The Art Market: NY’s sales surge continues

Ted Noten’s ‘Grandma’s Bag Revisited’ (2009)

New York’s contemporary art sales showed the same extraordinary vigour seen in the Impressionist and Modern art sales the previous week. “There is a global hunger for great icons,” said Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art after selling a large Warhol “Self Portrait”, consigned by fashion designer Tom Ford, for more than $32.6m in an evening sale that totalled almost $190m with just three of 53 lots unsold. The sale continued the success of Christie’s $232m sale the previous night when, as expected, 31 works of classic postwar art from the estate of writer Michael Crichton went through the roof. Leading the sale was Jasper Johns’ “Flag” painting, which fetched more than $28.6m and was bought in the room by the New York dealer Michael Altman. Records tumbled at both sales as buyers vied for established names, with sculpture particularly sought after.

The sales were marked by renewed interest in Warhol, his prices surging back after a dip in 2008-2009. After Sotheby’s sale, New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe said: “It’s a very strong market at the moment. People feel uncertain about Wall Street but feel confident investing in the best works of art.”

Anthony Grant, the firm’s specialist, said: “I’ve never seen so many new people in the market, coming in immediately at a very high level, something we didn’t see before.” He said he had a newcomer bidding on the phone for Joan Mitchell’s abstract “Vera Cruz”, which sold for $4m. It went to Jon Colby, a Miami bidder, who chased a number of works at both sales, including Sotheby’s cover lot, a tomato-red Rothko, which made more than $31.4m.

You read it here first – mega-dealer Gagosian is expanding again, opening a gallery in Hong Kong, where Larry Gagosian already has an office. “We are negotiating for a major space in Hong Kong,” the company confirmed. With the Paris space due to open towards the end of this year, this will bring the number of Gagosian galleries to 10, a global empire indeed.

Some weeks ago I wrote about the Turgot manuscript sent for sale in Paris, in which the famed economist – the French Adam Smith – outlined his plans to reform French finances at a time of dire financial crisis. The eight-page letter, sent to Louis XVI in 1774, sold at Drouot on May 5 for a double-its- estimate €64,440, and was immediately pre-empted by the French state. The letter will now go into the French national archives.

A ceramic piece made by Hitomi Hosono

Collect, the annual fair organised by Britain’s Crafts Council, is in full swing at London’s Saatchi gallery (until Monday), with 36 exhibitors showing silver, jewellery, textiles, wood and ceramics. The word “craft” seems inadequate for an array of objects that straddle the borders of fine and applied arts: the US term “sculptural object” seems more appropriate. Ted Noten’s “Grandma’s Bag Revisited” (2009) shows a chameleon preserved in acrylic, in the form of a Vuitton handbag (Rob Koudijs, €24,000), while Carolein Smit’s quirky “Arieshead” (2009) is a ceramic animal head with bulging eyes (Flatland, around €9,500). Alongside classic works by the likes of Lucie Rie and Hans Coper (Galerie Besson) are pieces by such young makers as the Japanese ceramicist Hitomi Hosono (Adrian Sassoon, from £1,100).

A fascinating but little-known fact about antique Japanese clocks is that they changed the time according to daylight, making the hours longer in summer and shorter in winter. These clocks proved highly confusing for westerners, while the Japanese were just as baffled by western notions of time. In 1873, the Meiji emperor decreed that all clocks in the country should follow western time, so the older clocks became redundant and are now quite rare. Bonhams’ specialist James Stratton says he only sees about one a year. In the firm’s recent sale of a collection of Japanese timepieces, a 19th-century example, in its original glazed case, made £8,400 (above its £4,000-£6,000 estimate). “These were only for the very highest ranks of society,” says Stratton, “Most people lived by daylight, which was what these timepieces reflected.”

The record $106.5m paid for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” has sparked some negative reactions from the authoritative art critics Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz, who have both lambasted the unidentified buyer. Writing in The New York Times, Smith said, “I wished [the buyer] would give $100m to the New York Public Library and just let it go at that, no strings attached. I also wished that the Brody family, which put the Picasso on the block, had given it to a museum, settling for 50 years of private pleasure from a painting they loaned to an exhibition only once.”

Meanwhile, her husband Saltz posted this on his Facebook page: “Dear imbecilic anonymous telephone bidder who paid a record $106m for a 1932 Picasso @ Christie’s. You think you’re an art lover. Sorry. Had you taken $106m & bought a gigantic building ... & simply rented space ONLY AT COST to 100 good galleries & 100 artist studios ...”

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