きょうはあらたなエントリを書く元気がないので、以前に書いた文章をアップします。
ことし10月30日のエントリ
「ピカソ絵画急きょ出品中止」、
11月9日に書いた
「美術市場の行く先はまだ何とも言えない」
の続報です。
ニューヨークタイムズの11月11日にこんな長文の記事が出ていたのを見つけました。
In Faltering Economy, Auction Houses Crash Back to Earth
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/arts/design/17auct.html?_r=1&ref=design
全文を引用するとさすがにまずそうなので、前半だけにします。
まあ、手短かに言っちゃうと
「だから言ったじゃない♪」
ってとこですかね。
こないだマレーヴィチやホアン・グリスが記録的な高値で売られ、関係者は、ホッとしたそうですが、傷は深そうですね。
サザビーの現代美術オークションの損失だけで2820万ドルに上ったとか。
モネもマティスもウォーホルもベーコンも、そして、現代美術も売れないそうです。
もっとも、目ざとい人はいるもので、ここ数年のバブルにへきえきしていたコレクターが
「それ、半額セール・オークションだ」
とばかりに、ジェフ・クーンズやロバート・ラウシェンバーグ、ドナルド・ジャッドを買ったという事例もあるそうです。
ドルが弱くなれば、相対的に、欧洲のコレクターが有利になりそうですしね。
果たしてどうなっていくのか。また続報があればお知らせします。
ことし10月30日のエントリ
「ピカソ絵画急きょ出品中止」、
11月9日に書いた
「美術市場の行く先はまだ何とも言えない」
の続報です。
ニューヨークタイムズの11月11日にこんな長文の記事が出ていたのを見つけました。
In Faltering Economy, Auction Houses Crash Back to Earth
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/arts/design/17auct.html?_r=1&ref=design
全文を引用するとさすがにまずそうなので、前半だけにします。
まあ、手短かに言っちゃうと
「だから言ったじゃない♪」
ってとこですかね。
こないだマレーヴィチやホアン・グリスが記録的な高値で売られ、関係者は、ホッとしたそうですが、傷は深そうですね。
サザビーの現代美術オークションの損失だけで2820万ドルに上ったとか。
モネもマティスもウォーホルもベーコンも、そして、現代美術も売れないそうです。
もっとも、目ざとい人はいるもので、ここ数年のバブルにへきえきしていたコレクターが
「それ、半額セール・オークションだ」
とばかりに、ジェフ・クーンズやロバート・ラウシェンバーグ、ドナルド・ジャッドを買ったという事例もあるそうです。
ドルが弱くなれば、相対的に、欧洲のコレクターが有利になりそうですしね。
果たしてどうなっていくのか。また続報があればお知らせします。
It was easily the worst two weeks of high-end Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions in more than a decade. Night after night, collectors and dealers tentatively watched as paintings by Monet and Matisse, Bacon and Warhol went unsold. Each time the hammer fell, it seemed to signal a new era in sales, one that featured the return of the seasoned collector and more-sober business practices. Still, given the depth of the global economic crisis, auction house experts were expecting worse.
So when a painting by Kazimir Malevich brought $60 million, and a Cubist canvas by Juan Gris fetched nearly $21 million — both record prices for those artists at auction — there was an audible sigh of relief. Dealers and auction house experts said it was proof that some high rollers still had the cash and the appetite to buy art. “In a period as frightening as this, it is still amazing to think that over $600 million worth of art changed hands over the past two weeks,” said William Ruprecht, Sotheby’s chief executive.
But timing was not kind to the auction houses. The sales were put together in summer, well before the financial picture darkened, and were overloaded with works from sellers trying to cash in on the last several seasons’ wave of inflation. To win their business the highly competitive auction houses bankrolled them with guarantees, undisclosed sums promised to sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome.
Late Friday afternoon Sotheby’s, the a public company, reported that it had lost $28.2 million from guarantees at its contemporary art auctions last week. That brought its total losses to about $52 million this fall, all from guarantees. Executives at Christie’s, which is a private company and therefore not obligated to release its finances, also admitted to having lost millions of dollars.
More fancy financial footwork compounded their losses. For several years now Sotheby’s and Christie’s have given sellers a cut of fees they charge buyers. The companies also spent a lot of money producing lush vanity catalogs and had become the art world’s equivalent of Avon, taking previews of the art coming up for sale across the globe to clients as though they were shop-at-home services.
The winners of the last two weeks were savvy veterans like the financier Henry Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josée, who parted with a Degas pastel that sold for less than the guarantee they received from Sotheby’s. And the prominent lawyer Aaron Fleischman was said to have been given $5 million by Christie’s for a 1973 Warhol, a Mao portrait that failed to sell.
Guarantees like these may seem like folly today, but at the time auction house experts were concentrating on collectors thought to be interested in specific works. That was in the summer. By November the trophy hunters — Russian oligarchs and oil-rich Middle Easterners as well as Americans — had for the most part fled. So had many Europeans who embraced the New York auctions a year ago when the weak dollar made their purchases seem comparatively cheap.
In their place were seasoned collectors who sat out the boom years and were now returning for what seemed like bargain prices. The Los Angeles financier Eli Broad, for example, could be seen near the front of the Sotheby’s salesroom last week and bought more than $8 million worth of art by Jeff Koons, Donald Judd, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg at an auction he called a “half-price sale.”
