November 2008

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What can one say about the latest and ever more astounding round of contemporary-art auctions in New York, except comment that the prices on the secondary market are now well out of control, and applaud the auction-houses for their continuing success in encouraging the world’s super-rich to jump in and join the party?

As has been widely reported, the two most astonishing record-breaking prices of the season were paid by someone who has never previously shown much interest in works of art, let alone drop an eye-watering $120m for contemporary art in just two days. That buyer was the London-based Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his acquisitions were the Francis Bacon Triptych of 1976, for which he paid $86.3m (£44.4m) at Sotheby’s on 14 May, and Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping of 1995, which he picked up the following evening for $33.6m (£17.25m). The first set a new record price for any contemporary art at auction; the second, a world auction record price for a living artist.

Most surprising of all, however, was the continuing strength of this market across the board, despite the countless predictions that this long over-heated market had to cool off. Christie’s $348m evening sale, for instance, was 95% sold by value and by lot, and Sotheby’s alone saw clients establish new auction-record prices for no fewer than 18 artists. And these prices were not just higher than anticipated, but huge – multiples of published estimates. Yves Klein and Gerhard Richter sold for three times their estimates; Takashi Murakami’s outrageous My Lonesome Cowboy (Fig. 5), estimated at 4m, realised $15m. Market insiders had predicted that while the best of the evenings’ offerings would do well, the less appealing lots and the day sales would suffer. Sotheby’s not only had its best evening sale ever, but a day sale that once again broke through the $100m barrier, realising a record $107m, with 57% of lots selling above the high end of their estimates.

It is clear that contemporary art remains the purchase of choice of today’s rich, and that the newest buyers are shifting the market’s focus away from abstraction and towards figuration. It is little wonder that at least one owner of a major Lucian Freud has changed his phone number since 15 May. Little wonder, too, that when Mr Abramovich and his new art-loving girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova, stopped to admire the Giacomettis at Art Basel in June, dealers froze with expectation.

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