And, indeed, the results were impressive. Totalling $852.9 million, the evening sale of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s set a worldwide record. Recent auctions can leave no doubt that today’s art market has overcome slumps and hurdles to find, once again, some of the frenzied enthusiasm that animated the seemingly limitless pre-recession market. But while results like these are surely telling and encouraging to many, what do they mean for the players involved in the greater context of the art market?
The danger of a record price
It’s no secret that contention and resentment between the directors of major galleries and auction house department heads have existed at times over the years. Though a high price in an important sale can do wonders for the profile of a rising star, it can potentially disrupt the carefully navigated road success that gallerists try to pave for their artists. And it can be a long road. Dealers raise their artists’ prices as their exhibition histories fill out and their work becomes part of increasingly important private and public collections. Concerted efforts by gallerists in multiple cities, over an extended period of time, can lead to acceptance by the particularly exacting global art world.
How potentially frustrating, then, when an artist’s work reaches the place where auction house specialists gain interest and begin putting it on their blocks, and the dealers who’ve done so much to foster an impressive career lose complete control of the artist’s market? It seems like the very polished concrete foundation the modern gallerist stands on depends completely on creating this control, and then maintaining it. Goals exist in the long-term, and the ultimate prize, say, a large-scale retrospective exhibition at an important museum, is something earned with slow but steady work and dedication. At the auction house, however, much beyond the pieces up for sale and some of the people in the room remains out of anyone’s control.
Making art expensive
As Tobias Meyer, former worldwide head of Contemporary art at Sotheby’s put it in an interview published in The New Yorker in 2006, My job is to make art expensive. This blunt statement underlines the essential function of houses that have existed for hundreds of years: to get the highest price possible for a given work, no matter who’s doing the buying. Not that prime results are easy to come by, nor is it easy to secure important works for a given sale. Stories of trucks delivering impressive hauls of pictures, rerouted from one auction house to another, remain staples of art world lore. Theirs is an aggressive and sometimes cut-throat business full of courtship and negotiation, promises and expectations. And though reputable galleries may occasionally help them in their search for the exceptional blue chip, gallerists aren’t usually overeager to provide access to works by artists in their stables. Some dealers have gone as far as to forbid their collectors from offering works sold to them for resale at auction, threatening a blacklist of sorts, which would effectively close the doors of several galleries to them for good. After all, a gallerist can’t have an important work by one of his artists ending up in the hands of the wrong collector at the wrong price.
A reciprocal relationship?
It’s clear that today’s auction houses depend heavily on the work performed by the galleries of the world, but to what extent do primary market dealers feel the utility of the auction can be used to their advantage? An impressive price realized can be a much-needed coup for an artist with a lagging market. And several gallerists have been known to appear in person at sales, interested in a major work to which they’ve been denied access. Such public demonstrations may remind collectors, and the artists they represent, of the purchasing power at the dealer’s disposal - a power that could be used to their benefit, if need be. Primary market dealers proceed cautiously in dealing with secondary market players, if not for a seeming lack of trust then for an innate need to supervise and regulate.
And so the delicate symbiosis continues. And you can bet that this spring’s auction weeks will inspire both fear and awe in the hearts of those on both sides. And we, of course, will be there, if only in excited spirit, waiting for the hammer to fall.
