BASEL—Dealers at Art40Basel continued to rack up sales on day two, but gone was the early euphoria of opening day that came with the realization that the art market hadn’t died. “It’s fine,” said David Nahmad of London and New York’s Helly Nahmad, strolling out of the stand’s solo display of late Joan Miró works, “but I think business is a little bit quiet.” The gallery sold one painting, Femmes et oiseaux dans la nuit (1968), for $6 million, according to Nahmad — an enormous sum for that period Miró — “to a known but anonymous client in the first minute of the fair.”

Pausing in thought, Nahmad added, “Maybe it’s difficult to sell, but it’s much more difficult to buy in this market because there’s very little material around.” That sounded odd, standing in the midst of acres of paintings and works of art by the world’s best modern and contemporary artists, but that’s what one notable secondary-market guru felt. Another one-person exhibition just down the aisle from Nahmad was at Madrid’s González gallery, which showcased six Donald Judd wall reliefs, “Progressions – 1960’s/1970’s.” Only one of the works had sold — the largest, a stainless-steel Untitled (1976), for more than $1.5 million, according to dealer Fernando Mignoni. “We have to take into account,” said Mignoni, “how things are right now and how things have been over the past two years. This is a business, and we have to be realistic. The bottom line is, we’ve done that, so we’re happy.” That more somber take was also evident at Chicago/New York dealer Richard Gray’s stand, which was rich in secondary-market works by modern and contemporary masters, including a major David Hockney canvas, The Conversation (1980), and Pablo Picasso’s La Famille du Jardinier (1965) and Femme ecrivant (Marie–Therese) (1934). Paul Gray declined to give details on any of the gallery’s transactions, other than citing sale prices ranging from $15,000 to $5 million. “I’m reasonably pleased, but we’re certainly down from last year, though not depressingly so,” he said. “None of the significant sales are things I want to publicize, and the reason is, we have these things because the sellers want to be discreet.” As Gray observed, “There are things we have this year that we wouldn’t have had last year [from consignors], because the auction houses no longer hold the advantage by throwing money at consignors. We have the advantage now.” But when pressed for details on gallery sales, the usually affable Gray grew testy and said, “I’m not feeling so cooperative today. All the headlines that the market is back are just wrong. It’s not doom and gloom, but there’s a lot more nuance now that doesn’t play well in headlines.” The recession seemed to lie heavily on everyone’s mind, and both dealers and collectors seemed to be working hard at playing fair in a tougher climate. “Collectors aren’t asking for 30 to 40 percent off on asking prices,” said Natalia Sacasa of New York’s Luhring Augustine. “It’s more like 10 to 15 percent. It’s a discussion not fraught with what kind of deal you can get in a recession.” The gallery had already sold a new Christopher Wool painting from 2009, Untitled (P575) in enamel on linen, to a European collector for $370,000 and several untitled works at $18,000 and $24,000 by 33-year-old gallery artist Josh Smith, currently showing in the New Museum’s “Younger Than Jesus” exhibition. It also sold Albert Oehlen’s large abstraction Nachthimmel (2006) for approximately $250,000. Sacasa said a lot of pieces went from the stand’s “backroom” closet, adding that she and her colleagues had begun to joke among themselves that next year they would build a giant closet and no booth, since collectors seemed to prefer what wasn’t on the walls
The usual foraging for transactions to report in the seven figures (or higher) was a lonely pursuit this year, as a kind of glass ceiling for top works of art seemed to be stuck at the mid-six-figure altitude. “The numbers aren’t the same,” said New York’s David Leiber of Sperone Westwater, “but we’ve sold works across the board.” Those works ranged from Charles LeDray’s tiny stained sculpture Mattress (1993), in cotton batting, fabric, cord, thread, burns, tea and coffee stains, and charcoal, which sold to an unnamed American museum for $50,000, to a 2008 Surrealist-toned painting in acrylic on canvas by Liu Ye, Miss, featuring a standing woman in bowler hat, trench coat, and umbrella, bookended by two valises. It went for a high-six-figure price to a German collector with his own museum, according to Leiber. Another European bought Wim Delvoye’s Cement Mixer Scale Model (2009), in laser-cut, corten steel varnish, for €80,000 ($112,560), while yet another picked up a classic white abstraction by Enrico Castellani, Untitled (1964), for $350,000. At San Francisco’s Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Sigmar Polke’s impressive Untitled (Interior) (1984), a gelatin-silver print with paint, sold to a European buyer for $500,000. The gallery also saw some action with fresh-from-the-studio watercolors by Barnaby Furnas, including Mummers Day 9 (We hopi you likey) and Mummers Day 6 (Fancy Brigade), which went for $21,000 apiece. The works are part of a new series based on the annual Mummers Day Parade on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia. Some exhibitors couldn’t help feeling relieved from the dread of a lousy fair, a sentiment expressed by New York’s Paula Cooper, who said business was about the same as last year. “I was just very curious about what would happen. I had no expectations, and we wound up doing very well.” The gallery sold a beautiful new Rudolf Stingel painting, Untitled (2009), measuring 95 by 76 inches and depicting a hurricane fence pattern across a silver background, for just above $300,000. Cooper also sold Robert Gober’s A Pair of Basinless Sinks (1986) — each sink measuring 27 by 25¾ by 2 3/5 inches and made of plaster, wood, wire, lathe, semi-gloss, and enamel paint — for some $1 million. The gallery also parted with a small (24 by 20 inches) but genuinely striking postmodern work by Sherrie Levine, Untitled (Broad Stripe: 4) (1985), in casein and wax on mahogany panel, for $125,000. “We sold mostly to Europeans,” added Cooper, “including new clients.” Gee, where have all the Americans gone? Perhaps they got lost in Venice. For those who did find their way here, the apparent theme, at least according to Mathias Rastorfer of the Swiss Galerie Gmurzynska, is that “longevity, knowledge, and substance are the required elements of the moment. Art Basel is very transparent in that way, because some of us have done very well, while others have not done well at all.” Gmurzynska sold two David Smith paintings from 1964, both called Untitled (Nude), at $200,000 apiece, as well as Alexander Calder’s vivid gouache Striped Man: Striped Sweater (1953) for just under $200,000 and Alexander Rodchenko’s Untitled (Spiral) (1919), in pencil on thin cardboard, for around €50,000. The large stand featured a small but well-focused exhibition of the two 20th-century titans, who both pioneered a new language with their hanging sculptures. On the younger side, the gallery sold several works by 30-year-old Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, currently showing in the Nordic and Danish pavilion at the Venice Biennale, including the clever collage wall relief Cap’n Europe (Romanian Beggar) in acrylic on product package, aka a Cap’n Crunch cereal box, for €4,000. Midway through the fair, it looks as if the modern side has gained ground over what was formerly red-hot contemporary terrain, thanks to a more conservative and cautious atmosphere. “I think we’ll see more corrections, for sure,” said one exhibitor. “The market is shrinking back to the price levels of 2005–06, which is a healthy market, in my view.”
