IZO

Irina Shalina, icon-expert in charge of the last two icon sales at Macdougall's, is leaving the auction house (Russian Art Media), in Russian).

Komar and Melamid etchings on eBay (eBay).

Sotheby's roller-coaster share-price over one year. It rose about 700%, but is down nearly 50% from its high of three months ago (Motley Fool).

Former Sotheby's Russian art expert, mover of 1988 Moscow auction, the ebullient Peter Batkin stole £330,000 from a Soho strip-club owner and gets a suspended sentence (Evening Standard). I liked this:

Batkin's theatrical flair led to him becoming a “meeter and greeter” at the Windmill [a table-dancing venue].

So Batkin's trajectory is the opposite of mine: as an art student I was a meeter-and-greeter at the Raymond Revue Bar, just around the corner from the Windmill.

Results of the 15 June Gene Shapiro auction; offers accepted fror unsold lots (Gene Shapiro).

Arbitrage vs auction

Once upon a time the arbitrage opportunities in Russian art were immense. The prices people would pay for works of Russian art outside Russia (then the USSR) were in many cases much greater than the prices inside Russia. Very few people would or could straddle the Iron Curtain to take advantage. Now political openness, cheap international travel and the internet have created market transparency and destroyed that advantage (which also accrued to dealers in art other than Russian, but to a lesser extent). So how do you make money on the secondary market? Very occasionally you have the opportunity to buy a good work cheaply enough to hold and sell at your leisure. But such is the saturation of the art-world with dealers, hype and expectations that this does not often happen. More often than not you are an intermediary, making a percentage when bringing together seller and buyer. You are also probably negotiating between them. Which brings your activity close to that of the auction houses, in effect, but without the volume of turnover. No wonder every second dealer one meets talks of opening an auction house of his or her own.

London Russian week sales

Sotheby's Important Russian Art sale on Monday set the tone of the week. Some unsolds, but several other lots travelling far above estimate.In the perverse universe of Russian art, even as the dearth of top-quality pieces begins to look critical, the prices for the perceived top-lots (which are in general below the quality of those from previous years) keep rising. For less important lots, the market is tougher (and the private market, in Moscow and elsewhere, is tougher still). Overall, sale totals are up on a year ago, but still down on the boom of 2-3 years ago.

Sotheby's had the highest total for the week; and also the highest-selling lot, an African subject by Alexander Yakovlev. Their IRA sale was also notable for the failure to sell of more than one work by Aivazovsky. You can extrapolate, as some are, that the market for nineteenth century Russian art is declining and that for early twentieth-century art is rising.

The top-lot at Christies was the Petrov-Vodkin, which fetched 1.6 million UKP. I wasn't there but I was told the winning paddle was raised by dealer Aleks Lachmann, presumably on someone's behalf. According to one Russian blogger, the painting was bought by a Russian businessman called Pakhomov, described as "the one and only to bravely tell the British press what bribes you have to pay to receive a contract [for the Olympics] in Sochi" (stanis-sadal, in Russian). I've no idea what that refers to (google news search turned up nothing), and it is not clear whether that would be Artur Pakhomov, active in St Petersburg with interests in Germany (gazeta.ru, in Russian) or, conceivably [but it seems to me less likely] the Mayor of Sochi, Anatoli Pakhomov, or some other Pakhomov. Thoughts about the Petrov-Vodkin earlier (IZO).

Macdougall's top lot was the very rare Pirosmani, with a lovely provenance, which fetched 1.1 million UKP.

Some more round-ups (Art Observed, Art Market Monitor, All Art News, Kommersant (in Russian), Kommersant (in Russian)).

Report on charity auction at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton in support of Russian and Jewish charities (Izrus, in Russian). Unfortunately no info on who bought what for how much etc.

London Russian week sales

Monday 7 June:
11 am: Macdougall's, Icons of the Orthodox World(Macdougall's).
2 pm: Bonhams, The Russian Sale (Bonhams).
7 pm: Sotheby's, Important Russian Art (Sotheby's).

Tuesday 8 June:
11 am, 2 pm: Christie's, Russian Art (Christie's).

