Figures from the world's most important art auctions confirm that 2023 was a testing year for the art market, or, as Christie's CEO Guillaume Cerutti put it when reconciling the minuses with pluses, a "paradoxical" year.
Sotheby's came out on top with sales of £6.28 billion, on par with 2022. Topping their list is Picasso's 1932 painting Femme à la montre, which sold for $139.3 million (£113 million) in New York ) was sold, the highest auction price of the year. Picasso's annual auction turnover fell to £436 million from £454 million in 2015.
Just behind it, at Sotheby's London, was Gustav Klimt's Lady with a Fan, 1917-1918, which achieved the highest ever auction price in Europe at £85.3 million. It was purchased by art consultant Patti Wong, who outbid Taiwanese collector Robert Wu to purchase the work for an anonymous collector in Hong Kong, no doubt attracted by the influences of Asian art evident in the painting. Like most top prizes, it's not clear how profitable these were, because the proceeds were shared with third-party guarantors - anonymous parties who backed individual sales before the auctions took place and reaped a reward in the process.
Christie's came second with sales of £5 billion, apparently unfazed by market share losses. But when Cerutti announced the company's results, he took the unusual step of first pointing to 2022, when it did have a majority market share, thanks to the extraordinary quality of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's $1.6 billion collection. Cerutti then revealed that sales were down 26 percent from 2022, but only 7 percent, he said, if you take out the Allen collection - which of course he couldn't.
Both companies now call themselves "art and luxury" auctioneers. For them, handbags, watches, wine and jewelry stand strong next to the Rembrandts and Picassos. While individual prices for luxury items may no longer be rising, the number of sales at auctions is still increasing. Cerutti made a big splash this summer by revealing that luxury sales rose more than art sales at Christie's, and could point to record sales of £790 million by the end of 2023, led by the Bleu Royal diamond, a rare, vibrant blue diamond of 17.61 carats. diamond, the most expensive jewel at auction last year at £32 million. Luxury items are popular with Asian buyers and are the main entry point for new buyers at Christie's, Cerutti said, with sales of handbags and watches in the Asia-Pacific region reaching their highest ever total last year.
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Third-place Phillips declined to reveal the annual total but highlighted key growth areas of jewelry (up 40 percent) and design (up 45 percent). By contrast, fourth-placed Bonhams, which now has 14 salesrooms worldwide, was pleased to announce 14 percent sales growth last year to $1.14 billion, which should put Phillips pretty close. The greatest growth was experienced by the Indian and Islamic Art Department, which sold Tipu Sultan's 18th-century Bedroom Sword for £14 million - a world auction record for an Indian and Islamic object and the most valuable sword ever sold at auction.
Analyst ArtTactic compiled key art statistics and indicated that the "flight to quality," which usually occurs when the market falls, had not occurred. Art auctions in the key categories of Old Masters, Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art worldwide by the three leading auctioneers Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips have fallen 27 percent in 2023 from 2022 to $5.74 billion. The root cause was that there was a 30 percent decline in the number of lots valued at more than $10 million being offered on the market.
On the other hand, sales of lower value lots, worth less than $50,000 each, increased 18 percent compared to 2022, indicating a more democratic market at work.
Looking at categories, the strongest decline measured by sales volume, as opposed to individual values, was felt by the Impressionist market, so well represented by the Allen collection in 2022, with a decline of 53.4 percent . Classical post-war and contemporary also fell sharply by 31.6 percent. Sales of work by Andy Warhol, the driving force behind this market - whose Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million the year before - fell 73 percent. Even the fashion-driven market for younger contemporary art, while superficially vibrant, fell by 12.8 percent. Ironically, given the amount of negative press this market has had, the Old Masters market, boosted by rediscovered works by Rembrandt and Canaletto, has been the best performing market. This market fell by only 5.5 percent.
Down, but not quite out, were NFTs (non-fungible tokens), once described as "tickets to a whole new lifestyle." In July, it was widely reported that a Bored Ape NFT, which Justin Bieber paid $1.3 million for in 2022, was worth 5 percent of that. A similar point could be made about the celebrated Saatchi collection, which sells works by once-famous artists for ridiculous three-figure sums in small London salesrooms.
The striking example of a downward price correction at the top end was the collection formed by the late real estate magnate Gerald Fineberg at Christie's in New York, which was valued at as much as $230 million and sold for $153 million. Paintings by market stars such as Picasso, Magritte, Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool, worth tens of millions, all sold significantly below their estimates, heralding the arrival of a buyers' market, no longer controlled by ambitious sellers.
However, women artists remained in demand, from the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi to the American minimalist Agnes Martin and the British star of the 21st century, Cecily Brown, who basked in the glory of a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Younger female artists also closed the gap with their male counterparts. In the under 38 category, female artists were in the majority, accounting for 34 of the top 50 auction prices.
It was also a good year for women of color. A polished terracotta pot by Magdalene Odundo, bought for £33 in 1993, sold for £82,500. Odundo's record, meanwhile, rose to £533,400 at another sale at Sotheby's.
One of the most closely watched market areas was the growth of Paris as an international centre. At October's rival fairs, Frieze in London and Art Basel Paris+, Paris auctions surpassed London's for the first time, raising €218 million (£189 million) at London's £156 million Frieze week sale .
Here a remarkable result was achieved for the 3 meter long bronze and copper Rhinocrétaire 1 (1964) by artist/designer François-Xavier Lalanne. It combines art, sculpture and functional design and contains a desk, a bar and a safe in the armored folds. It sold well above its €4 million estimate, for an astonishing record €18.3 million.
The sale marked a good year for animal art with character - David Hockney's ceramic cats, for example, or Les Flamants, 1910, a group of pink flamingos on the shores of a jungle lake by the self-taught Henri Rousseau, which exceeded its estimate. for a record $43.5 million at Christie's - a rare example of an outsider ranking in the top 10 auction sales in a year.
