Wise to Art

These days in King’s Street, Christie’s arranges three consecutive days of Impressionist and Modern Art sales offering a total of 329 lots. The sale is available for live Internet bidding (link below right). Here are some of the superb lots:

Evening sale 4 February:

Lot 9 Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) Les couturières, oil on canvas, estimate £4,500,000 – £6,500,000

(detail)

Lot 10 Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) Les deux filles oil on canvas, estimate £3,500,000 – £5,500,000
(detail)

Lot 15 Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) Pot bleu oil on canvas, estimate £500,000 – £800,000
(detail)

Lot 18 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) L’abandon (Les deux amies) oil on board, estimate £5,000,000 – £7,000,000
(detail)

Lot 24 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) Clovis oil on canvas, estimate £550,000 – £850,000
(detail)

Lot 41 Joan Miró (1893-1983) Femme entendant chanter le coq aux éclats violets oil on canvas , estimate £500,000 – £700,000
(detail)

Lot 42 Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) Jeux de mains, oil on panel, estimate £400,000 – £600,000
(detail)

Lot 46 Francis Picabia (1879-1953) Les acrobates (Gymnastique banale), oil, gouache, watercolour and pencil on board laid down on panel, estimate £400,000 – £600,000
(detail)

Souren Melikian in his IHT column has been fustigating several times lately the irritating tendency of auction houses to accompany their sales with an ever more profuse logorrhea. Hired intellectuals are put to the arduous task of conceptualizing artwork, hoping as such to build interest and gain momentum for upcoming sales. Melikian complains about this novel strategy so evidently focused at the ignorant newly rich, of late dominant actors on the auction scene.

This rings a bell when looking at a plain and insignificant 1913 drawing by Egon Schiele featured in one of Christie’s February sales. Here’s a detail of the drawing and part (!) of the profuse commentary:

Stehende Frau mit Schuen und Strümpfen is notable for its use of electrifying ultramarine pigment that animates the figure and accentuates the textural variation between hair, clothing and delicately tinted flesh. By contrasting the soft, fluid contours of the model’s pale body against the gesturally painted and richly coloured garment she is presumably removing, Schiele not only anchors the figure in the expanse of space that is otherwise devoid of environmental markers but also draws attention to her pelvic region, which he further emphasizes with a sharp blue chevron. In doing so, Schiele purposefully heightens the sexual significance of the image, thereby signalling his belief that all humans are at the mercy of their primal urges.

It is clear that after having forced ourselves to read the entire accompanying text, while focusing our attention on the pelvic region, the trivial sketch presented to our eye seems to take on quite another dimension…

Lots and lots is being said and speculated on the outcome of the present turmoil and although the experts are generally pessimistic, there are in the moody choir some tenors of hope.

Let’s once again remember what we were taught about the market being cyclic and that sense is only made on the longer term. There is absolutely no way to predict what will happen in the months to come and those depending on the art market for their living will have to use all their cunning to survive in a climate where price volatility and uncertainty rule.

Remember, the burst of the latest bubble was essentially about contemporary art and about living artists, having never before attained such monetary results. It was also about people knowing very little about art being lured into buying products of smart marketing. The array of new galleries that followed suit, the shoals of private dealers riding the currant, are now quickly dwindling away; also because of the impertinent habit of a new breed of artists to dispense of their services.

In times of uncertainty people turn to traditional values. It’s normal and healthy. Classicism will keep on being the rock on which to lean, and classicism takes us today already well into the mid-20th century. Let’s say that there are two generations needed to establish a work’s stature. Contemporary creation may be more interesting, rewarding, fun or whatever, but in terms of value it can’t be but ephemeral or conjectural. The art market investor, who is not a speculator, knows where to put his savings.

And this is the final line. Investing in art is in normal circumstances not more, nor less rewarding than investing in stocks, bonds or commodities. It is part of a healthy approach to diversification and as such helps to attenuate risk. And of course it’s much nicer to spend your time enjoying your art than following indices… Speculation, on the other hand, is common to all monetary instruments, with inevitable rises and falls in fortune.

It’s clear that the financial depression eclipsed the contemporary art boom and that the latter’s demise is affecting the art market in general. But if the disease is endemic to the affected patient, the collateral contagion is but temporary. Old masters, impressionists, modern masters etc. will quickly go clear.

So for 2009, this is my bet: vested values will suffer little, contemporary creation will be shunned. This till the end of the cycle…