If a recent interview with ArtNews is any indication, Requiem II will contain the insights you’d come to expect from an artist of Hirst’s caliber. My personal favorite: “Yeah, we ain’t gonna sell as much art, art shows are gonna get better now the focus shifts away from money.”

Brilliant.

Notably absent, of course, is any indication of whether Hirst notified his collectors before divesting a large portion of his holdings (in his own work) nearly a year ago – or if he set himself up for a big payday ultimately at their expense (because of falling art prices).

The art market, of course, reflects the title of the Prince/Hirst publication. The amount of billionaires in the world plunged from 1,125 to 793 (which has had little effect on my life), and the Russian oligarchs who distinguished themselves from the rest of the wealthy world by dropping fantastic sums on high-profile pieces have seen half their ranks fall away (only 49 are left).

The lack of wealthy buyers has had a clear financial impact – another for the “no shit” category. Together, the New York auctions by Sotheby’s (NYSE: BID), Christie’s (LSE: CTG:UK) and Phillips de Pury totaled $421.2 million. More than half of it came from Christie’s ($248.9 million), with Sotheby’s a distant second at $160 million and Phillips barely on the map at $12 million. A year earlier, the total for these three art auction houses was $1.6 billion. Auction sales for the spring season fell by more than 70%.

If you look hard enough, though, you can find signs of life in the art market. Christie’s and Sotheby’s have had a few recent successes … if you measure by sales relative to pre-sale estimates rather than the money that came in 12 months earlier. Some high-profile pieces are moving, and collectors are bargain hunting. But, the art market is still ailing, and it will probably take several ears for the situation to turn.

And, only if we’re really lucky, Damien Hirst will stick to books and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

Source – http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/08/03/art-market-sucks-hirst-and-prince-turn-to-books/

The post Art market sucks, Hirst and Prince turn to books first appeared on Indian Art News.

A stock-market rebound in cities such as Hong Kong and China, fueled by economic recovery, is reviving interest in art purchases among wealthy Asians, said Misung Shim, managing director of Seoul Auction’s Hong Kong office. A prevailing economic slump in Europe and the U.S. has made Western art more affordable in recent months and helped spur Asian buying.

Auction prices for Western contemporary artists have slid between 30 percent and 50 percent because of the credit crisis, said dealers. Sales of Impressionist and contemporary works at the June London auctions fell 70 percent to 165.9 million pounds ($274 million), according to figures compiled from Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury & Co.

“Many Asian collectors have always understood and loved Western art,” said Shim, 41, in a telephone interview. “This happens to be a good time to buy.” Chinese, Japanese and residents of Hong Kong are among Asia’s biggest buyers of Western art, she said.

South Korea’s largest art-auction house, which held its first sale in Hong Kong on Oct. 7, said vividly colored works by established artists like Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein and Damien Hirst are especially popular.

Hirst Butterflies
At Seoul Auction’s May 15 sale in Hong Kong, Hirst’s “Tranquility,” from the artist’s Butterfly Series, fetched HK$13.4 million ($1.7 million), his most-expensive work at an Asian sale. The buyer was an Asian collector, the company said, declining to give details. In November 2006, Hong Kong real-estate magnate Joseph Lau paid $17.4 million for a Mao portrait by Warhol, a record at that time.

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The post Hirst Statue Stars at Madrid Show as Dealers Aim to Defy Slump first appeared on Indian Art News.

The economic meltdown couldn’t stop British artist Damien Hirst busting records at his recent auction, but is the rest of the art market as robust? asks Simon de Burton

Those hoping that Sotheby’s auction of 223 lots of freshly minted works by the art world’s enfant terrible Damien Hirst would be a flop — especially the well-nourished dealers, who were cut out of the loop entirely — were cheered by the announcement, on the first morning of the sale, that Lehman Brothers had gone spectacularly bust.

However, the three-day event kicked-off with a ticket-only evening sale of 56 prime lots offered before a packed house that sold for an average of €1.64m each to raise a total of €89m. By the time the final hammer came down, the auction had raked in a staggering €140,724,310, the most ever made from the sale of work by a single artist. 


In fact, as the famous symbol of mortally wounded Merrill Lynch, the bull, was being photographed from every angle for the world’s newspapers, Hirst’s The Golden Calf, a formaldehyde-pickled bullock with gold horns, hooves and head ornament mounted in a gold-plated steel case on a marble plinth made €13m, an auction record for the artist. The Kingdom (a pickled tiger shark) went for €12m and Fragments of Paradise (a cabinet filled with manufactured diamonds) fetching €6.4m, five times its estimate. The ‘cheaper’ lots were offered the following day, 88 of which went for under €125,000 and 76 for under £1m (€1.3m).


