Re: ART / MONEY

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Thanks, Jan.

Bill

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From: Jan Faul
Sent: Nov 16, 2013 8:04 PM
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
Subject: ART / MONEY

THE CIRCUS by Peter Schjeldahl
A hundred and forty-two million dollars and change is a lot of money, or is it? What would the former possessor have done with the wad if he  or she—or a corporate it—hadn’t splurged, at Christie’s in New York, yesterday, on the triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” by Francis Bacon? Nothing as interesting, certainly. Far larger amounts of money move around the world—numbers falling on one balance sheet, rising on another—night and day, and few notice. Most entail commodities (stuffs, like oil or wheat, sold by metric measure) or abstractions (stocks and bonds, financial instruments). When a tangible, useless object is the occasion, in public, there’s drama, though the stakes are relatively trifling.
Any price—many millions, a buck fifty—paid for any work of art is absurd. Or call it fiduciary poetry. People keep noting that the value of art is strictly subjective, but that truth sinks in only so far, if at all.
There are degrees of subjective intensity, from whim to psychosis. Desires occupy a scale between idle liking and ruinous passion. The present art market plainly won’t quit until it hits the end of the line. So it has our attention.
Money is subjective, too, as the word “credit” expresses, but in a way that allows no one a place to stand and observe it as somebody else’s mania. Art in today’s market fascinates by performing like money itself, on a miniaturized stage: Mammon’s Mini-Me.
I offer you the choice between a one-dollar bill and a twenty. I point out that the first features a portrait of much the better President. You prefer Andrew Jackson? Really? If folding money were art, the numbers in the corners of the bills would be changeable, flickering up or down like those on tote boards, and popular choice would come to rate the former single above the former double sawbuck.
I don’t like Francis Bacon or, for that matter, Lucian Freud a whole lot, but they’re obviously worth something, given the spooky assumption  that art is worth anything. They are Andrew Jacksons, to my mind—and, of course, to practical effect, if you want buying power this year.
It’s tempting for a critic to argue with and about the latest numbers in the corners of art as currency. But that would be to don a clown costume and to join the circus. Those people waving paddles? They’re crazy fun._NewYorkerMagazine

