IZO

Phillips de Pury had a succesful outing with Russian and Ukrainian (mainly Ukrainian) art at the 29 June London contemporary day sale. Best newcomer was Alexander Roitburd, whose Goodbye Caravaggio, prompted by the theft of the Caravaggio from Odessa Art Museum (IZO, earlier) fetched £58,850. Here's a Roitburd video (IZO). Vasili Tsagolov fetched £32,450. You could buy one of these for $10,000 a couple of years ago: here's me on Tsagolov last year: "Vasili Tsagolov's show in Tsekh Gallery, Kiev, reviewed in Kommersant (in Russian). This is not investment advice, it is simply a flight of fantasy by an unqualified observer, but if you want to put money into contemporary Ukrainian art, Tsagolov could be your guy." (IZO, earlier).

Sotheby's "on a tear"; stock price up substantially over year's low (Kurt Rive). See also my more-or-less prescient remarks (IZO, earlier). If your only goal in art is investment, I think you may well be better off investing in Sotheby's shares than in any of the recently-created art-funds: they will rise with the market, they're liquid, and you have all those experienced folk working for you.

Russian and Ukrainian paintings are lots 166-182 in Phillips de Pury's 29 June Contemporary Art day sale in London (PDP).

Auction round-up, further to last week's first-day comments (IZO); figures in brackets are last year's totals:

Komar and Melamid's What is To Be Done? at £97,250 was top-seller at a disappointing auction of Russian, Ukrainian and Latvian contemporary art at Sotheby's, £900,000 total sales, less than 40% sold. There were successes. Faibisovich made £67,250. Anatoli Osmolovsky's carved slice-of-bread "icon" sold above gallery price at £11,250. Kosolapov, Nemukhin, Koshlyakov were among the others who sold well. Ukrainian art behaved ok, with a top price of £25,000 for Tsagolov, and a couple of Latvian painters sold at circa £10,000. Overall during Russian week Sotheby's raised £17.7 million (£39.7 million).

Macdougalls made £7.1 million, including a £1.3 million Repin, at their main auction, plus £526,000 at an icon sale. Christies raised £4.1 million (£11.3 million).

Overall, despite the freak (IMO) Kustodiev price, the retrenchment is real, especially in the contemporary art sector. More here, including info on a newish collector (John Varoli/Bloomberg):

MacDougall’s top lot yesterday was Ilya Repin’s “Portrait of Madame Alisa Rivoir” (1914), which fetched 1.4 million pounds, beating a top estimate of 1.2 million pounds. The second most expensive lot was Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s, “Maternity,” (1922), which sold for 1.07 million pounds. Its low estimate was 1.1 million pounds. Both were records for these artists at auction.  “I bought both these paintings because I love art, and thanks to the grace of God I have the means to buy them,” Alina Aivazova, a Ukrainian collector, who attended the auction, said in an interview.

UPDATE: Alina Aivazova is the wife of Kiev mayor Leonid Kosmos Chernovetsky (thanks, VK). On Kosmos here (IZO).

The most luxurious Russian-published book of the 18th-19th centuries, a 1744 book of engravings devoted to the coronation of the Empress Elizabeth in 1742, has been sold at auction in New York for $100,000 (Fontanka, in Russian).

Russian week update: I'll be in Berlin from tomorrow and can't attend any more sales, but here are some first day impressions. BTW, my report on the new Russian Art Fair (in Russian) should appear on the Art Times section of Open Space later this week. I didn't get to MacDougall's morning icon sale, but the report was it went not very well. Bonhams mixed Russian sale seemed to be under 50% sold (my impression). Attractive works by Harlamoff were unsold early on, and other good pieces didn't find bidders. Top price by a long way was for an officer's sword, which fetched over £100,000. So, an inauspicious start. Sotheby's evening sale fared better. The crowd was down on last year, but 17 out of 28 lots sold (61%) and nearly £8 million was raised. Top price was for an (in my opinion) middling-quality bucolic scene by Kustodiev (£2,800,000+); if there wasn't such a dearth of good material I don't think it would have fetched as much: a paradox of the recession. Isaak Brodsky joined the top league when his 1912 pastoral reached £930,000+. The assembled dealers and collectors breathed a sigh of relief at the evidence that there was still life at the top of the Russian market.

