Will the art market go bananas again, like it did before the pandemic, now that Donald J. Trump has been elected to the White House on promises to cut taxes? Speculative investments like cryptocurrencies have risen in anticipation of a new Republican administration’s anti-regulatory agenda, and the auction world hopes that it can ride an economic boom to recovery after nearly two years of declining sales.
The November auction season that starts this week in New York will test the willingness of the ultrarich to spend a pile on artworks. They will compete to own more than 1,600 lots that are estimated to raise at least $1.1 billion. That includes a $1 million banana. The expected total is down more than a third from last November, with 16 percent fewer works headed to the auction block.
On the plus side, some experts point to the fact that interest rates have dipped, making financing easier for collectors, and many pieces are priced to sell, with lower estimates to entice reluctant bidders, “increasing the odds that the auctions will perform well,” said Doug Woodham, a New York-based art adviser and former Christie’s executive.
But art advisers said the fall offerings don’t have the trophy quality of previous seasons. Beyond the banana — a head-turning installation by Maurizio Cattelan named “The Comedian” — there is an exceptional painting by René Magritte expected to fetch at least $95 million. But works by other big-name artists like Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and Alberto Giacometti have multimillion-dollar estimates that are still far below the $100 million-plus consignments seen in 2022, the last boom year.
“A lot of discretionary consignors were reluctant to sell in November — they wanted to wait until after the election turmoil, or sell before,” Woodham said. “Sales are thinner as a result, with more works of uneven quality.”
Woodham, like many experts, thinks that a Trump presidency could bring reduced taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals, which could be positive for the art market in the short term. “The types of people buying expensive art next week are keenly alert to how macro trends influence their wealth,” he said, adding, “their wealth since the election has gone up, and his policies are likely to benefit them.” But he noted, “there’s a chance these economic policies will lead to inflation and higher interest rates.”
Some dealers reported improved sales at the recent Frieze London and Art Basel Paris fairs. Sotheby’s also found itself on better financial footing after accepting a nearly $1 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, which now has a large minority stake in the company. But major art market hubs, like Los Angeles, have seen multiple gallery closures and the California-based entertainment group Endeavor, which owns the five Frieze art fairs, has notified exhibitors that this sector of its business may be sold.
“London was OK. Paris was OK. But people are now feeling a sudden sense of confidence,” said Abigail Asher, an art adviser based in New York. “They have been waiting for after the election to pull the trigger on major paintings.”
Here are six bellwether works that might indicate the economic whims of the post-election art market.
How Much Could a Banana Cost? At Sotheby’s, at Least $1 Million.
In recent years, auctioneers have attempted to electrify bidders with oddball lots. Suddenly you could find a much-debated Leonardo da Vinci painting, a hulking Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil and even a red-hot Ferrari mixed in with contemporary artworks.
But the main attraction this November is a banana taped to the wall at Sotheby’s that is estimated to sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million at the auction house’s Now and Contemporary Evening Sale on Wednesday. It’s a new banana — coming from a nearby fruit stand on the street — but an old shtick.
The artwork appeared five years ago at Art Basel Miami Beach, where Perrotin Gallery sold three editions of “The Comedian” for between $120,000 and $150,000 each. The fruit caused a stir of controversy around the evergreen question: Is it art? But the crowds proved so disruptive that the gallery eventually took the banana out of the booth after a performance artist, David Datuna, ate it. (The concept piece comes with a certificate of authenticity from the artist and installation instructions; the buyer replaces the banana, if they wish, whenever it rots.)
“It’s just the sort of thing that every museum wants to have on their wall, so people can say, let’s go and see Leonardo da Vinci and let’s go see the banana,” remarked Philip Hoffman, the chief executive and founder of an advisory firm called the Fine Art Group. “My guess is that it will make silly money.”
One person not laughing is the artist. “What bothers me is that after the first sale, the artist no longer profits as the work changes hands,” Cattelan wrote in an email. “Auction houses and collectors reap the benefits, while the creator, who makes the very object driving the market, is left out.”
A Model Magritte Painting Is the Week’s Top Lot
This year is the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist movement. With the centenary being marked by a blockbuster show at the Pompidou Center in Paris and several other exhibitions across the world, this could hardly be a more propitious moment for an outstanding version of one of Magritte’s most celebrated paintings to come to auction.
His inscrutable “Empire of Light,” showing a deserted lamp-lit street beneath fluffy clouds in a day-lit sky, is the most prized work in Christie’s sale Tuesday of the collection of the charismatic interior designer, philanthropist and socialite, Mica Ertegun.
The current auction record for Magritte is a similar painting that sold in March 2022 for $79.3 million. An anonymous third party has already guaranteed the Ertegun version for at least $95 million — or more than $100 million with fees — making it essentially presold.
“Miraculously, given that it was in the home of someone who gave dinner parties for the great and the good, it’s in impeccable condition,” Max Carter, a Christie’s vice chairman, said of the Magritte.
Warhol’s Failure to Impress Trump Might Become an Election Souvenir
The Pop artist Andy Warhol thought he knew what a man like Donald J. Trump wanted. The artist spent a good portion of 1981 convincing the future president of the United States and his wife, Ivana, to commission a series of silk-screen prints of his new skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, Trump Tower. “Nothing was settled, but I’m going to do some paintings, anyway, and show them to them,” Warhol wrote in his diary in April of that year.