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AUCTION HOUSE MATH by William Poundstone
This week’s auction results have the art media buzzing about “a new Gilded Age.” <http://tinyurl.com/mwunodk> OK: How do today’s art prices stack up against those of the actual, original Gilded Age?
Believe it or not, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, until well into the 20th century, was Thomas Lawrence’s Pinkie. It set a record in 1926, when Henry Huntington bought it for a dizzying, outrageous, stratospheric (gasp)… $380,000.
Other paintings had gone for more in private sales (among them Blue Boy and The Polish Rider). But Pinkie was the crest of the 1920s’ overheated auction market. Three years later, the stock market crashed, taking the art market along with it.
Adjust for inflation, and Pinkie’s price was just over $5 million in today’s money. At current valuations, a dozen Pinkies would be a fair swap for one Koons Balloon Dog (the orange canine fetched $58.4 million on Tuesday) <http://tinyurl.com/lxwteem> . This week’s auction record is Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold for $142.5 million. It’s 28 times more expensive than the Lawrence was, in real terms <http://tinyurl.com/moveuwb> .
Today’s gilded set really is richer than the plutocrat-collectors of old. Will the taste for Bacon, Warhol, Koons, and Wool hold up better than that for Lawrence?_LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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ART IS HARD TO SEE THROUGH THE CLUTTER OF DOLLAR SIGNS by Roberta Smith
As our troubled age becomes ever more gilded, art auction prices soar with bone-numbing regularity. A new high-water mark was reached on  Tuesday, when a 1969 triptych by the British painter Francis Bacon sold for $142 million while the Christie’s auction in which it was featured  took in $692 million. Both figures exceeded recent highs: One arrived in spring 2012, when Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” sold for $119 million at Sotheby’s; the other came last spring, when a Christie’s auction total reached $492 million. It seems that people really, really like art these days.
Auctions have become the leading indicator of ultra-conspicuous consumption, pieces of public, male-dominated theater in which collectors, art dealers and auction houses flex their monetary clout, mostly for one another. The spectacle of watching these privileged few (mostly hedge fund managers and investment-hungry consortiums, it seems) tossing around huge amounts of money has become a rarefied spectator sport. These events are painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually love art for its own sake.
More than ever, the glittery auction-house/blue-chip gallery sphere is spinning out of control far above the regular workaday sphere where artists, dealers and everyone else struggle to get by. It is a kind of fiction that has almost nothing to do with anything real — not new art, museums or historical importance. It is becoming almost as irrelevant as the work, reputation and market of the kitsch painter Thomas Kinkade.  
Some have tried to put things into perspective, lamenting that the Bacon price almost equaled the $154 million that President Obama requested for the National Endowment for the Arts for fiscal year 2013 — and more than the $138 million that the endowment actually received, with cuts.
Others have pointed out that the price would have paid, twice, for the renovated Queens Museum, which cost a modest $69 million. It has been noted once more that such figures make it impossible to see the art for the money, that works costing this much are, at least temporarily, damaged goods.
But here’s another perspective. Prices for postwar art began to rise in 1977, when the Whitney Museum of American Art paid $1 million for Jasper Johns’s “Three Flags.” The art world was shocked. Even adjusted for inflation, the $1 million Johns painting would cost roughly $3.85  million in today’s dollars. Now, this would seem a drop in the bucket.
And the system seems greased to go even higher. In a postsale news conference on Wednesday, Brett Gorvy, worldwide head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, seemed to be in gung-ho mode. “This isn’t a bubble,” he said. “It’s the beginning of something new.”
Yet it seems obvious that the Bacon — three portraits of the artist’s friend, the British painter Lucian Freud — is a special case and a guaranteed money magnet. It is a portrait of one of Britain’s two most famous modern artists painted by the other one, both of whom led flamboyant and well-documented lives. More skeptically, the triptych, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” might also be termed a portrait of a middlebrow artist by another middlebrow artist.  Yes, the work is beautifully painted with a fetching yellow background, yet if its subject were someone else, or if it simply had an unfamiliar name in its title, it probably would have gone for quite a bit less.
In the meantime, it helps to remember that today most people look at Mr. Johns’s “Three Flags” at the Whitney without seeing a million dollar signs. It may be hard to look at this Bacon without thinking of its extraordinary price. But since the buyer is currently a mystery, it’s anyone’s guess whether we will see it again anytime soon._NYTimes

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COUPLE SHARES GOOD LINE
Yesterday during his Reddit AMA, New York‘s art critic Jerry Saltz was asked whether he would pay the $140 million for Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), the way some person or group of people did at Christie’s Tuesday night. Mr. Saltz balked. “The Francis Bacon is completely predictable,” he, or some group of people transcribing his answers, wrote. “A middle-brow painting by a middle-brow painter painting another middle-brow painter.”
Today his wife Roberta Smith has an on-point Critic’s Notebook about the auctions in The New York Times that uses nearly the same line: “It seems obvious that the Bacon… is a special case and a guaranteed money magnet. It is a portrait of one of Britain’s two most famous modern artists painted by the other one… More skeptically, the triptych… might also be termed a portrait of a middlebrow artist by another middlebrow artist.”
Who had it first? Not that it matters! It’s a good line. And you do this with your significant other’s opinions all the time, don’t lie. <http://tinyurl.com/l8mzcjw> _Dan Duray_GallleristNY

