Source: AFP
New York’s major auction houses were preparing for the start of their all-important spring sales on Monday, even as Christie’s suffered a cyber attack that affected its website.
After a drop in sales in 2023, there is hope among hammer guns that the good results in Europe so far this year will be repeated stateside.
David Hockney, Francis Bacon, Leonora Carrington, Joan Mitchell, Brice Marden, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alberto Giacometti, Georgia O’Keeffe are among the distinguished artists on offer when Sotheby’s launches its season on Monday.
Christie’s and Phillips follow on Tuesday.
There will be no shortage of works by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso in the increasingly globalized market, which is still dominated by US collectors.
Christie’s, which has confirmed that its systems, including its website, were the victim of a cyber attack, expects to bring in between $578 million and $846 million for the sale of about 900 works.
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“A technological security issue has affected some of our systems, including our website. We are taking all necessary measures to manage this issue,” a Christie’s spokeswoman told AFP.
Sotheby’s is setting the bar slightly higher than last year, hoping for $549 million to $784 million.
Source: AFP
“The market is frankly more driven by supply than demand, we don’t struggle to sell things, we struggle more to get people to ship them,” said Lucius Elliott, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art sales.
down 14 percent
With sales of $14.9 billion last year, the art market is down 14 percent compared to 2022, although online transactions are up 285 percent.
Unlike Sotheby’s, which assembled the more than 700 works it offers for sale piece by piece, Christie’s most important works come from two private collections.
One of those collections belonged to the late TV pioneer Norman Lear and his wife Lynn, with David Hockney’s A Lawn Being Sprinkled worth an estimated $25 million to $35 million among the separate pieces.
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“There are probably fewer collections this season than there have been historically for idiosyncratic reasons, but we have great collections (that) will be on the market again this season,” Christie’s vice president Max Carter said, adding that the March sales in London was among the highest ever.
At Sotheby’s, the crown jewel of the sale is a portrait of Francis Bacon with an estimate of $30 million to $50 million.
It is the first large-scale painting Bacon made for his then-partner George Dyer in 1966, and the first of ten works he did for the latter before dying on the eve of his death.
Source: AFP