But the couple ultimately turned down the eight finished artworks in black, gray, and silver. Warhol grew resentful of the businessman. “Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated,” Warhol wrote in August 1981. “They’re going to come down with swatches of material so I can do the paintings to match the pinks and oranges. I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though.”
Stinging from the lost commission, Warhol, who died in 1987, ultimately consigned the paintings to his dealer Bruno Bischofberger, who sold this example to a European collector in the early 2000s. Now, Phillips is offering one of the works, “New York Skyscrapers,” during its Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Tuesday. with an estimate between $500,000 and $700,000.
Coming only two weeks after Trump’s presidential win, some collectors might want to show support by purchasing an artwork of his famous skyscraper. Robert Manley, a deputy chairman of Phillips, who organized the sale, said that interest has been split. “Some people are politically motivated, but some people are Warhol collectors.”
For his part, Warhol never forgot the botched commission. He judged a cheerleading competition in the skyscraper in January 1984, arriving two hours late to the event because, according to his diary, “I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower.”
What’s Old Is New Again. What’s New Is Not of Much Interest.
A speculative boom early in the pandemic nearly doubled the sum spent on work by young artists at auction, which reached $712 million in 2021. Then, last year, prices came crashing down. This season, the number of works available by artists born after 1974 has diminished considerably.
Phillips and Sotheby’s are offering fewer than half of those works in their evening sales as they did two years ago. Artists who were making headlines then, including Flora Yukhnovich and Amoako Boafo, are now nowhere to be found.
Sotheby’s is also folding The Now — its sale established in 2021 to capitalize on the frenzied demand — into its standard contemporary auction this season. In this “more discerning market,” there wasn’t enough high-quality material “for a stand-alone sale,” said David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art.
Energy is shifting back in time, to 20th-century artists with cult followings and solid bona fides from curators. One newly minted market darling is the Berkeley-born painter Miyoko Ito, who died in 1983. After being confined during World War II to internment camps in California and Utah, she settled in Chicago, where she painted geometric shapes dancing with organic forms in rich hues of lapis and chrysanthemum. Her luscious “Sunbather” from the 1960s carries an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000 at Sotheby’s contemporary evening auction on Wednesday.
In the market’s typical hype cycle, the appetite for “rediscoveries” grows after collectors have gorged on more untested work — and are experiencing a bit of indigestion. “The art market is always looking for inefficiencies,” the art adviser Wendy Cromwell said. “When there’s a lot of available work by a great artist who is undervalued, that’s an inefficiency, so you start to see it at auction more. Will they become part of the forever canon? I don’t know.”
A Broader Surrealist Picture, and a New Star
Magritte isn’t the only Surrealist getting the star treatment this season. The market for Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), the iconoclastic British-born Mexican painter and writer, is recalibrating amid the broader vogue for the movement. In May, market-watchers were stunned when her 1945 painting “Les Distractions de Dagobert” sold for her auction high of $28.5 million with fees.
The same collector who anonymously sold “Dagobert,” reported to be the American investor and scientist Ronald Cordover, consigned the artist’s 1951 “La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman)” to Sotheby’s sale on Monday, according to market analysts close to the sale. (Sotheby’s said it would not comment on the identity of consignors.) With an estimate of $5 million to $7 million, it carries a financial guarantee backed by a third party, meaning it is certain to sell.
Standing at more than six feet tall and created in collaboration with the artist José Horna, the intricately painted hybrid creature is the finest sculpture the artist ever made, according to the San Francisco art dealer Wendi Norris, who worked with Carrington. “It belongs in the Met or an equivalent institutional collection,” Norris said. “That’s what Leonora would have wanted.”
A $60 Million Monet, Without Safeguards
Water lilies are one of the most recognizable symbols of the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet, and one of the most expensive works during auction week is a six-foot-high version, “Nymphéas,” that comes with an estimate around $60 million at Sotheby’s Monday evening sale of the Palm Beach beauty magnate Sydell L. Miller, who died in March.
The beneficiaries of Miller’s estate are taking a risk with the Monet, which at the time of publication did not have a guaranteed minimum price — an assurance from the auction house to the consignor, no matter the outcome of the sale. This means that the painting could ultimately fail to sell.
Prearranged guarantees have in recent years made auctions of big-ticket art predictable events. According to the art market analysts Pi-eX, 71 percent of the value of the successful bids at last November’s evening sales in New York were backed by financial guarantees.
“It was a shock to see a full non-guaranteed collection come to market,” said Christine Bourron, the chief executive of Pi-eX, noting that a consignor can reap more of the proceeds of a live auction by not opting for the financial certainty of prearranged bids.
Monet made almost 300 paintings inspired by the water garden he created at his home at Giverny, France from the late 1890s until his death in 1926. (The auction high for a Monet is $110.7 million, for “Meules (Haystacks),” which sold at Sotheby’s in May 2019.) This canvas is dated by Sotheby’s to about 1914 to 1917, a preparatory work for the huge panoramic canvases that can now be admired in the Orangerie Museum in Paris.
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