Displaying items by tag: Sothebys

Sotheby’s, the auction house under pressure from activist investors to boost profit, doubled the amount it can borrow to make art loans in a bid to win clients and top consignments.

Sotheby’s secured a credit line of more than $1 billion to make such loans from a consortium including General Electric Capital Corp., according to a filing last week. The New York-based auction house previously could borrow as much as $550 million under that line.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.

Peter Brant, chairman and chief executive officer of the White Birch Paper Co., has fallen from billionaire status and is turning to his contemporary art collection to help recapitalize the family newsprint business. An early patron of Andy Warhol, Brant recently pledged 56 works to the lending arm of Sotheby’s including works by Warhol, Richard Prince, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Brant also pledged pieces to a unit of the Deutsche Bank AG and his former business partner, including a Warhol from the early 1960s that is said to be worth around $35 million.

Ranked as one of the largest contemporary art collectors in the United States, Brant joins a number of wealthy collectors who have started taking out loans backed artworks to fund their ventures. It is rumored that Brant used his art collection to provide some of the capital needed to buy White Birch out of bankruptcy in 2011.

According to an annual report, Sotheby’s Financial Services provides consignment loans secured by artworks that borrowers have agreed to sell through the auction house, permitting them to get some of the proceeds as much as a year ahead of time. The auction house also makes term loans on works that clients aren’t planning to sell in order to solidify relationships with borrowers that will hopefully lead to future consignments.

Tobias Meyer, the fastidious German auctioneer at Sotheby’s, stood at the podium in the beige auction room two weeks ago, sweating gently in an uncreased suit and violet collar. Sotheby’s had a strong lineup of 73 lots, including four paintings from the “triumphant period” of Clyfford Still, an early proponent of Abstract Expressionism. But the Dow was down three points, the Italian prime minister had just announced his resignation over economic turmoil, and there was a mob of about 150 protesters outside the auction house’s glass facade, heckling the buyers and collectors on their way in.

“Shame on you! Go home!” protesters shouted as the likes of Eli Broad, Larry Gagosian and Jose Mugrabi scurried past the picket line before being sucked through the revolving door into the marble vacuum of the auction house. A small brass band outside Sotheby’s pumped out a zippy rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” as a pair of girls clapped and two-stepped on the sidewalk. An older gentleman leaned over the metal barricades placed by the police and gave a zealous thumbs-down. “Boooo!” he taunted, then turned to Gallerist. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

The protesters were picketing on behalf of the Teamsters Local 814, the union that represents the 42 art handlers at Sotheby’s. When the union contract came up for renewal in July, Sotheby’s hired the infamous union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis and proposed changes to overtime, benefits and restrictions on the use of temporary laborers, a package the union says amounts to a pay cut and a ploy to avoid paying benefits. The negotiations stalled, and on Aug. 1, Sotheby’s told the art handlers not to come back to work. Since then, protesters at Occupy Wall Street have seized on the juxtaposition of Upper East Side art buyers versus blue collar art movers, giving what might have been a routine picket line an unexpected jolt.

One protester gave the Sotheby’s clients the finger, provoking a gray-haired buyer with a checkered scarf. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” he shouted in a French accent. Once inside, he stood behind the glass window like a kid at the zoo, sticking out his tongue, mouthing obscenities, zealously grasping an imaginary phallus and pumping it a few times into his mouth before he grew bored or realized how many cameras were around. “He’s in Sotheby’s a lot,” one of the locked-out art handlers told Gallerist as he aimed a flashlight at arriving clients’ eyes. One picketer hoisted a cutout of Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht’s head on the end of a long pole. “I’m Bill the CEO,” the back of the sign said. “I gave myself a 125% raise, HA.”

The real Mr. Ruprecht was inside with “a big African American bodyguard,” said one veteran art adviser, who noted that it was the first time they’d seen Mr. Ruprecht with a detail. “Sotheby’s had staff beyond, beyond,” the adviser noted. “It was like a hand-off. It started many feet ahead of the building, and as you got to the corner, a guy came and walked you a few feet to the next, who walked you a few feet to the next, so you’re not alone for a step.”

Sotheby’s was worried about protecting its clientele, but it likely was more worried about protecting the art. “I’m just always amazed that nothing hideous has happened,” the adviser said. “What’s to stop a Tony Shafrazi from coming in with a spray can, which is what he did to Guernica? The thing is, he never went to jail for it and it actually gave him some business credibility in the art world!”

Indeed it had. Mr. Shafrazi, a legendary dealer who defaced Picasso’s Guernica in 1974 as a protest against the Vietnam War, had come late to the sale and was pestering Miami-based collectors the Rubells about how much previous lots had gone for. In fact, once inside, most of the patrons quickly forgot about the protest. The rabble’s whistles and cries were barely audible in the auction room, with the exception of the interminable eight minutes the first Still painting spent on the block. The room fell silent except for the protest’s dull roar from outside, underscoring the tense volley between private dealer Christopher Eykyn, on a cell phone, and Sotheby’s chairman of North and South America Lisa Dennison, also representing a phone bidder. Finally Ms. Dennison offered $61.7 million. “Sold!” Mr. Meyer banged his hammer. “Thanks, Lisa.” By the end of the night, Sotheby’s had unloaded $315.8 million worth of art, the house’s best take for a single contemporary art sale in three years.

As for the protests, “some people were offended by it, and some didn’t give a shit,” said the veteran adviser. “They like being in the 1 percent! Anything that points that out is probably a good thing. That’s why they collect, after all. They’re very self-centered, these people. The whole art world really believes they are the epicenter of the world.”

It’s probably best that the picketers didn’t see the auction open with one of Andy Warhol’s Dollar Signs, a screenprint the size of a sheet of copy paper that sold for $698,000.

Four paintings by Clyfford Still could fetch more than $70 million when they come up for auction at Sotheby’s on Nov. 9 in New York.

The rare pieces come from the estate of Still’s wife, Patricia Still, and are being sold by the City of Denver. The proceeds will go toward the endowment of the Clyfford Still Museum, which is scheduled to open on Nov. 18 in Denver.

The auction house guaranteed the museum more than $25 million. The four works are estimated to bring between $51 million and $71.5 million. Sotheby’s could earn as much as $15 million in commission from the sale, according to the contract with the City of Denver.

“You always think in your job that you’ve seen everything, but this is a new world,” Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, said in a telephone interview. The sale marks the first time, he added, that four works by the American Abstract Expressionist will be offered “to the global community of collectors.”

The works include three completed in the 1940s and one in 1976. The top lot of the group, “1949-A-No. 1,” features deep reds and velvety blacks. It has an estimate range of $25 million to $35 million.

Paintings by Still (1904-1980) rarely come up at auction. In 2006, Christie’s, which competed for the Denver consignment, sold a large 1947 canvas for $21.3 million, the auction record for Still.