Art market review of 2023: luxury thrives as impressionist art slumps
Figures produced by the world’s leading art auctioneers confirm that 2023 was a testing year for the art market, or, as Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti put it when reconciling the minuses with plusses, a “paradoxical” one.
Sotheby’s emerged on top with ￡6.28 billion of sales, on a level with 2022. Heading their list is Picasso’s 1932 painting Femme à la montre, which sold for $139.3 million (￡113 million) in New York, the highest auction price of the year. Picasso’s annual auction sales dipped from ￡454million in 2015 to ￡436million.
Close behind, at Sotheby’s London, was Gustav Klimt’s Lady with a Fan, 1917-18, which achieved the highest-ever auction price in Europe at ￡85.3 million. It was bought by art advisor Patti Wong, who outbid the Taiwanese collector Robert Wu to buy the work for an anonymous collector in Hong Kong, no doubt attracted by the influences of Asian art visible in the painting. As with most of the top prices, it is not clear how profitable these were because proceeds were split with third-party guarantors – anonymous parties who backed individual sales before the auctions took place, reaping a reward in the process.
Christie’s came in second with sales of ￡5 billion, apparently unfazed by loss of market share. But when announcing the company’s results, Cerutti took the unusual step of first referring to 2022 when it did have majority market share, thanks to the extraordinary quality of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $1.6 billion collection. Cerutti then revealed sales were down 26 per cent on 2022, but only 7 per cent, he said, if you strike out the Allen collection – which, of course, he couldn’t.
Both companies now call themselves “art and luxury” auctioneers. For them, handbags, watches, wine and jewellery feature strongly alongside the Rembrandts and Picassos. Even though individual prices for luxury items may not be accelerating upwards anymore, the number of sales made at auction is still going up. Cerutti made a big point this summer of revealing how luxury sales were increasing more than art sales at Christie’s, and at the end of 2023 could point to record sales of ￡790million led by the Bleu Royal diamond, a rare vivid blue, 17.61-carat diamond, which was the most expensive jewel at auction last year at ￡32million. Luxury items are popular with Asian buyers and are the number one entry point for new buyers at Christie’s, said Cerutti, with sales of handbags and watches in the Asia Pacific region reaching their highest totals ever last year.
Third-placed Phillips declined to reveal a year’s end total, but it did emphasise its main areas of growth as jewellery (up 40 per cent) and design (up 45 per cent). Fourth-ranked Bonhams, on the other hand, now with 14 salerooms worldwide, were happy to announce a 14 per cent growth in turnover last year to $1.14 billion, which must be running Phillips pretty close. Greatest growth it said was experienced by its Indian and Islamic art department which sold the 18th-century Bedchamber Sword of Tipu Sultan for ￡14 million – a world-auction record for an Indian and Islamic object and the most valuable sword ever sold at auction.
Rounding up the main art statistics was the analyst ArtTactic which indicated that the “flight to quality”, which usually occurs when the market dips, had not happened. Art auction sales in the principal categories of old masters, impressionist, modern and contemporary art worldwide by the three leading auctioneers, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, declined by 27 per cent in 2023 from 2022 to $5.74 billion. The root cause it said was that there had been a 30 per cent drop in the number of lots valued at over $10 million offered on the market.
On the other hand, sales of lower-value lots valued at under $50,000 each increased by 18 per cent compared with 2022, signalling a more democratic market at work.
Looking at the categories, the steepest fall measured by volume of sales, as opposed to individual values, was felt by the impressionist market, which had been so well-represented in 2022 by the Allen collection, down by 53.4 per cent. Classic post-war and contemporary also fell sharply by 31.6 per cent. Sales of work by Andy Warhol, the bellwether of this market – whose Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million the year before – were down by 73 per cent. Even the fashion-driven market for younger contemporary art, while buoyant on the surface, fell by 12.8 per cent. The best performer, ironically considering how much negative press it has had, was the old master market spurred by rediscovered works by Rembrandt and Canaletto, which fell by only 5.5 per cent.
Down though not quite out were NFT’s (non-fungible tokens), once described as “tickets to a whole new lifestyle”. In July, a Bored Ape NFT, which Justin Bieber paid $1.3 million for in 2022, was widely reported as worth 5 per cent of that. A similar observation could be made about the fêted Saatchi collection, which has been offloading work by artists once tipped for stardom for derisory three-figure sums at minor London salerooms.
The glaring example of a downward price correction at the upper end was the collection formed by the late real estate tycoon Gerald Fineberg at Christie’s in New York, which was estimated at as much as $230 million and sold for $153 million. Paintings by such market luminaries as Picasso, Magritte, Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool, valued in the tens of millions, all sold significantly below their estimates, heralding the advent of a buyer’s market, no longer controlled by aspirational sellers.
Women artists, however, continued to be sought after, from the baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, to the American minimalist Agnes Martin, and Britain’s 21st-century star, Cecily Brown, basking in the glory of a survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Younger female artists also narrowed the gap on their male counterparts. In the under-38-year-old category, female artists were in a majority accounting for 34 of the top 50 auction prices.
It was also a good year for women of colour. A burnished terracotta pot by Magdalene Odundo, which had been bought in 1993 for ￡33 sold for ￡82,500. Odundo’s record meanwhile rose to ￡533,400 in another sale at Sotheby’s.
One of the most closely watched areas of the market was the growth of Paris as an international centre. During October’s rival fairs, Frieze in London and Art Basel Paris+, the Paris auctions edged ahead of London’s for the first time realising €218 million (￡189 million) over London’s Frieze week sales of ￡156 million.
Here, a notable result was achieved for the artist/designer Fran?ois-Xavier Lalanne’s 10ft-long bronze and brass Rhinocrétaire 1 (1964). Bridging art, sculpture and functional design and containing a desk, bar and safe inside its armoured folds, it sold well above its €4 million estimate for a stupendous €18.3 million record.
The sale marked a good year for animal art with character – David Hockney’s ceramic cats, for example, or Les Flamants, 1910, a group of pink flamingos on the banks of a jungle lake by the self-taught Henri Rousseau, which soared above estimate for a record $43.5 million dollars at Christie’s – a rare example of an outsider making the top 10 list of auction sales in a year.