Those who thought Hirst and Sotheby’s would be left with egg on their faces had, of course, made the mistake of assuming that the main collectors of his work were Europeans and Americans half-destroyed by plunging stockmarkets. In reality, only the mega-rich can afford to spend millions on such frivolities as pickled unicorns (lot 110) and are generally immune to global financial downturns. It is probably the wealthy buyers from the Middle East, such as the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad Al-Thani (who last year paid a then-record €13.1m for Hirst’s Lullaby Spring) that saved the sale, along with players from emerging markets such as Russia and India – not for nothing did Sotheby’s preview selected lots in New Delhi. One of the secret buyers was later revealed to have been Ukrainian steel tycoon Victor Pinchuk.


“I love art and this proves I’m not alone and the future looks great for everyone!” gushed a buoyant, even richer Hirst. But is this really the case?


Although Hirst – perhaps unwittingly – timed his sale to perfection, there are those who believe that the art market in general is in for a sharp shock as the worldwide financial squeeze begins to hit collectors buying at the important mid to high price range, an area that is the very life blood of the dealers and auction houses. 


Evidence of whether or not this is going to be the case will be seen this month, when Bonhams, Sotheby’s and Christie’s stage their major New York sales of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art, events traditionally packed with blue-chip workers that, during the past decade, have been fetching ever higher prices.


According to a Sotheby’s insider, the news of the Lehman Brothers crash resulted in many American commission bids for Hirst pieces being withdrawn before the sale, suggesting that US interest could be severely reduced at the forthcoming flagship auctions. This could, potentially, result in a large number of non-sales which will lead to a reassessment of values market-wide. In other words, a burst-bubble effect. 


Historically, however, Impressionist and top-end Old Master paintings have always weathered financial turmoil, largely because they are in relatively short supply and therefore always in demand, but also because the people who were rich enough to buy them in the first place are usually rich enough to be able to hold on to them until the next boom comes around.


The ‘supply and demand’ situation could, however, be dramatically reversed when it comes to contemporary art: many financial institutions have been building corporate collections of the genre for several years – but now that the writing is on the wall, the paintings might just have to come off it and be turned back into cold, hard cash.

The post A Bull Market? first appeared on Indian Art News.

Some emails can have a calming and salutary effect. An old journalist friend wrote from London this week: “Trying to put together a piece on the coming crash in the contemporary art market here. The received wisdom is that Indian and Chinese buyers will ride to the rescue. Did you see the Damien Hirst show in Delhi? Any views, reactions? I am in my frequent Thursday afternoon panic.”My friend is also a columnist, so the reassuring part was that columnists everywhere are bent low at their computers, palms slightly sweating, on Thursday evenings. But if Indian affairs were his chosen weekend topic why was he talking about art prices and Damien Hirst in Delhi rather than tastier stories from the subcontinent such as the Singur imbroglio?
There’s logic behind the inquiry. An astonishingly large sum of money, about $130 million, is expected to be raised at Sotheby’s sale of Damien Hirst’s works in London later this month. It’s not often that an international auction house devotes an entire show to the works of a single contemporary artist, and it is a reflection of the recession in the West that selections of Hirst’s works were taken on a road show in Asia to lure cash-rich buyers from emerging markets. Fourteen pieces by Hirst were displayed in Delhi — his spot and spin and butterfly paintings and a bronze sculpture of a ghoulish-looking skeletal angel seated on a rock. If Indian companies are briskly acquiring big steel and drug and BPO companies round the globe, surely there are enough rich Indians with spare cash to buy works by the acknowledged enfant terrible of the art world?
The Hirst show also coincided with the first art trade fair in the capital, the India Art Summit, and judging by the beaming smiles all round (Minister for Tourism & Culture Ambika Soni cheerfully posing with artists and organisers) it went off swimmingly well. The organisers haven’t released precise figures of the business transacted (it’s roughly estimated at about Rs 10 crore over three days) but 33 galleries were spread over 100,000 sq. ft of space and next year’s art summit promises to be three times as large.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in a period of general economic slowdown — when stock markets tank and property prices peak — people have to park their money somewhere, and the art market is often a favourite. But it is also true that there is no business more governed by hype, capricious tastes, cartels and price-fixing. The Sotheby’s-Christie’s clandestine price-fixing on commissions some years ago erupted in a scandal so large and provoked so many lawsuits that its owners and senior executives had to served a variety of sentences, including jail terms.
The Indian market in contemporary art is still minuscule — worth about $350 million in a worldwide market estimated at $25 billion. Trade in contemporary Indian art is infinitesimal compared to contemporary art from Latin America, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. But it remains both an unorganised and disorganised business with few checks or controls, and overrun by fly-by-night operators and other predators. A friend who sold a major artwork by an important Indian artist via an online auction in June is still waiting for her money to come through. Indefinite delays in payment for stocks or property would invite instant penalties and threat of litigation.
Rules and regulations are essential to mark the growth of the Indian art market from adolescence to adulthood. Till then, it will carry the reputation of dodgy dealers operating in a disreputable marketplace. Meanwhile, Western eyes are peeled for the number of Indians standing by their phones to bid for Damien Hirst in London on September 28. But a bullish Damien in India doesn’t mean that the art market’s other demons have been laid to rest.