The upcoming modern and contemporary auctions in London will probably reinforce that view. Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction

Elsewhere in this issue, we look at the effect the credit crunch is having on the art world as the new year begins. In the art market, there have been a few early victims of the crisis, including the 18 employees sacked by PaceWildenstein in New York, and the 17 “fabricators” of pill cabinets, butterfly paintings and pickled animals axed by Damien Hirst. “I want to make sure that we are the best swimmers on the block. The luxury of carrying under-performing employees is now a thing of the past,” warned Mr Gagosian, in a similar vein, in the same memo to his staff.
In Miami, the trendy French dealer Emmanuel Perrotin has shuttered his gallery, and now will only reopen it for Art Basel Miami Beach next December. Sotheby’s is also trimming its workforce, and has announced it has abandoned guarantees for the foreseeable future. The firm, and its arch-rival Christie’s, were badly hit by the collapse in art prices during New York’s sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art in November, which garnered only half the expected totals. Those sales were prepared before the autumn, when art prices were still riding high. Some works sold in November for half their low estimates, and up to 75% of the works in some sales were bought in.
Today a different reality prevails. The lacklustre 2008 autumn fairs, Frieze and Art Basel Miami Beach, saw dealers prepared to be flexible on prices, accepting discounts of up to 30%. But, as journalist, sociologist and lecturer (and The Art Newspaper contributor) András Szántó points out: “Just as designer brands are now being offered at huge discounts in the high street—were those shoes or handbags really worth the previous prices?—so those [pre-financial meltdown] prices should never have been so huge. Some dealers priced art so aggressively, and the prices went up with such velocity, that it is inevitable that they should fall back sharply.”
These prices rose with the greatest speed for contemporary art. But the picture of the art market, as 2009 opens, is far from simple. It is always worth remembering that the market is not a single block, but a whole series of sub-sections.
More traditional categories, where prices did not rise so dramatically, have weathered the downturn better. The London sales of old master paintings in December, for example, saw enthusiastic bidding for the best works on offer, with Christie’s selling a rediscovered Tiepolo for £2.8m and Sotheby’s making £3.6m for Frans van Mieris the Elder’s A Young Woman In a Red Jacket Feeding a Parrot, 1663, (est. £500,000-£700,000). And there was extraordinarily strong take-up and an 87.6% sell-through rate (by lot) for Victorian narrative painting, an unfashionable category if ever there was one, from the Scott Collection, held at Sotheby’s London in November.
The sale of stock of traditional antique furniture in London by Christie’s from the Jeremy and Hotspur dealers was by no means a rout, and made near its (admittedly “realistic”) pre-sale estimate. Elsewhere, a Seurat drawing made $6.3m in Paris, five times higher than expectations. Everywhere, while sell-through rates are down, there is still money being spent on art and buyers available for the best works.
Against this must be placed dire results for the over-estimated, over-supplied Russian market and severely weakening totals for contemporary Chinese art and Middle-Eastern art. At Christie’s sale in Dubai last autumn, Parviz Tanavoli’s sculpture, Poet in Love, 1998-2007, fetched $242,500, well under its low estimate of $400,000. Again, these were categories where prices had risen the highest, and the fastest, supported by speculative buying.
As this year starts, what are the prospects for the art market? “As long as you see wild fluctuations on Wall Street, no one will spend a lot of money on art. I think 2009 is going to be very difficult,” says Per Haubro Jensen of the venerable New York dealers Knoedler & Company. To this must be added the psychological impact of the meltdown—for many, it seems the wrong time to be buying what is, after all, an inessential purchase.
Supply presents an ambiguous picture. On the one hand, vendors are holding back from selling, for fear of “burning” their pictures by seeing them unsold; the auction houses are struggling to bring in good material for next month’s sales. On the other hand, forced sales by cash-strapped collectors may bring desirable works onto the market. Dealers claim that it is a great time to buy, and a number were acquiring inventory at Art Basel Miami Beach last month. “Cash is king at the moment, and there will be great buying opportunities,” concludes Mr Szántó.
The writer is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper