The art market: Slow Tuesday, fast Wednesday and the danger of a double dip

It was a tale of contrasting sales this week in London, as Christie’s and Sotheby’s rolled out their summer impressionist and modern auctions. Christie’s kicked off on Tuesday 23 JUNE with thin pickings – saleroom specialists admitted it had been a “tough gathering season”. The 46-lot catalogue was further weakened by the in extremis withdrawal of a restituted Pissarro because of an inheritance dispute, and of a Bonnard that is being negotiated the subject of negotiations with the Musée d’Orsay. Bidding was lacklustre and the published tally of £37.2m fell just short of the pre-sale estimate of £36m-£50m (pre-sale estimates don’t include premium; totals do), with 14 lots bought in; the auction house included in its total two paintings that failed to sell on the block but, it saidthe firm, found buyers immediately afterwards. This practice, which seems questionable to many observers, boosted the total by £351,700.

Only three of the top 10 lots sold above their estimates: Monet’s classic impressionist view “Au Parc Monceau” (1878), consigned by the American collector Brook J Lenfest, easily beat its £3.5m-£4.5m estimate to make £6.3m; a charming small Miró, “Peinture (Femme se poudrant)” (1949), almost doubled expectations at £3.9m, going to the New York- and London-based Nahmad dealership; and Giacometti’s “Buste de Diego sur Tige”, estimated at £750,000- £950,000 fetched just over £1m. The Nahmads also bought Picasso’s 1969 “Homme à l’Epée”, which carried the highest estimate of the evening at £5m-£7m but sold for £5.7m. Most of the evening’s casualties, said specialist Thomas Seydoux, were in the £300,000-£600,000 range, where he said the firm needed to “fine-tune the estimates”.

The Sotheby’s sale the following evening was conducted at a cracking pace by auctioneer Henry Wyndham, who racked up £33.5m (pre-sale estimate £26.7m-£37.2m) for the 27 works on offer, with just four lots left unsold. The highest price of £6.9m (est £6m-£8m) was given for another Picasso musketeer, also titled “Homme à l’Epée”, painted just one day before the Christie’s painting, but. It was the more desirable of the two works, better composed and more colourful, and sold to the Lebanese financier Samir Traboulsi in the room against a telephone bidder. The Picasso carried an “irrevocable bid”, meaning that someone had already agreed to buy it at a confidential agreed price. Was Traboulsi this bidder? Sotheby’s specialist Melanie Clore refused to be drawn.

A group of three Giacometti sculptures from a European collection did well, making a total of £7.4m. One, a painted plaster bust of Giacometti’s brother Diego executed in 1951-54, made £2.7m. Some paint had flaked off when the piece was used to make bronzes – one of which, cast posthumously, was the “Buste de Diego” that had exceeded its estimate at Christie’s the previous night. and by coincidence, one of those bronzes, cast posthumously, had sold at Christie’s the previous night for just over £1m.

Asked after the sale why the two sales had been so different, the London dealer Daniella Luxembourg said: “Sotheby’s sale was curated better, and the pace was better. It did not include day sale material like Christie’s – if they had just sold their best 27 lots, the results would have been the same.”

Are art prices levelling out? A newly published survey indicates that they could be, after the dramatic plunge that they have taken since October last year. According to athe Contemporary Art Market Confidence Report published by the research company ArtTactic, volumes in the market have contracted between 70 per cent and 80 per cent since the height of the market, and prices have fallen by up to 50 per cent. But now, say the 138 rainmakers interviewed for the survey – curators, collectors, advisers, dealers and auctioneers – prices may be close to bottom. Prices may adjust another 10-20 per cent or even less, said 74 per centof the survey sample. However, the author of the report, Anders Petersen, warns that it is too early to declare the recession over. “There is a sense of euphoria on the back of the mainly successful results of Art Basel,” he says. “But there is a danger of a double dip.” His respondents are also more optimistic today about the length of the current downturn, even if they remain negative about the short-term outlook. “Our forecasts have been revised, and 64 per cent now believe the contemporary art market could rebound in one to two years, instead of the three to four years, which a majority previously predicted,” Petersenhe says.

Abu Dhabi is to get an art fair this year, despite the cancellation of Art Paris Abu Dhabi. The emirate’s governmental Tourist and Development Investment Council (TDIC)has decided to run its own art event, having cancelled the French company’s contract. No further details have yet been released, but the TDIC will certainly have a scramble to find enough dealers to exhibit in November, when the new event is planned to go ahead.

Another fair change in the offing concerns London’s summer Olympia International Art and Antiques fair, which ended on June 14. Faced with low attendance this year, a number of dealers approached the Florida-based veteran entrepreneur David Lester to help find some solutions, and he is now in talks with the fair owners, Clarion Events. “Blaming the Tube strike [for low attendance] just doesn’t wash,” he says. “People spending a million dollars $1m don’t go by Tube.”

Lester is quite a comeback kid; he sold his fair empire in 2001 and sailed off into the sunset on his boat. But the lure of the business was too much and he has since bought back some of the events, as well as establishing Seafair, an exhibition yacht, with varying success. Compellingly pPersuasive and energetic, Lester would certainly be a force to be reckoned with. What would his plans be? “For a start, I would change Olympia’s dates – it is insanity to run up against Art Basel, as it did this year,” he says. He would also aims to produce a more high-end, Maastricht-fair-type event and to double attendance, which could put it on a collision course with the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, flagship of the British antiques trade.

One of Britain’s foremost art dealers, Richard Green, is also a passionate racehorse owner, and he was well rewarded when one of his horses, “Art Connoisseur”, galloped to a surprise victory in the £450,000 Golden Jubilee stakes at Royal Ascot on June 20. “It wasn’t totally unexpected, he had good form, having come second to Mastercraftsman in Ireland last year,” said Green, who owns a 75 per cent share in the 20-1 winner, the other quarter belonging to his trainer Michael Bell. But Green wasn’t at Ascot to accept the prize. Why not? “I was busy concluding an important art deal,” he told me.

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper