It was meant to be one of the world’s top collections of 20th century art, anchored by Amedeo Modigliani nudes and Claude Monet water lilies.
But two years after Dmitry Rybolovlev sued his dealer, alleging he was overcharged by as much as $1 billion, the Russian fertilizer magnate is unloading works he acquired at often record prices. He has already sold three for a loss totaling an estimated $100 million, and is offering five more at Christie’s auctions in London starting next week, some for a fraction of their purchase prices.
Rybolovlev—whose fortune totals about $9.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—invested about $2 billion in 38 works, from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. They were procured privately by Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, better known for creating a network of tax-free art storage warehouses in Singapore and Luxembourg.
Rybolovlev was among new buyers from Russia, China and other emerging economies who drove an unprecedented expansion of the art market in the past decade. Booming wealth created a network of collectors hungry for trophies by top modern and contemporary Western artists and willing to pay almost anything. Between 2003—the year Rybolovlev met Bouvier—and 2014, global sales more than tripled to $68 billion.
Since then, the market has contracted, and some of the art world’s most expensive pieces have been resold for less than their purchase price, mired in lawsuits and investigations.
Two Rybolovlev trusts in the British Virgin Islands recouped “less than $50 million” when the Russian sold Paul Gauguin’s “Otahi,” according to court papers they filed in New York. That’s about 60 percent below the $120 million Rybolovlev paid. In November 2015, he sold Gustav Klimt’s “Wasserschlangen II” for $170 million, down from the $183.8 million purchase price. In May 2016, his Auguste Rodin sculpture, “L’Eternel Printemps,” fetched $20.4 million, an auction record for the artist but less than a half the $48.1 million he paid.
* For the full story, pls go to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-23/a-100-million-mystery-a-russian-his-art-and-his-big-losses
Auction houses don’t simply pluck prices for their sales out of nowhere. They assign estimates based on what previous, comparable artworks have sold for. The logic is the same as with real estate: If the market can sustain a price for one work, it can probably pay the same amount (if not more) for another.
Yet oftentimes it doesn’t quite work as planned. The thrill of an auction is watching furious bidding push an artwork’s price millions of dollars above its estimate—or on the flip-side, watching a supposedly million-dollar painting fail to find a single buyer.
Take the quiz in the link below to find out exactly how much some of these art pieces sold for:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-17/quiz-how-expensive-is-this-piece-of-art Have fun!
Conventional wisdom holds that the art market is highly cyclical and moves with stock markets.
But recent comments from Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith suggest that fine art prices have room to grow — and may be in for a structural (rather than cyclical) surge.
Sotheby's looked at the wealth of today's billionaires and compared it to the most expensive works of art sold. To do this, Sotheby's used the 201st richest American on the Forbes 400 to get a median wealth level. In 2006, the 201st on the list would have had to spend 10 percent of their wealth to buy the most expensive piece of art sold that year. In 2016, that same number was only around 5 percent.
In 2006, the 201st wealthiest person would have had to spend 70 percent of their fortune to buy all of the top 10 pieces of art sold at auction that year. In 2016, that same number was 40 percent.
"In other words, the median member of the Forbes 400 would have seen his personal spending power to purchase art at auction grow 75 percent in the past decade alone," Smith said.
Granted, not every billionaire collects art, and even the most avid collectors aren't likely to spend 10 percent of their wealth on a painting. And billionaire fortunes aren't that liquid — most are in the form of operating businesses rather than cash that can be handed over to Sotheby's.
Yet, the numbers counter the perception that art prices have soared beyond the reach or rationale of even the wealthiest buyers.
There are not only more billionaires in the world than ever — more than 2,000 — but their fortunes have grown far more rapidly than art prices. And that could make today's most expensive art look relatively cheap in the future.
This article first appeared on CNBC. www.cnbc.com/2017/05/10/heres-why-the-art-market-could-soar.html
We'll be spending the weekend at the lovely Alpina Residensi showroom:) Pls feel free to drop by and say hi and check out their newly launched Semi-D units if you happen to be in the area.
It was the most successfulAsia
Week New Yorkever, by
the numbers, with a reported $423 million in sales. A huge figure by any
metric, the total blows away the $130 million in 2016 sales, which were
undoubtedly affected byraids
from federal officialsthat
saw eight potentially-stolen items seized. In 2015, Asia Week saw $360 million
in sales.
Now in its eighth edition, Asia
Week had over $406 million in sales this year from its five
participating auction houses: Sotheby’s New York, Christie’s New
York, Bonhams New York, Doyle New York, and iGavel, Inc. Asia Week also saw arecord
50 international art galleriestake
part for 2017.