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FRANCIS BACON: LIKE DAMIEN HIRST, BUT WITH TALENT by Jonathan Jones
I was disappointed to find out that Francis Bacon's record-breaking Three Studies of Lucian Freud has (apparently) been bought by the New York art dealer Acquavella. Just for a moment, I thought the anonymous purchaser might be Damien Hirst.
Britain's best-known contemporary artist has a bit of money <http://tinyurl.com/cmd7dv5> . He is also a forthright fan of Bacon. "I think Bacon is one of the greatest painters of all time", he told the Observer in 2008. In fact, he has bought at least five paintings by Bacon <http://tinyurl.com/8a6uda5> .
But the connection between Bacon and Hirst goes deeper than fandom or even ownership. He identifies with the visceral, meaty art <http://tinyurl.com/mf5nkfw> of Bacon, even perhaps sees himself as Bacon's double. Talking about his hero in that Observer interview, he contrasted what he claims is Bacon's technical clumsiness as a painter with Lucian Freud's precision. He apparently thinks that, like Bacon, he can get away with lack of virtuosity in his paintings through sheer imagination.
This is a misunderstanding on Hirst's part. Bacon was a gifted painter with a rich sensual mastery. Hirst's own paintings are utterly talentless. Comparing him as a painter with Bacon is like comparing a hundred monkeys at the piano with Glenn Gould <http://tinyurl.com/ke3e6ya> .
But in his vitrines, his only significant contribution to modern art, Hirst apes Bacon effectively. The isolation of his shark in its glass and metal tank, with its mouth open wide, is a clever echo of Bacon's series of paintings of a pope screaming in a glass booth <http://tinyurl.com/dx3nfsb> . The nightmare natural history of Hirst's A Thousand Years <http://tinyurl.com/l54p9s8> , in which flies are born, feast on flesh, and die, translates the desperate universe of Bacon's paintings into three dimensions.
And then it hit me. Why is Bacon suddenly the man of the hour? Because he fills a need. A need that Hirst cannot satisfy.
There are some people who were never "taken in" by Hirst. They saw through him from the start. Clever them.
But others among us love art, and want it to be fierce and necessary and impossible to ignore. That's why we got excited about Hirst in the 1990s, when his striking images of nature, death and imprisonment said so much more than most of today's art.
Now that Hirst is so abjectly exhausted, the stupendous Bacon looms up in his vacated vitrine.
I am a disillusioned fan of Hirst, a bereft former believer. And now, when I look at the art of Bacon, I feel an old passion stir. It is not too late to believe, after all. Bacon is my new art god, and for a simple reason. He is Damien Hirst – with talent._GuardianUK