On the state of art in Ukraine and the Kiev (should that these days be Kyiv?) artists at Sotheby's upcoming Russian contemporary  sale (Kyiv Post):

Like in most other segments of life in Ukraine, bureaucracy and over-taxation are also factors that stall the Ukrainian breakthrough. Any work of art destined for abroad can be claimed by the state as a “national treasure” and prevented from export. On top of that, the Ukrainians who want to bring their Sotheby’s purchases back home, have to pay an additional 20 percent value added tax.  “It’s a barbaric law,” said Natalia Zabolotna, head of the Ukrainian House, a major exhibition center in Kyiv. “If they [collectors] buy Aivazovskiy for 2 million pounds, they’d have to pay 400,000 on the border. That’s why our own Aivazovskiy will never make it to Ukraine,” she said. For comparison, in Russia, the European Union, and the United States, there are no import duties on art.

That last sentence is inaccurate: in the UK for example VAT on import of artworks in 5%; it's probably more in other European states.

Catalogues received for London Russian week. Sotheby's have four sales: the Russian Art Evening on 8 June, the contemporary sale on 9 June, paintings on 10 June morning and Works of Art & Faberge on 10 June afternoon (all e-catalogues Sotheby's). Macdougall's have two sales: icons on 8 June and a general sale XIX-XXI century on 11 June (Macdougall's). Macdougall's recently appointed the former Christies icon specialist Maria Paphiti to run their icon department.

Bonhams mixed Russian sale of icons, objets, old, modern and contemporary Russian paintings is on 8 June (Bonhams). Christies' two mixed sales are on 9 June (Christies) and 11 June (Christies).

I believe Phillips de Pury plan to include Russian art in their 29 June contemporary sales in London, but the catalogues have not been published at time of writing.

The contemporary sales by Sotheby's, Christies and Phillips de Pury last week produced a fraction of the sum they did last year but the slimmed-down catalogues had a good selling rate. Larry Gagosian bought the Jeff Koons Baroque Egg with Bow, which some saw as a market bellwether (IZO, last week), below estimate (WSJ).  I imagine Koons is regarded by the über-dealers as "too big to fail". A Russian or Ukrainian collector may have bought Peter Doig's Night Fishing for $4.7 million (Artforum). I suppose that's all reassuring for the Russian contemporary market. There were four Russian lots in the 15 May Phillips de Pury contemporary sale (by Elena Keller, Natalia Nesterova, Petr Belenok and Dubossarsky and Vinogradov) and they failed; but that number of works isn't representative.

I'm told some of the works in Sotheby's June contemporary Russian sale are from the Markin collection; I haven't checked this info. But it would tie in with the widely-held belief that he wants to sell the whole thing, notably, unsuccessfully, to Roman Abramovich. Sic transit gloria mundi. UPDATE: we are talking about lots 169 (Nesterova), 172 (Weisberg), 180 (Pivovarov), 190 (Lion) and 207 (Infante) (thanks, MK).

Auctioneer Gene Shapiro is upbeat about the Russian market (Antiques And The Arts).

Sotheby's will preview their June contemporary sale in Kiev on 20-21 May (Art Knowledge News).

The results of Gene Shapiro's 23 April Russian sale are available; it seems to have gone OK (Gene Shapiro).

There are strong suspicions that a work by Boris Kustodiev sold by Christies in 2005 for $2.9 million is a fake. It has, sensationally, been included in the latest volume of fakes published by RosOkhranKultura. Three expert opinions have denied its authenticity. Christies also sold the work earlier, in 1989 (Kommersant, in Russian). The article doesn't give the identity of the painting's 2005 buyer, and nor will I.

Sotheby's 22 April NY Russian sale had a selling rate of 74% and brought $13.8 million, but that is compared to $46.5 million last year. Works by Aivazovsky and Grigoriev broke the $1 million barrier (Art Times/Open Space, in Russian). Other results include $74,000 for a bureaucratic-looking Alexander Gerasimov (the meeting of Roosevelt and the Shah of Iran); $98,000 for a big Lanskoy; $218,000 for a very unexciting-looking Alexander Volkov.

Sotheby's will have a Ukrainian section in their upcoming June Russian contemporary sale. I was given a preview of some of the works by a Kiev dealer: they look interesting. I'm also selling a few things in this auction.

Top lot at Christies 24 April sale, and of the New York Russian week as a whole, was Svyatoslav Roerich's portrait of his father, Nikolai, which made neaely $3 million (AuctionPublicity.com). This was one of collector Valeri Dudakov's picks in an article referenced on IZO last week. As Dudakov points out, the work is primarily of "historical value" (Art Times/Open Space, in Russian). Which is an interesting indicator of the overriding values in the Russian art market. Overall, Christies sold 69% of lots for $13.2 million (Luxist). That's a good selling rate, by dint of course of reduced catalogue size and reduced estimates. Other interesting results: Alexander Gerasimov still-life $146,000; Pavel Chelishchev $230,000; Boris Grigoriev's Portrait of a Girl $206,000, more than doubling its estimate (Kommersant, in Russian).

