femme au chat assise dans un fauteuil had fetched more than the £4-6m estimates each was carrying.
The most sought-after Picasso work at these London sales was offered the following day at Christie’s. After $95m for Nude, Green Leaves and Bust at Christie’s New York sales in May, the formidable Portrait d'Angel Fernandez de Soto (1903, blue period) carried a good chance of generating a big surprise. But Christie’s was to be disappointed with a result of just £31m against a high estimate of £40m.

Paris enters the lists…
Contrary to expectations, the best result from the Impressionist and Modern Art sales during June 2010 was generated not in London, but in Paris, with a new record for Amedeo Modigliani. His caryatid Tête, from the Gaston Lévy collection fetched nearly ten times its low estimate when it went under the hammer for €38,5m (£32m, $46.6m), on 14 June

 
July 2010 -   Video Art, highly sensitive to the new technologies domain, is continuing to develop at the cutting edge of the IT and communication fields. This very contemporary and fast-evolving means of expression is the favourite medium for a number of artists who rarely attract the art world’s spotlights. A small number of these video-makers are trying to interest the still small number of collectors willing to take the risk of venturing into this market.

 
June 2010 -   After the major auction sales in New York during May, Artprice has compiled a Top 10 of the best results. The high hammer prices in this Top 10 confirm the recovery of the top end of the art market with twelve new records, including the new world record for an artwork after Pablo PICASSO’s œuvre Nude, Green Leaves and Bust went under the hammer for $95m at Christie’s in New York on 4 May. This spectacular sum is more than double the best auction result in 2009 generated by Raphaël’s drawing Head of a muse ($42.9m at Christie’s in London on 8 December).

May 2010 -   With a large number of major collectors clearly back in acquisitive mode, the results of the big sales in New York during May amply covered the price expectations and were a far cry from those posted in May 2009. At the end of the prestigious Impressionist & Modern Art sales on 4 & 5 May, Christie’s and Sotheby’s posted a combined revenue up 205% compared with the previous year’s total and their combined results from the Contemporary Art sales (11 and 12 May) were nearly 230% better than the previous year. The bought-in rates were particularly low: ranging from 6% (Sotheby’s Contemporary Art sale) to 22% (Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art sale). Twelve new records were set including a new world record for a work of art at auction which allowed Pablo PICASSO to recover the place he lost to Alberto GIACOMETTI just two months earlier.

Picasso and the best ever auction result The new record auction price for an artwork of $95m for Picasso’s lascivious painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter entitled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust is $2m higher than his previous record for Garçon à la pipe set in 2004. The work came from the Frances Lasker Brody collection and sold at Christie’s on 4 May 2010 generating almost one third of the sale’s total revenue ($296.5m from 56 lots sold).

The Impressionist and Modern successes
Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art sale on 5 May 2010 generated three times the 2009 revenue total ($171.2m, 50 lots sold, 14% bought in) and fetched 43 hammer prices above the $1m line. It also saw a significant return of Asian buyers who carried off two major works by Claude MONET (Effet de Printemps à Giverny at $13.5m and Fin d'après-midi, Vétheuil at $5.5m) as well as Amedeo MODIGLIANI’s superb portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne au Collier for $12.25m. The top price paid that evening was $25.5m for Henri MATISSE’s Bouquet de Fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet and there were new artist personal records for Salvador DALI whose Spectre du Soir sur la Plage fetched $5m and Isamu NOGUCHI’s whose Undine (Nadja) fetched more than 4 times its upper estimate with a final hammer price of $3.7m.