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SOTHEBY’S HAS STRONG SALES; OVITZ DECRIES CRASS COMMERICALISM by Marion Maneker
When Michael Ovitz thinks you’re a philistine, watch out! The overall reaction to record prices again at Sotheby’s $380.6m (89% sold-through) sale last night with records for Andy Warhol’s silver Car Crash and other works by Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Mark Bradford and others was another round of shock and revulsion as Katya Kazakina recorded on Bloomberg:
    “I am an art collector; this is not about collecting,” said former talent agent Michael Ovitz as he exited the cavernous saleroom. “For a moment last night I thought I was in the commodities market,” Ovitz said of the Christie’s sale.
Those overwrought reactions are less instructive than what the trade had to say about the sale which is a simple tale of supply and demand:
    “They didn’t have the goods, but when they did they were very successful,” said Lucy Mitchell-Innes, a New York dealer.
    “There are a lot of new collectors, a lot of empty walls to fill,” said New York art dealer Dominique Levy.
Gallerist’s Dan Duray stopped one dealer to get his take on the incentives Sotheby’s might have provided to win the lots that were not guaranteed:
    “I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave away almost all of their upside, to get those pieces.”
Getting good goods was the challenge of the season. Sotheby’s had gone to several sources, including the Lannan Foundation, collector Steven Cohen and the Dia Foundation which ultimately walked away with $38.4m for a new acquisitions fund. Here’s Carol Vogel with some of the details on their successes:
    "Among the artworks sold were several seminal sculptures by John Chamberlain, including “Candy Andy.” That 1963 work, fashioned entirely out of old car parts, had set the artist on the course of what became his signature method of using mangled fragments of old cars. It had been expected to bring $2 million to $3 million; Christopher Eykyn, the New York dealer, bought it for $4.6 million. Also for sale was Barnett Newman’s “Genesis — The Break,” a 1946 abstract canvas that brought $3.6 million. The audience came alive with bidders when Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea,” a suite of 24 drawings created in 1959,  came on the block. Although it was expected to sell for $6 million to $8 million, a phone bidder snapped it up for $21.6 million."
Dia doesn’t appear to have received a guarantee for its works but Steven Cohen did. Received wisdom puts the value of that guarantee at $80-85m. By Kelly Crow’s calculations, that puts Cohen ahead by more than $3m as the group brought in somewhere shy of $77m:
    "Five days after hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s firm SAC Capitol Advisors accepted responsibility for insider trading by at least six of its employees—an admission that could cost the firm $1.8 billion in penalties—Mr. Cohen did a little trading of his own at Sotheby’s. He sold off six pieces for $76.7 million combined, including a $26.4 million Gerhard Richter abstract from 1986, “A.B. Courbet,” that was bought by a telephone bidder from Mexico. Mr. Cohen also got $20.3 million for a lemon-hued Warhol “Liz #1 (Early Colored Liz)” and $7.3 million for Warhol’s “5 Deaths on Turquoise,” both from 1963.
Gallerist’s Duray watched the bidding play out among these auction regulars:
    "The third most expensive lot of the evening, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s two-panel work Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers) (1982) sold to Larry Gagosian for $25.9 million after a last minute bid following a slow bidding session between Jose Mugrabi and Peter Brant—all three of whom are known to do a fair amount of business together in the artist’s market, and the competition did not seem high-stakes in the room either. Marc Glimcher of Pace Gallery jumped at the bidding on a Dia work by John Chamberlain, Malaprop (1969), with a little “toodle-oo” finger wave over the head of the person sitting in front of him, and won the lot for $845,000."
The Master, Judd Tully, tallied up the top lots:
    "Forty-seven of the 54 lots that sold made over $1 million. Of those, two made over $10 million, and seven made over $20 million.
And summed up the evening and the week with this response from Philippe Ségalot:
    “I didn’t get anything tonight,” said Segalot later as he exited the salesroom, “because what you want goes for the highest prices.” _ArtMarketMonitor

