Art & Finance Newsletter #14 - Fall art season is in full swing…
The fall art season is in full swing. Expo Chicago concluded it's seventh edition on 30th September. The organizers state the sales were strong and interest from international collectors robust. Impressive given it's geographical location.
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, which closed 7th October, stated record attendance and sales as well. Presumably Brexit was not on any local collectors mind that week. Far to many sales took place in the opening minutes of Frieze London & Masters but one sale of note was a Franz Kline painting that sold for USD 8mio.
This Thursday, 18th October, FIAC will open in Paris at a new location. In past years FIAC was held in the historic Grand Palais, which will go into renovation in 2021. This year and the oncoming years FIAC will be in a temporary structure built on the Champs de Mars gardens near the Eiffel Tower.
These fairs and others like them are good fun and attendance is mandatory for any person or company claiming to be participating in the art world in some form.
On to the art market...
Mega-Galleries Bank on Chinese Art
White Cube, the London-based gallery historically associated with the YBAs, has given over its entire stand at Frieze London to a striking display by the Chinese artist Liu Wei. Where once hung spin paintings by Damien Hirst now stands a cage-like construction built by Liu to house his new paintings and sculptures. The majority of the works, priced between £90,000 and £450,000, sold on the opening day.
But is this simply history repeating itself? After all, ten years ago, the market for contemporary Chinese art grew exponentially, but that spurt was short-lived. Not so, says Magnus Renfrew, the co-founder of Art HK, who is launching a new fair in Taipei in January.
He acknowledges that there was a “period of intense interest” between 2006 and 2008, during the “heyday auction market for Chinese contemporary art, which was fairly uncritical”, but a correction followed in 2010. Renfrew says the “institutional scene is developing rapidly” in China, lending critical and curatorial clout to a new generation of artists coming up through the ranks, as well as those who survived the bust.
Western galleries are also now “doing due diligence and creating meaningful relationships with artists”, he says. “Their engagement is no longer primarily commercially driven.”
The Art Newspaper - Mega-Galleries Bank on Chinese Art
Collectors, Art & Weathering Recessions
First, collectors should avoid parting with any artworks at the onset of a recession, particularly if they are in possession of blue-chip works by artists in their collection. On the other hand, if in need of liquidity, consigning a quality artwork from the right blue-chip artist or work will almost certainly lead to a completed transaction, though at values that may not be at market peak level.
Secondly, artists who are more universally appreciated can weather recessions better than emerging artists who may only be of interest by more regional or less traditional collectors.
Third, these are times when collectors should be in acquisition mode.
Data also points to some more interesting phenomena, however. On the one hand, some specific artists’ works were ostensibly unaffected by the recession. This would suggest that a growing appreciation in the work of an artist can be more important than global economic events in determining performance, and that artists like Calder, as well as blue-chip artists like Picasso or Warhol, can buck wider economic trends and demonstrate a surprising degree of stability, while other artists cannot.
Without adequate data, collectors will often be at a loss to discern which artists will perform well, regardless of economic environment, and which works can offer the greatest stability. Ultimately, it’s not about timing the buying or selling of their works during economic fluctuations, but identifying artists who consistently have stable transactional market
Artsy - Collectors, Art & Weathering Recessions
International Legal Battle Over Art Expands
Sotheby’s has vowed to ‘vigorously defend’ itself against a ‘desperate lawsuit’ filed in New York on Tuesday (2 October) by Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, who claims the auction house helped to defraud him over the sale of artworks worth millions.
Rybolovlev, the owner of football club AS Monaco filed suit in the US district court in New York for US$380 million (£292 million). He alleges that Sotheby’s “materially assisted the largest art fraud in history” by helping Swiss shipping magnate, Geneva Freeport operator and backroom art dealer, Yves Bouvier, with selling masterpieces to him at over-inflated prices.
Sotheby’s denies it knew Bouvier was working as an agent for Rybolovlev. The auction house also argues that the case should be litigated in Swiss courts where it joined with Bouvier to pre-emptively sue Rybolovlev in 2017 after the Russian billionaire threatened action in the UK.
Lawyers for Bouvier have accused Rybolovlev of waging a “global terror campaign” of litigation against their client. They argue that Bouvier was never legally bound to Rybolovlev as an agent with fiduciary duties and was therefore free to sell the artworks to him at whatever price Rybolovlev agreed to pay.
Sotheby’s plans to ask the judge in New York to dismiss the suit.
Bloomberg - International Legal Battle Over Art Expands
Deloitte Art & Finance Conference 2018
Heads up for those who are reading this in Europe. I will be in London 23rd Oct. - 2nd Nov with a short trip to Luxembourg 25th Oct. - 27th Oct for the Deloitte Art & Finance conference.
This is the 12th edition of the conference and third time it will be hosted in Luxembourg. The topic of the conference will be art investment & technology. Two panels I'm particularly interested in are the Art Law & Technology and Risk Management: How technology can support trust in the art market.
If you are in London or Luxembourg and would like to meet please do not hesitate to shoot me a message!
Until next time,
Blake