Recovery of Contemporary art
The Post-war and Contemporary Art sales generated as much enthusiasm and as many records as the Modern masters. On 11 May, Christie’s sold 74 contemporary works for $202.3m with only 8% of the works offered remaining unsold. The following day, the 50 lots sold by Sotheby’s generated total revenue of $166.2m with only 6% of the works offered remaining unsold. The two best results of the week represented bids above $25m! The highlight of the Sotheby’s sale was a 1980s self-portrait by Andy WARHOL belonging to the American fashion designer Tom Ford. The piece fetched $29m, well above twice its estimated price. A Mark ROTHKO red painting fetched $28m against an estimated price range of $18m - $25m. At Christie’s, the star lot was Jasper JOHNS’ Flag from the Michael Crichton. Estimated at between 10 and 15 million dollars, the US flag revisited by Johns fetched no less than $25.5m.

May 2010 -   Kinetic art goes back a long way. Its origins go back to the 1910s and 1920s, an era highly impregnated by the cult of progress and the myth of the machine.

During the last decade (2000-2010) kinetic works have gained considerable value. Inflated by their first 7-figure results, the price index climbed 128% over the period.

A decade of records
Today, kinetic art has the wind in its sails more than ever before. One the movement’s key figure, Victor Vasarely, signed his two best ever results in the first quarter of 2010 including a spectacular record for his painting Altaï III. The work came from the Lenz Schönberg collection that was dispersed by Sotheby’s on 10 February last. It fetched nearly five time its low estimate at a final hammer price of £470,000 ($734,000) more than doubling the artist’s previous record of approximately $300,000. This high quality sale generated a number of records including one for the Dutch artist Jan Schoonhoven who signed his first ever $7-figure result (Weißes Strukturrelief R 62-1 sold for £660,000).
Three months before the dispersion of this collection, Yaacov Agam’s new record had prepared the ground. His historical work 4 Themes Contrepoint generated an excellent result of $270,000 at fives times its estimate and double his previous record (on 24 November 2009, Sotheby’s).

Among the more contemporary creators, motorised sculptures by Jean Tinguely and mobiles reacting to air currents by Alexander Calder also fetch millions: Métamatic No.7 by Jean Tinguely sold for £920,000 ($1.8m) on 1 July 2008 at Sotheby’s and Alexander Calder’s mobile Baby Flat Top fetched $4.2m on 10 November 2004 at Christie's NY. However, the most spectacular prices are generated by the works of Bridget Riley, whose primary market is in London. Heiress to Victor Vasarely’s optical effects, Bridget Riley beat Alexander Calder with an auction result of $4.5m on 1 July 2008 with her Chant 2 (1967).

Latin America revival
The last decade also brought a number of Argentine and Venezuelan artists to the fore via major exhibitions such as Inverted Utopias (Museum of Fine arts in Houston Texas, 2004), L'œil moteur, art optique et cinétique de 1960 à 1975 (Strasbourg Museum of Modern Art in 2005) and La Utopia Cinetica (Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid in 2007).
Latin American artists are now commanding higher prices and over the last two years they have been closing the price gap versus their European peers. Leno by the Venezuelan Jesús-Rafael Soto fetched €430,000 ($555,000) on 12 February 2009 at Casa de Subastas Odalys in Madrid; Alejandro Otero’s Coloritmos fetch between $130,000 and $340,000 (vs $20,000 in the 1990s); his compatriot Carlos Cruz-Diez signed an auction record of $210,000 for his Fisicromia on 18 November 2008 at Sotheby's; Julio Le Parc set a new record of $260,000 in May 2008 for his Ordination d'une surface, vitesses progressives de rotation, and the Argentine Hugo Demarco has a top auction price of $55,000 for his 1966 Relief à déplacement continuel (30 May 2008, Sotheby's).

April 2010 -   Born on the streets of New York in the 1960s and incarnating rebelliousness and non-conformity, tags, graffiti and stencils have found their way into galleries, auction rooms and collections. Today, street art is clearly fashionable having earned its stars in numerous exhibitions at venerable institutions like the Tate Modern in London (Street art, 23 May - 25 August 2008) and the Grand Palais of Paris (Tag, 27 March - 26 April 2009).

Demand for this type of art was insatiable over most of the last decade, generating a 195% increase in its price index over the period as a whole. However, it peaked in January 2008 before declining quite substantially with the crisis. Since 2008, its prices have contracted 40% back to 2005 levels.