“With the influx of Chinese
buyers, museum curators and collectors, Asia Week New York ended on an upbeat
note with record-breaking sales in all categories,” said Asia Week chairman
Lark Mason in a statement.
Leading the charge was Christie’s
March 15 sale of “Important
Chinese Art From the Fujita Museum,” in Osaka, Japan.
Sales on the night amounted to a hefty $262.84 million, over 60 percent of the
week’s total. Despite an estimate of just $1.2–1.8 million, a Chen Rong
handscroll titled Six Dragonssold for an astonishing $48.97 million.
Other top lots
included a Bronze ritual ram-form wine vessel from the Shang dynasty, 13th–11th century BC, that blew
away a $6–8 million estimate with a $27.1 million price tag, and three
bronze ritual wine vessels that sold for $37.21 million, $33.85 million,
and $27.13 million each.
On March 15, Bonhams had a 95.71
percent sell-through rate for “The
Zuiun Collection.” The house made $677,750 on the night, with a Qin
dynastypatinated sandalwood
scepter selling over nine times its high estimate, for a total of $90,000, for
the auction’s top sale.
In recent years there have been numerous examples of the tenacity with which Chinese buyers track down outstanding examples of their heritage in small auction rooms around the world. That Bordeaux result had echoes of the €22.1 million, bid in Toulouse in 2011 for a Qianlong-era scroll painting or the even more extraordinary $83 million bid, but never paid, for a similar period vase at a 2010 auction in Ruislip in West London.
More recently, President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption and the slowing of China’s economy have cooled demand, particularly for more routine objects that have been restored or overvalued.
And yet Chinese decorative art and antiques was one of the few auction sectors that grew in 2015, according to the Netherlands-based European Fine Art Foundation, or Tefaf, whose annual art market report was published on March 9. Auctions of Chinese porcelain, jades, furniture and other antiques fractionally increased year-on-year from $2.1 billion in 2014 to $2.2 billion. Though this is still far below the heights of the $3.4 billion generated in 2011, the sector nonetheless “performed significantly better in terms of annual growth than fine art in China and many other countries,” the report says.
The strengths and weaknesses of the market for historic Chinese art were evident this month at the annual Asia Week New York promotion, which ran from March 10 to 19.
The event, whose eighth edition featured 45 galleries and five auction houses, achieved a total of $130 million in sales, the organizers said. Last year, Asia Week raised $360 million, thanks to a $131.7 million boost from Christie’s blockbuster sale of the collection of the dealer Robert Hatfield Ellsworth. Perhaps more significantly, this year’s total was also well down from the $200 million the event achieved in 2014.
The seizure by federal officials of more than half a dozen Southeast Asian artifacts from the promotion, which the authorities said had been looted, generated some unhelpful publicity , but plenty of Chinese buyers did fly to New York for the event, and dealers and auction houses made sales.
“Mainland Chinese are in a more cautious and selective mood now,” said James Lally, a participating New York dealer, whose exhibition of ancient Chinese jades nonetheless found buyers for 62 out of its 75 pieces, ranging in price from $5,000 to $500,000. “Yet China is creating new collectors every day, and when a mainland Chinese begins collecting, he always collects Chinese art.” He added that about 40 percent of the sales at his show went to buyers from greater China.
PhotoCredit“Mainland Chinese are in a more cautious and selective mood now,” said James Lally, a participating New York dealer, whose exhibition of ancient Chinese jades nonetheless found buyers for 62 out of its 75 pieces, ranging in price from $5,000 to $500,000. “Yet China is creating new collectors every day, and when a mainland Chinese begins collecting, he always collects Chinese art.” He added that about 40 percent of the sales at his show went to buyers from greater China.
The Tefaf report calculates that 82 percent of the value of last year’s auction sales of Chinese decorative arts and antiques took place in China. That percentage is set to rise in 2016 as Western sellers increasingly choose to offer their finest pieces in Hong Kong rather than New York or London. Descendants of the mid-20th century British collector Roger Pilkington, for example, have chosen to sell all 100 lots of his Chinese ceramics on April 6 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. The auction is estimated to raise at least $29 million.
Wealthy Westerners, if they do buy Chinese art, now tend to buy the art of today. Many are banking on it being a lucrative investment once China produces its hoped-for boom in contemporary art collecting.
The world’s museums continue, by and large, to regard the best Chinese Neolithic jades, Tang dynasty pottery figures and Ming dynasty bronzes as among the timeless achievements of human civilization.
And the new wealth of China still values this heritage and is prepared to pay for it.
“The future of the market for Chinese art is exceptionally strong,” said Mr. Berwald, the London antiques dealer. “But that future is in China.”
This article first appeared on New York Times. To read the full article, please go to:
