It's A Buyers Market For Contemporary Art



(Archisponge (RE 11)" by Yves Klein via bloomberg)

Longtime readers of this blog know that one of The Corsair's more conservative stances is on the subject of Art. There is, we believe, no liberalism in the activity artistic creation. There is no "democracy" in writing, or, for that matter, in music or in painting. Meritocracy rules, and the aristocrats -- Nabokov, Coltrane, El Greco -- endure. The best artists live forever, having created works acutely excellent, mining the oceanic depths of the human experience, while the less talented stunt-poseurs with aesthetic pretensions simply cease to draw bids at auctions and evaporate into the recesses of history falling into the margins of impropriety. Does anybody else remember Vance Bourjaily (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment)?

Contemporary Art generally leaves us cold. The low attention span of the present age shows itself in the sloppy works that garner, unfortunately, the highest values at the auctions. The shittiness is extreme. Until now.

The pendulum swings. The financial crisis is burning away the dreck; separating the wheat from the chaff. From Bloomberg:

"Sotheby's sold 68 percent of the art it offered last night in New York, its lowest selling rate for a multiple-owner evening auction of contemporary work since November 1994.

"The 63 lots totaled $125.1 million, short of the low estimate of $202.4 million and about a third of the tally of its comparable auction in May.

"'It's a half-price sale,' said Eli Broad, a 75-year-old billionaire who'd predicted for years that prices would fall. 'Things are a little more reasonable.'

"... Actor Steve Martin and Blackstone Group Vice Chairman J. Tomilson Hill III were among the collectors witnessing how the contemporary-art market was faring with the Standard & Poor's 500 Index off about 40 percent this year.

"... Designer Valentino Garavani, tanned and in the front row, scored two Andy Warhol paintings and a Joan Mitchell canvas with little competition. He'd been outbid in the May sales. Gap Inc. founder Donald G. Fisher bought a glossy Gerhard Richter for less than the low estimate."

What is less-than-low for "a glossy Gerhard Richter" (Averted Gaze). More here.