发布时间：2009年11月20日
2009年11月13日出版的《华尔街日报》对艺术品市场近期的变化做出报道并引用梅-摩艺术品指数：美国艺术市场似乎正呈现好转迹象。从秋拍的成交情况来看，收藏家的成交意愿明显增强。而交易商表示，通货膨胀的预期对此亦有影响。
原文如下：
The Art Market Shows Signs of Life
Sales were strong at fall auctions, though some key works fell short
By Kelly Crow
The U.S. art market appears to be on the mend. The major fall art auctions may not have sold everything on offer, but collectors showed a renewed willingness to bid up top examples of artists' work. Dealers also said inflation fears and expectations of higher bonuses in the financial markets stoked strong bidding.
Andy Warhol's '200 One Dollar Bills' sold for $43.7 million at Sotheby's.
New York's two chief auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's International, brought in about $596 million combined from their semi annual sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art in the past two weeks. The total surpassed the houses' $409 million spring sales in May, a gain that could signal a measure of returning confidence in high-end art values.
The mood among collectors grew increasingly upbeat as the two weeks of sales progressed. At Sotheby's contemporary art sale Wednesday night, a Warhol silkscreen sold for $43.7 million, more than triple its high estimate. At a lively sale of modern and Impressionist art the week before at Sotheby's, an Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for $19.3 million, well over its $12 million high estimate.
At Christie's, the results were more modest. The house fell short of presale estimates at its Impressionist sale and modern art evening sale Nov. 3, but it performed solidly at Tuesday's post-war and contemporary auction, led by a Peter Doig painting that sold for $10.1 million.
Despite the uptick, the market isn't likely to recapture its boom-era exuberance anytime soon. The volume of art changing hands at these sales is still much smaller than it was last November, when the two houses brought in a combined $729 million, or two years ago at the market's peak, when their fall sales totaled $1.6 billion.
With help from the Warhol sale, Sotheby's won the latest series, selling $391.1 million and besting Christie's $205.7 million total. Smaller Phillips de Pury & Co. aims to bring in over $11 million with its two-day auction ending Friday.
Here are a few lessons learned this time around.
STARS STILL AREN'T SURE BETS
Art experts often gauge the health of the auction marketplace by tracking the priciest pieces. Although these sales enjoyed some unexpected hits, several star lots floundered. At Christie's, Jean-
Mi chel Basquiat's "Brother Sausage" was estimated to sell for at least $9 million on Tuesday, but bidding stalled at $7.5 million and it went unsold. A week earlier, Christie's failed to sell its ruby-red portrait of Pablo Picasso's wartime lover Dora Maar, "Tête de femme," which had been priced to sell for at least $7 million but got stuck around $6.4 million in the bidding.
Instead, the top price at Christie's went to Edgar Degas, whose 1896 peach-colored pastel of two ballerinas, "Danseuses," sold to a private Asian collector for $10.7 million, surpassing its $9 million high estimate. Christie's other big seller was Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture of a couple intertwined in an embrace, "Le Baiser, moyen modele dit 'Taille de la Porte.'" New York dealer Christopher Eykyn bought it for $6.3 million, three times its high estimate.
A few surprise works surged ahead at Sotheby's. André Derain's "Barques au port de Collioure," a sun-dappled seascape painted with Fauve brushstrokes, sold to New York private dealer Guy Bennett on Nov. 4 for $14 million. Not only did that price top its $8 million high estimate, it also outshone one of the night's anticipated highlights—Picasso's "Buste d'Homme," which sold for $10.3 million but had been expected to sell for up to $12 million.
The mixed fate of these big-ticket items suggests that collectors can still be persuaded to splurge, but only on masterpieces. One example: Andy Warhol's "200 One Dollar Bills," one of the artist's career-defining Pop pieces depicting a wallpaper-like grid of greenbacks. The work carried high expectations—Sotheby's priced it to sell for up to $12 million—and it delivered, selling to a telephone bidder on Wednesday for $43.7 million, the second-highest price achieved for an artwork all year. (Christie's sold a $46.2 million Henri Matisse owned by Yves Saint Laurent in the spring.)
