subject: Art Market Watch Frieze Week Contemporary Auctions By Emily Nathan [print this page] Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, people everywhere are turning against the super-rich in a dramatic demonstration of public conscience.
The last thing the art world needs, then, is headlines tying it to the oligarchic 1% (whose gut feeling for symbols of
sophistication, i.e. artworks, fuels our vigorous art economy). So what the hell is up with Sotheby's idiotic lock-out of its art
handlers union, now entering its third month?
OWS activists have already disrupted one Sotheby's auction with a protest against ostentatious wealth, and were reportedly planning
to demonstrate at the auction house's York Avenue headquarters today, Oct. 19, 2011. Can someone wake up Sotheby's board chairman
Michael I. Sovern and Sotheby's CEO William F. Ruprecht and tell them to settle the damn dispute? It's time to push the art world
over towards the enlightened side.
OK, back to the market machinations of people with more money than God. Last week's series of contemporary sales in London, timed to
coincide with the Frieze Art Fair and its attendant inflow of art collectors, suggested that plenty of people still want to play in
the deep end. Trouble may lurk under the surface, however, if Sotheby's stock price is any indicator -- it remains bogged down at
summer's low 30s, rather than rising in anticipation of fall auction triumphs, as is typical.
Perhaps these factors weighed on the contemporary art evening auction at Sotheby's London on Oct. 13, 2011. The sale totaled
17,809,000, or about $28 million, with 36 of 47 lots selling, or just over 76 percent, a performance that would be easily bested the
following night by arch-rival Christie's London (see below). The top lot at Sotheby's was Lucian Freud's 1952 portrait of Charlie
Lumley, Boy's Head, which sold to an anonymous buyer for $4,999,085. Freud's auction record is $33.6 million, set in New York in
mid-2008.
A new auction record was set for Freud's fellow British expressionist, Leon Kossoff, when his gnarly 1985 painting of a man on a
bench, Street in Willesden (1985), sold for $1,086,983, well above the presale high estimate. The demand for Kossoff seems to be
rising overall, as his 1972 Self Portrait II sold in Sotheby's day sale for $626,145, triple its presale high estimate.
Kate Moss is art-market catnip, and yBa Marc Quinn's decision to make a series of sculptures depicting the supermodel twisted up like
a pretzel has proven wise. His Microcosmos (Siren), a 13-inch-tall sculpture of Kate in an impossible yoga pose, made from 10
kilograms of 18-carat gold, sold for $908,245, while during the day sale on Oct. 14 his Pink Sphinx, another pretzelesque Kate, sold
for $361,344.
A new auction record was set for Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, whose toy-sized laser-cut stainless steel sculpture of a flatbed truck
and construction crane sold for $360,626.
Sotheby's 20th century Italian art sale brought 21,647,950, or $34,060,885, the highest-ever total for a sale in this category. The
evening's top lot was Alberto Burri's 1957 period piece, Combustione Legno, an eerie composition of wood, plastic, vinavil and burnt
fabric, which was won in spirited bidding by an anonymous phone buyer for $4,999,085, a new record for the artist at auction. New
records were also set for Francesco Lo Savio ($360,626) and for a Gino Severini work on paper ($1,157,472).
