The contemporary-art market surged by 35 percent in 2011’s auctions as an influx of wealthy buyers sought refuge from financial turmoil.
Sotheby’s (BID) and Christie’s International raised a combined total of $1.7 billion from evening sales, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. Collectors sought proven artists for investment, led by Germany’s Gerhard Richter, 79.
While some prices are still below the highs of September 2008, when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, buyers from the U.S., Russia, Asia and other emerging economies have been investing in contemporary art.
“The art market is a place for new people these days,” Christophe Van de Weghe, a New York-based dealer, said in an interview. “There are Americans nobody has seen before who are excited by this world and who want an alternative to shares. And then there are buyers coming in from places like India and China. The collectors who bought 15 years ago aren’t prepared to pay today’s higher prices.”
Sotheby’s and Christie’s made their combined total with fees from 12 high-value contemporary art sales in New York and London this year. In 2010, the equivalent evening auctions made $1.2 billion, an increase from $482.3 million in 2009. The sales reached a record $2.4 billion in 2007, fuelled by speculative bidding for fashionable names such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince.
Market Demand
“The market is hungry for great works at ‘masterpiece’ level,” the New York-based art adviser Mary Hoeveler said in an interview. “There is tremendous wealth to buy them. New buyers are also migrating to the contemporary market from other more traditional art collecting fields. Demand for contemporary art has increased exponentially.”
Sotheby’s raised $844.1 million from its evening auctions in 2011, while Christie’s took $834.3 million. Equivalent auctions in New York and London held by Phillips de Pury & Co., which has a reputation for offering pieces by emerging artists, totaled $208.3 million, an increase of just $7 million on 2010, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Classic contemporary works from long-established collections attracted intense demand. Sotheby’s sale of 34 paintings by Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke and other German artists belonging to Christian Graf Duerckheim-Ketelhodt, chairman of the Cologne-based pharmaceutical company Axiogenesis AG (AI8), raised 60.4 million pounds ($94.6 million) in London on June 29. The total with fees almost doubled the low estimate of 31.8 million pounds, based on hammer prices.