Wednesday 9 June:
10 am: Sotheby's, Russian Paintings Day Sale (Sotheby's).
10 am, 2.30 pm: Sotheby's, Russian Works of Art, Fabergé, Icons (Sotheby's).

Thursday 10 June:
11 am: Macdougall's, Russian Classic and Contemporary Art (Macdougall's).
2 pm: Christie's, Russian Art (Christie's).

Friday 11 June:
11 am: Macdougall's, Russian Works on Paper (Macdougall's).

Survey of the sales (Kommersant, in Russian).

UPDATE: The relatively new Russian Art Fair opens on the evening of Wednesday 9 June (world-arts).

Gene Shapiro's 15 June sale will be at new NYC premises (ACN):

“I am very happy that we have been able to make this move,” Shapiro said, “as this has been something we have been wanting to do for a while, but we were waiting for a great space to come onto the market.”

The new gallery is conveniently located next to the intersection of 74th Street and York Avenue, which is only two blocks away from Sotheby's.

15 June sale catalogue (Gene Shapiro).

There is speculation over the Petrov-Vodkin being offered at Christies on Tuesday (Christies). Inevitably so, because his work is so rare and sought after. Is this painting authentic or not? At Sotheby's Sunday night reception I spoke to two experts in the art of this period (presumably, 1910s). Neither had a definitive unshakeable opinion, but both were sceptical. One said he had investigated the provenance and, while it appeared good on paper, it seemed unproveable and the old catalogues (1922 and 1932) merely list and do not illustrate the painting this one is claimed to be. What do I think? Well, I only flew in from Berlin on Sunday and at time of writing I haven't seen it in actuality. Nor am I anything like a PV expert. But I'm sceptical too, for a reason I won't divulge because it could conceivably assist a future faker of PV's work.

Russian week auctions

The Gene Shapiro June 15th Russian sale is online (Gene Shapiro). Actually that's post "Russian Week" but close enough. Below: lot 148, Petr Belenok, In Between Worlds, 1974.

Macdougall's have three sales: Icons of the Orthodox World, Russian Classic and Contemporary Art, Russian Works on Paper . The unified catalogue is here (Macdougall's). Below: lot 484, Evgeni Rukhin, Untitled, 1974.

 

Sotheby's have three sales. Private View video (Sotheby's). Important Russian Art (Sotheby's). Russian Paintings (Sotheby's). Russian Works of Art, Fabergé and Icons (Sotheby's). Below: lot 19 from the Important Russian Art sale, Yuri Annenkov, Portrait, 1919.

 

Bonham's Russian sale is on 7 June (Bonhams). Christie's Russian sale is on 8 June (Christie's).

A charity auction of jewellery takes place in Moscow in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on 6 June (Izrus, in Russian).

The Rabin pulled from a Christies interiors' sale after its mis-pricing was outed by IZO (IZO) has now been re-offered with a more realistic estimate, 20x higher (Christies) (thanks, TM).

22 May auction of young Ukrainian art (Zolotoe Sechenie). Below, work by Apl315 (lot 70) and Alexei Sai (lot 130).

Three-way smackdown as Mercury Group-owned Phillips de Pury expands to midtown Manhattan (WSJ).

Simon de Pury is the "Mick Jagger" of auctioneers (Guardian). So who is Tobias Meyer? Till Lindemann?

Auction results, reports

Sotheby's NY 21-22 April, results (Sotheby's). Report on first session (Bloomberg):

Barely half a dozen Russian collectors made it past the Icelandic ash cloud to attend Sotheby’s Russian art auction in New York yesterday.

But... session 3, the painting, did very well. The Pimenov made over $300,000; the Pereman collection made nearly $2 million; a late Nesterova fetched about $35,000; quite encouraging if you are invested in C20 Russian painting. The new King of the Hill is Pavel Tchelitchew, with a top price approaching a million dollars. A Zurab Tsereteli painting fetched $86,500. Report on third session (Art Daily). The Pereman collection is going to Kiev having been bought by an anonymous businessman for the Ukrainian Foundation of Avant-Garde Art (Izrus, in Russian).