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THE REASON WHY FRANCIS BACON'S 'LUCIAN FREUD' IS WORTH $142 MILLION
While the world is scratching its head as it tries to digest the $142 million price tag slapped on Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” at Tuesday night’s post-war and contemporary auction in Christie’s New York headquarters, the writing appears to have been on the wall for quite some time.  As the ultra-wealthy become even wealthier, the top-end of the art market, along with real estate and other luxury sectors, have experienced an incredible surge as cash is being channeled into alternative investments.  Add the rarity of the piece, and the performance of the contemporary art market, and you have the recipe for a global record.
After about six minutes of “fierce” bidding, as a spokesperson for Christie’s put it, several bidders had taken the value of Bacon’s triptych from approximately $80 million, where it opened, to a final price of $127 million.  After auctioneer Juri Pylkkanen hammered down the piece, the art world was left with a new auction record, with Bacon’s piece dethroning Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which sold last year at Sotheby’s for $120 million.
The total value of the auction also marked a new record, grossing $691.6 million and leaving in the dust none other than Christie’s’ last blockbuster evening sale held in May which fetched $495 million.  Three pieces sold for more than $50 million, with 11 pricing in north of $20 million, with a Jeff Koons and a Warhol going for nearly $60 million each.
The figures are astronomical, yet that wasn’t unexpected, according to Thomas Galbraith of online auction house Paddle8.  “This is consistent with what we’ve been seeing the market doing,” Galbraith explains.  “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” won its place as the world’s most expensive artwork given a confluence of factors, from the intrinsic value of the work itself to the state of the market.
“Bacon has a relatively small body of work, he wasn’t nearly as prolific as someone like Picasso,” Katherine Markley, artnet’s lead market analyst, said.  While there were seven pieces by Andy Warhol up for grabs during Tuesday’s auction, “only 10 Bacon lots have come to auction in 2013,” Markley added.
Furthermore, the piece has a sort of intrinsic, yet subjective, value given its importance from an historical perspective.  “The subject matter is very important for the Bacon market given the well documented camaraderie and rivalry he had with Lucian Freud,” Galbraith notes.  Given the rarity of the piece, the auction house will also feed the PR machine, drawing a crowd of clients and observers that creates a feedback loop that reinforces the importance of the auction and the piece, evidenced by the completely packed room at Christie’s on Tuesday.
Another major factor is the wind that has been blowing behind the contemporary market’s sales over the past decade.  From total sales of about $850 million in 2002, the contemporary sector has skyrocketed to about $6 billion last year, artnet’s data shows.  This has happened at the expense of the impressionist and modern market, as less and less top-tier pieces come to market.  Munch’s “Scream” was one of the major works of the modern and impressionist age, allowing it to become the most valuable auction sale last year, despite the rise of the contemporary market.
The final, and possibly most important factor is the rise of the mega-rich.  “Since the recession, the wealthy appear to be becoming even wealthier, while middle class wages are more stagnant,” said Galbraith, who notes this is apparent in the art market where the high-end is experiencing more activity.  “The ultra high net worth and the newly wealthy are looking to get into the art market,” said Markley, who notes contemporary art is accessible and acts well as a status symbol.  If the Forbes 400 is any indication, the wealthy are getting wealthier, with the 400 richest Americans now worth a cumulative $2 trillion, up $300 billion from a year ago and with an average net worth of a record $5 billion, an $800 million increase from a year ago.
The luxury market is firing on all cylinders, as Manhattan real estate brokers can attest to.  This is very clear when one looks at global art markets, particularly at the high end in New York and London, and beyond.  Bacon’s record piece is but one more example of this “new era”  that many are calling a bubble.  Yet, as long as the rich continue to get richer, there doesn’t appear to be any indication this trend will reverse itself.“_Agustino Fontevecchia_Forbes

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IT’S A NEW WORLD” IS THE GIDDY RESPONSE TO CHRISTIE’S RECORD-SETTING SALE by Marion Maneker
Last night’s $691m sale in New York provoked a extreme reactions in both directions. Art critics and much of the art market press recoiled from the frenzy of buying with moralizing and peevishly irrelevant remarks about donating the money to charity. At the same time, market professionals seemed to bathe in soothing waters of what they think is a sea change._ArtMarketMonitor

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ROMAN ABRAMOVICH IS NOT THE MYSTERY BUYER OF BACON TRIPTYCH
Art insiders say Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich <http://tinyurl.com/mxnlu4w> is not the mystery buyer who snapped up a Francis Bacon triptych painting for a record-smashing $142.4 million this week.
Modal TriggerThere have been reports that Abramovich — a noted Bacon-lover who certainly has the cash to spare — was the man who really snapped up the work at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art sale when Acquavella Galleries bought it on behalf of a high-flying client. (After all, Abramovich will need to decorate his new $75 million Fifth Avenue townhouse with something. And he previously purchased a different Bacon triptych for $86 million.)
However, a source close to the oligarch told us, “No, it’s not him. Keep guessing,” while a different source familiar with the transaction said, “I’ve never heard Roman’s name mentioned” as a potential buyer. William Acquavella’s gallery has been incredibly tight-lipped about the acquisition, and Abramovich’s reps didn’t comment. Rival dealer Larry Gagosian has said he went as high as $101 million in the six-way bidding war for the Bacon._Ian Mohr_NYPost

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ART COLLECTING: A BILLIONAIRE'S HOBBY
Marion Maneker, publisher of Art Market Monitor, discusses the art market following a Sotheby's auction and says there's been a appreciation in the modern art market driven by an expansion in collectors and buyers. <http://tinyurl.com/mcju6du>

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