Sotheby’s auction sales for the first six months of the year reached $2.91 billion (£1.8 billion), a 35 per cent increase on last year, nearing its first six months record $2.95 billion in 2008. Christie’s auction sales figures are not yet available, but are thought to be close.
The figures were topped up by one of the most successful fortnights of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions in London, which ended last Thursday, and realised £516.2 million, the third highest on record for such a series in London, just a fraction behind the £520 million achieved in February 2008. The Impressionist and modern art sales, which I reviewed last week, were dominated by the more modern art and realised close to £280 million, second only, in London, to the June 2008 series of £298 million.
Last week it was the turn of post-war and contemporary art, the area that was most hit by the recession. Having lagged far behind the Impressionist and modern art market during 2010, contemporary art is catching up again, and the sales last week brought just over £236 million, a 102 per cent increase on last summer. In spectacular fashion, Sotheby’s achieved the highest total for a single contemporary art auction outside New York of £109 million.
A couple of observations can be made. Painting, and predominantly figurative painting, though not necessarily in the conventional sense, was in the ascendant. Big prices were paid at Christie’s for a darkly ominous portrait by Francis Bacon (£18 million to a Russian buyer), a West Indian river scene by Peter Doig (£6.2 million to a US buyer), and a vertiginous view of a bull ring by the Spanish artist, Miquel Barcelo (£4 million to a European buyer). And at Sotheby’s records tumbled for the German new wave paintings of the 1960’s - satirical, expressive and fundamentally figurative - by Sigmar Polke (£5.7 million from a European buyer for ‘Jungle’, pictured), and Georg Baselitz (£3.2 million from the American trade for ‘Spekulatius’, pictured). European, and especially the German art from the collection of Count Duerkheim, eclipsed the American art on offer. Much of this, though classified as ‘contemporary’, was in fact historic, dating from the 50’s and 60’s, by artists now of the older generation, or no longer living.