The post Sunil Sethi: A bullish Damien & other demons first appeared on Indian Art News.

Damien Hirst is to open a shop next to Sotheby’s in London’s New Bond Street, the artist’s publishing company, Other Criteria, said tonight in an e-mailed statement.
The announcement comes three weeks before Sotheby’s holds its “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” auction of new Hirst works. The 223-lot sale, to be held on Sept. 15 and 16, is expected to fetch more than 65 million pounds ($119.5 million), said Sotheby’s, which has its main salerooms in New York.

Hirst, the U.K.’s richest artist, signed a 10-year lease on retail space at the southern end of Marylebone High Street, the Evening Standard reported in February. It said that the shop will sell a variety of merchandise ranging from books and T-shirts to an 18-carat charm bracelet.

In addition to our shop opening in Marylebone, we will be opening a second space next to Sotheby’s,” Hirst’s company said in an e-mail. This will be ready by the end of the year and will stock products which are available from the Other Criteria website, www.othercriteria.com.”
At the time of writing, no directors at Sotheby’s in London or New York were available for comment when contacted by telephone.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

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“” Recently, Hirst went on record saying he would gradually stop making spin and butterfly paintings, his signature works, and reduce the number of animal installations or formaldehyde art. “

The post Damien Hirst’s butterfly art set to captivate India first appeared on Indian Art News.

The post Damien Hirst brings £65m of his wares to market first appeared on Indian Art News.

Is there a bubble in the art market? Sales of high-end works defy expectations amid an expanding pool of oil-rich buyers.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Luxury these days is a tale of two markets: consumers continue to snap up high-priced Louis Vuitton bags even as they balk at paying full price for Coach handbags. The same can be said of demand for works of art.
Recent auctions of high-end art on both sides of the Atlantic have been a huge success. The sales, fueled in part by rich oil barons, have defied expectations that a shaky global economy would curb demand.
In London, works by Claude Monet and Jeff Koons fetched stratospheric prices, with Monet’s water lilies masterpiece, “Le Bassin aux Nympheas” selling for $80.5 million last week – well above its $47 million high estimate. In May, Francis Bacon’s “Triptych, 1976” set the record for most expensive contemporary work at auction when it sold for $86.3 million at Sotheby’s in New York.
Trendy categories like post-WWII and contemporary art have seen triple-digit price gains since 2002, but the boom was supposed to end after the credit crisis hit last summer. Instead, buoyant sales are just the latest example of a market that seems impervious to the downturn driven by climbing oil prices, a floundering financial sector, and a looming U.S. recession.
One reason the auctions are still buzzing is the influx of commodity-rich buyers who chase trophy works and push prices to ever-loftier heights. Roman Abramovich, a London-based Russian oligarch, reportedly bought two of the top works at the New York sales in May: the $86.3 million Bacon triptych and Lucien Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,” which sold for $33.6 million, making Freud the priciest living artist.
Meanwhile, the Al-Thani family of Qatar was the reported buyer last year of Mark Rothko’s “White Center (Yellow, Pink, and Lavender on Rose)” for $72.8 million. It was the highest price for a post-war work sold at auction at the time – a title now held by Bacon’s “Triptych.”
Signs of softness
This trophy-lot frenzy, however, has obscured some underlying weakness.
“We have two markets going on,” says Ian Peck, CEO of New York-based Art Capital Group, which provides financing against art assets. “There’s the super-rich market, which is very active right now. Then there’s the middle market, which is soft and patchy.”
According to research firm ArtTactic, works priced at more than $1 million made up about 70% of the contemporary art auction volume this year. Lower-priced pieces, which are offered by the auction houses at day sales rather than at the high-profile evening auctions, were more likely to sell below their top estimates or to fail to sell.
This softness shows that middle-market buyers are balking at rapidly escalating prices. For example, this week Christie’s featured six works by Damien Hirst at its day sale in London. Two didn’t sell, including a medicine cabinet that was estimated at $690,000 to $880,000. In its last auction four years ago, the Hirst piece fetched $212,000, nearly three times its top estimate.
The high-end market, on the other hand, has been resilient thanks to a buyer’s pool that is bigger and more global than ever. As recently as the late 1980s – when Japanese buyers bid up Impressionist art – American and European collectors were the only other major players, says Olivier Camu of Christie’s in London. When the Japanese economy faltered, so did the art market, and prices fell precipitously in the early 1990s.
“The reason the market is doing so well is because it’s so much deeper and broader,” says Camu. Big bidders now also hail from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Asia.
With growing demand for a limited supply, quality has been able to command record prices. The $80.5 million Monet, for example, was a rare masterpiece in top condition whose companion paintings are in museum or private collections or, in one instance, damaged.
Still, observers question whether even the trophy-art market can continue to soar as economic conditions deteriorate. “We think if there is a shift it could happen quickly,” says Peck. “It would take one or two major pieces to do poorly, and that could trigger a chain reaction. It’s a very neurotic sort of market.”

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