London: capital of Street art
Since 2000, the centre of gravity for Street art seems to have shifted from New York to London, attracted particularly by the mysterious Banksy. In November 2003, one of Banksy’s works appeared at auction for the first time and the price was accessible to even the smallest budgets. His painting Keep it real sold for £800. On 18 May 2005, a message on his website announcing the exhibition of a remarkable rock engraving at the British Museum launched a treasure hunt… and the media eagerly joined the fray. Banksy was suddenly hot stuff! In October 2007, The Rude Lord, a recent work (2006), sold for £270,000 ($550,000) at Sotheby’s! In just 2 years, his auction prices had acquired an additional 3 zeros. Then on 14 February 2008, Keep it spotless, a stencil on a canvas making a strong reference to the Spot paintings of the UK’s other art market star Damien Hirst, fetched $1.7m. That was his first seven-figure result (and so far his last). As one of the hottest artists in the Contemporary art field, Banksy’s market suffered a substantial meltdown in 2009. The number of his works offered at auctions during 2009 fell to a third of its 2008 number. Bansky’s success has encouraged a whole generation of young London artists who have received notable support from Bonhams with their Urban Art sale and from Dreweatts London branch.

Paris joins the movement
In 2009, two Paris exhibitions contributed to the general public’s awareness of Street Art: Le Tag at the Grand Palais in the spring, followed by Né dans la rue – Graffiti at the Fondation Cartier from July to November. Stimulated by so much news, the auctioneers Artcurial, Cornette de Saint Cyr and Pierre Bergé & Associés quickly joined the sales trend of an art form that perfectly corresponds to a new generation of burgeoning collectors. Indeed, in the current climate, the market for Street art has all the right ingredients: it is financially accessible, particularly dynamic and its key figures like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat generate very inspiring results. Small format works by Misstic can be acquired from $500, original works by Crash, Speddy Graphito, Daze, Invader, Futura 2000, Quik and Blek le rat usually fetch between 1 and 10 thousand dollars. A little further up the price ladder there are large formats by John Perello (Jonone) which sell for between $10,000 and $40,000.

March 2010 -   As the art market convalesced in 2009, the world's top auction performers generated much smaller totals than in previous years. Regulars in the Top 10 ranking like Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Alberto Giacometti, Edgar Degas or Claude Monet saw their annual revenues contract by 55% - 77% compared with 2008. While Picasso and Warhol appeared frequently on the annual podium, it's the first time a chinese artist reached such heights.

1 – Pablo Picasso – $121m

Pablo Picasso regained his first place in 2009 despite losing 54% of his 2008 total. After a progression of +96% between 1998 and 2008, his prices contracted by 15% in 2009. The number of sales above the $1m line fell sharply from 39 in 2008 to 15 in 2009. His best result for the year was $13m for Mousquetaire à la pipe on 6 May 2009 at Christie’s. However, better results were expected from two works offered in the first half of the year, both of which were finally bought in. The failed sale of Picasso’s Instruments de musique sur un guéridon in February was particularly hard for Christie's who had hoped to generate a world record for a Cubist work. The estimated range of €25-30m (roughly $31-39m) was too high, despite the prestige of the work’s Pierre Bergé / YSL origins.

2 – Andy Warhol – $106m

Andy Warhol moved up a step in the Top 10 despite an annual total down 55% in 2009 and an unsold rate of 33% for the year. The $106m total in 2009 is a long way from the 2007 score that gave the King of Pop Art first place in the auction revenue Top10. In 2009 he signed 13 results above the $1m line (vs. 43 in 2008) the highest of which was the best result of the year for post-war art. His 200 One Dollar Bills was estimated at between $8m and $12m. On 11 November, it fetched $39m, Warhol’s second best-ever auction result. Indeed, throughout 2009, the auction houses relied fairly heavily on Warhol to lure buyers in a difficult market context. Before the sale of 200 One Dollar Bills, Warhol signed the best result at Christie’s Contemporary Art Paris sale in May, generated the highest bids at Christie’s Contemporary Art sale on 23 September (Flower, $895,000, New York) and at Sotheby’s (Campbell's Soup Can, $310,000) the following day.

3 – Qi Baishi – $70m

Baishi QI’s modernity and highly efficient pictorial simplicity has fascinated many avant-garde artists and thinkers. Henceforward, the artist who Pablo Picasso considered "the greatest Oriental painter" is at last among the world’s top-ranked artists in terms of auction revenue. His rise to the summit has gone hand in hand with the emergence of the Chinese art market since 2004. All his market indicators are in the green: his annual sales total has progressed 240% and his price index is up 29%. This superb acceleration has been substantially propelled by the success of a sale organised by Poly International on 22 November 2009. At that sale, a series of drawings entitled Flowers and insects sold for a record equivalent to $12.47m (Yuan 85 million, Peking).

February 2010 -   Christie’s and Sotheby’s have won their gamble. The Impressionist & Modern Art sales on 2 and 3 February in London generated one global all-segment record and 29 results above £1m out of 87 lots offered. Christie's managed to sell 87.5% of its lots for £61m (est. £48m-69m) plus the £8.5m from its special session devoted to surrealist art. Sotheby’s, the big winner of the week, sold 81% of its lots for a total result £106.1m (est. £68m-101m) including £58m for Alberto Giacometti’s L’Homme qui marche I.

One week after this new record, Contemporary Art sales were equally dynamic with sold rates of 96% at Sotheby’s and 90% at Christie’s. Sotheby’s opened the first sale on 10 February with a session entitled “Zero” devoted to 49 masterpieces from the Sammlung Lenz Schönberg Collection. The collection’s coherence, origins and privacy (none of the works had ever appeared at auction before) were all major advantages. “Zero” generated £23.2m and 19 new records including one for an Yves KLEIN scorched anthropometric painting (est. £2.8m – £3.5m, sold for £3.2m), one for a Lucio Fontana work on copper (Concetto Spaziale, New York 26, est. £1.5 – £2m, sold for £3m)

After a price contraction of -30% in 2008 followed by -10% in the first quarter of 2009, the Artprice Global Index stabilised at the end of 2009 to around 2005 price levels. Since then, a form of sober confidence has clearly returned to the market, clearly targeting art that might be considered a safe investment. Demand for the masterpieces of art history has clearly recovered. The £167.14m from the Christie’s and Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern evenings (not including the Surrealist session) clearly reflects an improved climate and is twice the total generated a year earlier (£83.75m on 3 and 4 February 2009).

The apex of the sales was the ferocious battle, in million-pound steps, to acquire Alberto Giacometti’s L'Homme qui marche I on 3 February. L'Homme qui marche I, a human-size bronze was auctioned £58M (£65M premium included), for a £12M-18M estimate, and is now the most expensive artwork ever auctioned. Giacometti has superseded Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe that sold for $93M (£51.8M) on 5 May 2004 at Sotheby's.
Giacometti has exceeded his own 2009 total sales revenue with one single auction record. The £58M L'Homme qui marche I alone has yielded more profits than the 170 artworks (including 22 sculptures) put up for auction in 2009.
This sale's global revenue is Sotheby's London's most profitable sale (£146.8M premiums included) and points out to the art market revitalizing in 2010 after a 1 and a half-year crisis.

Major works are once again flowing into auction rooms and after eighteen months the high end of the art market has emerged from a relatively short period of purgatory hibernation. But while the top-end of the market is congratulating itself that “confidence has returned”, the middle-market remains hesitant and suspicious of a general rise in prices driven by a handful of exceptional results.
Incidentally, 42% of our AMCI respondents believe that art prices will rise over the next three months.

Art Market Insight is a biweekly update offered by Artprice.
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