Sotheby's will offer million-pound-plus pair of huge gold-plated porcelain Russian vases in June (Reuters):

Decorated with two types of gold and copies of Old Master paintings, the 1848 vases are the largest the London-based auction house has ever sold.

Legendary collector Valeri Dudakov comments on the 24 April NY Christies Russian sale (Art Times/Open Space, in Russian) and the 22 April NY Sotheby's Russian sale (Art Times/Open Space, in Russian). In brief, he's underwhelmed by both catalogues, although he finds a few bright spots. This is one of the consequences of the Crisis: potential sellers will hang on to their masterpieces.

My theory about the increase in price in Sotheby's shares (IZO, last week) seems to be more-or-less right. Apparently, collector Steve Cohen is building up a stake (Artforum).

The catalogue for the 23 April Gene Shapiro auction is online (Gene Shapiro).

The catalogue for the 22 April Sotheby's NY Russian sale is online (Sothebys). It opens with a wonderful Pokhitonov, but the overall impression I get, from this and Christies' sale two days later, is that owners are currently reluctant to part with their best works.

The catalogue for the 24 April Christies Russian art sale is online (Christies). It's heavily weighted to emigre art and artists, a situation which I touch on in the next issue of Russian Art + Auction

Contemporary art performs badly in New York (Chelsea Art Galleries):

...the sales for the contemporary art auctions in New York, March 9-11th, totaled $6.4 million ($8 million including premium), 30% below the low end estimate. The auction results were down 70% from last year's total of $22.7 million, partly because fewer lots were for sale (599 lots versus 1,101 lots in 2008).  (...) The auction results from the last few years indicate that the market peaked in May 2008, though the rate of growth already at that time had slowed significantly. For instance, the May auctions in New York in 2008 grew 10% compared to May 2007, while the prior November auction in 2007 grew 67% from November 2006.   The year-over-year sales decline for the March auctions is in line with the London auctions last month (down 80% from 2008), and the New York auctions in November 2008 (down 64% from 2007), and signals no shift in the current market.

These weren't major sales, but even so it's clear that even after paring the sales right down (as it seemed to them) the major auction houses' imaginations are running ahead of the real market. One problem they have, it seems to me, is this: it's not clear who is hot. For example:

Of the 20 highest grossing artists in 2008, only four reappeared in the top-20 list this year: Romare Bearden, Alexander Calder, Sam Francis, and Andy Warhol.

Dramatic new tactic in the art restitution wars: Chinese bidder wins top-lot bronzes at YSL auction and then announces he won't pay because the works were looted. The date of the looting was 1860, which takes us back way before the Nazi period, which is most commonly implicated in historical restitution claims (Independent). I suspect that the auction houses are pretty helpless when faced by such presumably government-backed strong-arming, whatever the law. In the circumstances, I wouldn't be surprised if the underbidder, whoever it was, also dropped out if the bronzes were offered to him/her, because the resale value and indeed - given China's international clout - the ultimate title to the works must now be in some doubt.

The catalogue of the 12 March Russian auction at Auktionsverk, Stockholm, is online (Auktionsverk). It features a large number of wonderful Malyavin drawings which, I happen to know, are impeccably sourced. Estimates for the drawings seem to be below Moscow gallery prices. Below, a detail of lot 50.

Yves Saint-Laurent sale tidbit (Metro):

Among the last-minute VIP visitors to the exhibition hall, just four hours before the sale, was Russian billionaire art collector Roman Abramovich, accompanied by dealer Larry Gagosian.

On the Mugrabi family, who have huge holdings of Warhol (including, according to Richard Polsky, "even the stuff that was considered junk"), Prince and Wesselman, among others (NY Times) (thanks, MK):

For the Mugrabis’ preferred artists, the family doesn’t merely operate in the art market; it is the market. “They’re so invested, they’re like the casino, not the gambler,” said the gallery owner Francis Naumann, a friend. What threatens them at an auction is not the presence of other aggressive bidders but cautious bidders.

The article analogises the Mugrabi holdings with a controlling stake in a commodity:

“We’re market makers,” Alberto said. “You can’t have an impact buying one or two pictures per artist. We’re not buying art like Ron Lauder — just to put it on a wall. We want inventory.” He equated inventory with liquidity: “It gives you staying power.” In the commodities sector, the analogue would be making a run on a precious metal — in order to manipulate the price.

