(Bloomberg) -- There’s no sugarcoating it. However bad the art market was this year (and it was, by all accounts, pretty bad), the top of the auction market was worse. Whereas in previous years we saw a bevy of sales of individual works that easily cleared the $50 million mark (in 2023 there were at least 6, and the year before had at least 19), this year there were just 3. Across the board, the total value of the 10 most expensive artworks was down more than 22% from a year earlier and roughly 55% from 2022.
It’s tempting to dismiss the very peak of the market as a meaningless sideshow to the meat-and-potatoes business of art fairs and auctions and galleries. After all, no one looks to vintage Ferrari auctions for indicators about where global auto sales are going. And yet the art market is uniquely attuned to the vicissitudes of perception. No one needs a painting like they might need a car. Art is an entirely discretionary purchase reliant on taste, trends and desire. Sales beget more sales, and giant prices at auction undoubtedly have a halo effect, however unquantifiable that might be.
But the reverse is also true: An absence of big-ticket sales can contribute to the art market stalling out. This seems to be particularly evident at auctions, where—given there’s always a chance that an artwork might fail to sell—consignors are hypersensitive to the perception of a downturn. “Most of our clients are terrified of a disaster scenario,” says Fine Art Group Chief Executive Officer Philip Hoffman, referring to a public auction failure. “There’s a big preference, I think, to buying and selling privately right now, until we see the froth back in the auction market. And I think we won’t see that for at least 12 to 18 months.”
So why is it useful to look at the top auction sales of the past year? The real utility, Hoffman says, is as much to see what wasn’t on the list as to see what was. “If you go back to 2016, 2017, you’d see big Warhols were flying all over the place,” he says, referring to, for instance, the Warhol Sixty Last Suppers that sold for almost $61 million in 2017. But a combination of shifting taste, price resistance and buyer fatigue has effectively sent many formerly high-flying markets into hibernation. In previous years you’d also see major results for artists such as Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter, Hoffman continues. “And those markets have all been much quieter,” he says, “or removed from the scene altogether.”
Instead the list is almost entirely populated by old standbys: two Monets, two Van Goghs, and a Warhol. Only one out of the top 10 works was created by a living artist. The newest is by Basquiat—and it’s more than four decades old. Here’s the full list:
$32.2 million for Vincent van Gogh’s Les Canots Amarrés (1887)
Estimated from about $30 million to $50 million; sold at Christie’s
$32.5 million for Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow and Blue) (1954)
Estimated from about $30 million to $50 million; sold at Sotheby’s
$33.2 million for Vincent van Gogh’s Coin de Jardin Avec Papillons (1887)
Estimated from $28 million to $35 million; sold at Christie’s
$34.8 million for Claude Monet’s Meules à Giverny (1893)
Estimated in excess of $30 million; sold at Sotheby’s
$35.5 million for Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964)
Estimated from $20 million to $30 million; sold at Christie’s
$43.2 million for René Magritte’s L’ami Intime (1958)
Estimated from about $38.4 million to $64 million; sold at Christie’s
$46.5 million for Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR) (1982)
Estimated from $40 million to $60 million; sold at Phillips
$65.5 million for Monet’s Nymphéas (circa 1914-17)
Estimated at about $60 million; sold at Sotheby’s
$68.3 million for Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964)
Estimated at about $50 million; sold at Christie’s
$121.2 million for Magritte’s L’empire des Lumières (1954)
Estimated at about $95 million; sold at Christie’s
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