Christie's NY 23 April, results (Christies). The sale made $5 million total, only 50% sold (The Voice of Russia).

Phillips de Pury BRIC sale in London 23-24 April; most Russian lots are 225-304. Catalogue (PDP), results (PDP). Mixed results with some very good prices: Bulatov's relatively late Entrance - No Entrance made £713,250 ($1,096,000); a Yankilevsky triptych made £133,250 ($205,000) (that's a breakthrough price for him); a good, small Sundukov made £67,250 ($103,000). But, best result of all in a way, because it was a significant increase over prices achieved earlier for single paintings, was the sale of Komar and Melamid's 1972 painting Meeting Between Solzhenitsyn and Böll at Rostropovich's Country House for £657,250 ($1,010,000) (PDP). The sale puts K&M among a handful of Russian artists whose work sells at this level.

Below: Meeting Between Komar and Bown at Burlington House, 2010, by LKJ.

  

Stop press

Email from Sotheby's:

Matthew – not sure if you are in London, just dropping you a line to say that it will be possible to both participate in and/or watch the NY Russian sale in London.  We’ve got a special remote room set up which will have an auctioneer and it will be possible to register for a paddle to bid.  You could also come and watch the auction’s progress.  All because of the ash cloud!   The works of art are tomorrow, pictures on Thursday.

Auctions

Sotheby's NY Russian sale is on 21-22 April (Sotheby's).

Christie's NY Russian sale is on 23 April (Christie's).

Christie's opens Moscow office (RT).

Macdougall have opened a Kiev office. Everyone says to me "smart move" because Ukrainians love Russian art, not just Ukrainian art. I don't know if that's true, but I know it's a smart move because Macdougall is always making smart moves.

BRIC auction preview

The show/party at the Saatchi Gallery by Phillips de Pury was full of interesting things. You can view the sale here (PDP).

Crowd scene; on the far wall, work by Anatoli Osmolovsky.

Works in cabinet by Grisha Bruskin; works on wall by Vasiliev (I think), Bulatov, Kosolapov. In attendance: Alex Lachmann and Nonna Materkova.

Work by Berlin-based Alexei Kostroma.

 

Works by Alexander Kosolapov, Leonid Sokov. In attendance: Flora Bown.

Mark Kelner and James Butterwick.

BRIC – the movie

An IZO reader writes:

The underpriced, yet very authentic Rabin was pulled from today's Christies Interior Sale at South Kensington.  Damn you, IZO... :-/

Background (IZO, earlier). Was IZO responsible? Maybe we'll find out soon, if the owner or auction house gets in touch to say "Thank you, IZO, you saved us from a big mistake, here's your commission."

Auctions

The Phillips de Pury two-day BRIC sale in London has a few Russian lots in the Evening Sale on 23 April and a Russian section on 24 April (PDP).

Auction of Icons and Artefacts from the Orthodox World on 6 May, in Limassol, Cyprus. This is claimed as the first stand-alone auction of Orthodox art (including Russian, Greek, Balkan, Cypriot icons and Byzantine artefacts) outside  the UK (download Cyprus auction pr) (La Parole Divine).

Sotheby's in 2009: a $6.5 million loss, $2.4 million pay + perks to CEO Ruprecht (Business Week); one fifth of staff sacked; share price up 500% in last twelve months (Business Week).

Hong Kong is world's third-largest auction market (Art Radar Asia):

In 2009, when the global art market shrunk by more than a third to $43.5 billion, compared with $63.9 billion at its peak two years earlier, the Chinese art market bucked the trend. Sales in mainland China and Hong Kong reached a record high of $5.5 billion, up from $5 billion in 2008, boosting China’s share of the world art market that year to 14%, its highest share ever.

Lots of Burliuks sold at 25 March Sotheby's NY Impressionist and Modern Art sale (lots 207-224) (Sotheby's).

An IZO reader writes to point out that Christies Interiors sale on 30 March has an early 60s Rabin estimated at 1,000-1,5000 UKP (Christies). That's an eBay-style price, let's hope it's not an eBay-style painting.

Christies NY Russian sale is on 23 April (Art Knowledge News).

Confusion over possible sale of Vasari letters archive to mysterious Russian collector (Guardian). See earlier (IZO).

Upcoming Sotheby's New York and London sales are previewed in Paris until 9 March (Artdaily).

Russian space memorabilia at auction at Waddington's (Globe and Mail):

The rare pieces carry significant historical weight, curator Sean Quinn says. A spacesuit worn by cosmonaut Anatoli Artsebarsky, a spy periscope from a secret Russian space station and mechanical items such as thruster engine covers, observation portholes, control panels and landing brake engines. The collection is expected to draw tens of thousands of dollars.  "There's just not a lot of this stuff available on the market," says Mr. Quinn. "The space agencies tend to hang onto it."

Below: Artsebarsky's suit.

 

Phillips de Pury, now under Russian ownership, expanding in NY to 57th and Park (FT).

Profile of the MacDougall auction house (Russia):

They organised the first auction in five months, offering 106 lots of Russian 19th- and 20th-century paintings. It was a disaster. Almost no one bid, and they lost £60,000.

I remember it. Amazingly (to me), they persevered, and it has paid off in a big way.

Drouot auction house reorganises after arrest of eight Cols Rouges porters on theft charges (ATG).

Russian demand boosts prices at Christies London sale (Bloomberg):

“They want flashy, colorful pictures by the big names,” Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s international head of Impressionist and modern art, said in an interview. “We were surprised by the amount of bidding from Russian and former Eastern Bloc buyers.”  At least six Christie’s staff members -- including Matthew Stephenson, managing director of Christie’s Russia, and Sandra Nedvetskaia, of the company’s London-based Russian art department -- took telephone bids on Picasso’s 1963 painting “Tete de Femme (Jacqueline). 

The Picasso was bought by Bond Street, London, jeweller Laurence Graff against Russian underbidding (Art Market Monitor).

Sale of the $1.7 million prez Medvedev photo of Tobolsk (IZO, earlier) with insider info (b_insider).

 

Prez Medvedev photo of Tobolsk kremlin fetches $1.7 milion at St P charity auction (CTV).

Russian-week follow-up: William MacDougall writes:

Would it be immodest of me to suggest that the most striking thing about  last week was that we came first for Russian Paintings, outselling the other  three auction houses in the most important area of the Russian market?  And  that we sold the two most expensive lots of the week?

Well, I don't know if it's immodest, but facts are facts.

Hermitage buys remainder of Popoff collection watercolour portraits after auction failure (Bloomberg).

One story of last week's Russian sales in London is the rise and rise of Nikolai Roerich. He provided the highest-selling painting of the week and also two of the top three. How to explain his huge popularity? My guess is it's a reverberation of Eurasianist ideology, which asserts that Russia's natural cultural alignment is not with Europe but with Asia. Eurasianism is a recurring theme in Russian culture, its current popularity born perhaps of Putin's disenchantment with the West and admiration of the Chinese transition to a market economy. Roerich, who made important ethnographic study trips to Central Asia in the 1920s-30s and in 1928 set up an institute in the Himalayas, is a great symbol of this Eurasian outlook.

Russian week sales

Market-leader Sotheby's Russian sales raised about £19 million total. The Romanov heirlooms were 100% sold, which was remarkable, but the evening sale of prime lots must have been disappointing: it was only 51% sold by lot - last year it raised £14 million, this year £4 million. Which makes the comment by one Kathryn Hopkins in the Guardian, implying that the market has improved improved massively year-on-year, particularly dim-witted (Guardian):

The sale was a far cry from last year, when demand for art dampened in the midst of the credit crunch, and auctioneer Christie's failed to sell a Francis Bacon self-portrait in New York.

For further comparison: two years ago Sotheby's November sales totalled $80 million (£39 million) over two days. So in the two years from pre- to post-Crisis, the market leader's turnover has dropped by about 50%.

Sotheby's results in detail: Romanov Heirlooms (Sotheby's); Russian Art Evening Sale (Sotheby's); Russian Paintings Day Sale (Sotheby's); Russian Works of Art, Faberge and Icons (Sotheby's). 