Final prices, unlike estimates, include the auction houses' fees, which are 25% on works under $50,000, 20% up to $1 million and 12% over $1 million.
GOOD VALUE IN DRAWINGS
Collectors looking for smart buys during these sales often bypassed paintings in favor of lower-priced drawings by their favorite artists. Bidders may have been spooked by the $9 million price tag on the Basquiat painting at Christie's, but they pursued the artist's 5-foot-tall untitled drawing from 1982. The work, depicting a blue-faced man and painted in a faux-naïve style, sold Tuesday for $3.1 million—exceeding its $2.8 million high estimate and achieving a record for a work on paper by the artist.
Christie's also broke the work-on-paper records for Philip Guston and Brice Marden. A spidery Marden abstract, "Untitled with Green," sold to an American collector bidding over the telephone for $2 million, over its $1.2 million high estimate. At Sotheby's, records were similarly broken for works on paper by Salvador Dali and Jackson Pollock.
On Nov. 4 at Sotheby's, London jeweler Laurence Graff paid $902,500 for a Picasso drawing of his mistress sitting in an armchair, "Femme Assise dans un Fauteuil." The work was priced to sell for up to $700,000. Mr. Graff said, "It's a bargain at these prices."
FLIP AT YOUR OWN RISK
Before the recession, collectors and speculators routinely bought artworks and then resold them months later at a profit. Now, such attempts can backfire. Michael Moses, co-founder of the Mei Moses Fine Art Index, tracked returns on objects sold during these sales and found that pieces quickly returning to the auction block tended to resell at a loss.
Christie's Nov. 4 sale of Impressionist and modern works on paper included a 1949 drawing of a woman overlooking a river by Marc Chagall, "La Seine à Villennes." The seller paid $76,000 for it in June 2007 but only got $50,000 for it, a 15.6% negative compound annual return. In the same sale, a vivid watercolor of musicians by Raoul Dufy, "Le Concert Mexicain," sold for $104,500—37.2% less than the $166,572 it sold for at Christie's in London two summers ago. "The seller totally bit the bullet on that one," Mr. Moses said.
GUARANTEES ARE BACK
For auction houses, these sales also marked the return of the guarantee, a financial mechanism in which an auction house promises to buy a work if it doesn't sell at auction. Guarantees offer potential sellers a risk-free reason to part with their best pieces, but Sotheby's and Christie's stopped offering deal-sweeteners after suffering an estimated $63 million combined loss from unsold guaranteed artworks last November.
Now, auction houses are gingerly stepping back into such deals, but they're mostly shifting the risk to third parties, typically dealers or collectors who agree to pay the seller a prearranged price for the work if it doesn't ultimately fetch a higher price at auction. Sotheby's made a single deal this time around for the seller of Picasso's 1949 portrait of his toddler son beside a toy horse, "Claude a Deux Ans." Sotheby's arranged for an outsider to place what it calls "an irrevocable bid" on the work, which means the bidder agreed to buy the piece for a guaranteed price or share a cut of any additional profits should another bidder offer more. In this case, the Picasso was guaranteed to sell for at least $5 million. The piece went for just over that at $5.5 million, or $6.2 million with fees. Sotheby's declined to say whether the third-party bidder won the work.
Christie's secured third-party guarantees for five works in its contemporary sale with a combined low estimate of $13.7 million, including works by Jeff Koons, Joan Mitchell, Basquiat and Marden. At the sale's outset, auctioneer Christopher Burge disclosed that the works' guarantors might also choose to bid on them during the sale, but the auction house later declined to say whether any stakeholders took home the works or were outbid. Either way, the move paid off for Christie's since the five works constituted half the top 10 prices achieved during its contemporary sale, led by Mr. Koons's "Large Vase of Flowers," which sold for $5.6 million, within its $4 million to $6 million estimate.