But of course art isn't a commodity. I'm not going to say what it is (I'll tell you later ;)) but the commercial demand for it is very much fashion-driven. One presumes the Mugrabis aren't leveraged if only because they began buying so long ago when prices were different, Basquiats were $8,000 etc. The article doesn't address this question (if they were leveraged, they could be staring a disaster in the face).

At some point the younger Mugrabis were given the task of going out and finding new blood for the collection. No doubt after considerable cogitaton and research they came up with, well, er, Damien Hirst. Now they have 150 works by him, mostly in storage. If 150 Hirsts in storage is the best the Mugrabis can do with the art of today, maybe they've missed the point and they might as well be selling refrigerators.

A grand farewell to art-collector Yves Saint-Laurent (WWD). Footnote:

Bergé, meanwhile, confirmed that another sale, that of the couple’s Château Gabriel in Deauville, has been completed. The buyer is said to be a Russian businessman. Furniture and works of art from the château, where each room was named after a Proustian character, will be auctioned by Christie’s and Pierre Bergé & Associés from Nov. 17 to 19.

Christies: Russian art sales fell 59% in 2008 (RIA Novosti). That's considerable, but actually masks the fact that the fall-off in sales occurred substantially in the latter half of the year, i.e. it was even more dramatic than the statistic suggests.

Results for the few Russian works at Phillips de Pury's 13 February London day sale, all including 25% buyer's premium: Chernyshev and Shulgin (119) sold for £8,750, Afrika (198) sold for £7,500, Pusenkoff (199) was unsold, Koshlyakov (200) sold for £18,750, and Bratkov (216) sold for £375. A good result for Koshlyakov in current conditions, a poor one for Bratkov, who sold for a meagre 10% of the low estimate.

Overall, the auction houses are keeping sales' percentages up by (a) cutting estimates and (b) reducing the number of lots on offer. The result is dramatically reduced turnover. Extract from an email received:

Chelseaartgalleries.com (http://chelseaartgalleries.com)  announced today that the sales for the contemporary art auctions in London, February 5-13th, totaled £36 million (£43 million including premium), 26% below the low end estimate. The auctions brought less than 1/5th of last year's sales total of £207 million, strongly reflecting the current financial climate. 

Not all auction houses were affected equally by the downturn: While Sotheby's and Phillips De Pury's evening auctions reached 18% of last year's sales, Christie's evening auction only reached 11% of last year's sales after failing to find buyers for its two highest estimated lots. The day auctions faired slightly better, with Phillips De Pury at 36% of last years results, Sotheby's at 29%, and Christie's at 19%. 

The very high end of the market has been hit the hardest, as the lack of sellers and buyers has left the auction houses without the super star lots that traditionally make up half of their auction sales. In February 2008, the 15 most valuable lots (of 778 sold lots) contributed more than 50% of the sales total. This month, not only were the high-end lots much less valuable, but 4 of the 7 highest estimated lots failed to sell. In 2008, the average value for the top ten winning bids was £9.4 million, this year it was £1.4 million.

On the future of Sotheby's and Christie's (NY Times).

Former East German Stasi secret police spy (and Conde Nast VP) Bernd Runge has been appointed CEO of Phillips de Pury by controlling Russian Mercury group (Scott Reyburn/Bloomberg). He was apparently an agent 1981-89, which overlaps with Putin's 1985-89 tour of duty in Dresden: did they ever meet?

Plenty of Chinese but no Russians in Phillips de Pury's 12 February evening sale (Phillips de Pury). In the 13 February day sale: Chernyshev and Shulgin (119), Afrika (198), Pusenkoff (199), Koshlyakov (200), Bratkov (216) (Phillips de Pury).

Ueber-dealer Helly Nahmad bought the $60 million Malevich (IZO, earlier), but, according to Nahmad, it was bought on behalf of someone else (Kommersant, in Russian).

Sotheby's lays off staff (Bloomberg).

Speculation in the London Evening Standard (14 January) that Francois Pinault, under pressure from a big US lawsuit, is mulling the sale of Christie's. It's a rubbish time to sell :)

Christie's cuts 200 (Artinfo).

Another version of the recent Malevich sale at Sotheby's NY: that the buyer was connected to the legal firm that regained the work for the artist's heirs.

Russian bidders "lock horns" for a Japanese-inspired C19 French cabinet at Bonhams (ATG).