Macdougall's icons sale made £830,000. Macdougall's paintings sale made £8.6 million; top lots were Roerich (£1,128,000 - top price of the week) and Serebryakova (£1,071,000); results in detail (Macdougall's).

Macdougall's ended neck-and-neck with Christies on overall turnover.

Bonhams 30 November sale made £1.9 million; top-lots were by Aivazovsky (£378,000) and Feshin (£168,000) (Bonhams). Results in detail (Bonhams).

Christies 1-2 December sale made £8.9 million; top price was for Roerich, £993,000; results in detail (Christies). Christies 3 December South Kensington sale made £572,000; results in detail (Christies).

Further round-up (John Varoli/Bloomberg):

“The market has two locations and realities,” said Ildar Galeyev, owner of Galeyev Gallery in Moscow. “There’s the Moscow market, where we don’t see signs of recovery since the crisis began. Then there’s London where we see the market growing. Russians prefer to buy in London for a number of reasons, for instance, they have more trust in the major auction houses.”

Nabokov Manuscript Flops (Straits Times).

Two Vladimir Makovsky-designed art deco clocks set for auction next week (James Spotting).

Results of the 22 November Gene Shapiro auction: unsold lots still open to offers (Gene Shapiro). A 1946 Anisfeld made $72,000; a 1931 Andrei Goncharov did well ($54,000); Belenyuk held up ($24,000); a Roginsky with an incredible provenance of the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition seems disappointing at $10,800.

Russian week in London auction schedule:

Monday: Sotheby's, Romanov Heirlooms, 17.00; Sotheby's, Russian Art Evening Sale, 19.00; Bonhams, The Russian Sale, 13.00.

Tuesday: Sotheby's, Russian Paintings Day Sale, 10.30; Sotheby's, Russian Works of Art, Faberge and Icons, 14.30; Christies, Russian Art, 10.30.

Wednesday: Macdougall's Icons of the Orthodox World, 11.00; Christies, Russian Art, 14.00.

Thursday: Macdougall's, Russian XIX & XX Century and Russian Post War & Contemporary Art, 11.00 and 14.00.

Below: a painting from the Macdougall sale, Semyon Faibisovich's Assembly Point, 1989.

Berlin auction house Jeschke-Van Vliet raises €387,500, against estimated €2.6 million, in sale of Milanese collection of Socialist Realism (Open Space, in Russian). But it doesn't seem to have been much of a collection, so perhaps that was a good price:

Miryana Maricevic from the Moscow gallery Maricevic Fine Art and Antiques described the auction as "genuinely odd: the exhibited lots were a professionally-selected group of works of extremely dubious artistic quality. The level of all the works was identical: they were made-to-order daubs!"

"Evgeny Rukhin" on ebay.

Online catalogue of Gene Shapiro's Sunday 22 November auction (Gene Shapiro). Below: Alexander Kosolapov, Molotov Cocktail, 1989.

Results and analysis of last week's big contemporary sales in New York [not a single Russian contemporary work was on the block] (oneartworld). This site also puts all the lots on one page: such a relief not to have to click through multiple pages, each with ten or twenty lots. UPDATE: speculation that the purchase of the $43.7 million Warhol dollar-bills pic at Sotheby's was Steven A. Cohen (Business Insider). Well, that might have the collateral effect of boosting Sotheby's shares, in which Cohen is the biggest investor of late (IZO, earlier).

Sotheby's NY Russian sale last Monday brought $13.8 million. Top seller was Boris Grigorev at $1.4 million (Sotheby's). That's over estimate even though the Sotheby's pr continues the ridiculous practice of comparing pre-sale estimates which exclude buyer's premium with sale results that include it.

At Christies impressionist and modern sale the next day the results were "limp" (Reuters). But at Sotheby's similar sale on Wednesday "Prices far surpassed estimates"; a 1932 Kandinsky made $10.2 million (NYT).

PM Putin stuff:

Perm Territory governor Oleg Chirkunov has successful meeting with Putin about making Perm a "cultural capital" (maratguelman, in Russian).

Policeman makes Youtube appeal to Putin setting out the tribulations of a policeman's life.

Whom Pencil Putin?