Archive for the 'Auction' Category
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
It’s Hirstory
Image: Steve Forrest for The New York Times
Excuse the questionable title…Following months of equal parts anticipation and speculation, the results are in on Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, Damien Hirst’s unprecedented auction at Sotheby’s, London. While many forewarned weak results, others hoped the market could somehow insulate itself from a deepening recession and the past week’s global economic crisis.
Recent announcements of the near bankruptcy of financial service provider, Lehman Brothers, the government bailout of AIG, and the impending collapse of mortgage corporations, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac (both are under federal control), have certainly shaken confidence in an already uncertain art market. A Sept. 12th Bloomberg report cited last weeks’ 9% drop in Sotheby’s stock and 40% drop in shares over the past year as a sign of things to come, going as far as quoting one dealer who said, “it’s very simple, Damien Hirst will fail.”
Not all observers were skeptical. According to The New York Sun, art market research company ArtTactic’s poll of 51 market insiders concluded the auction would fare well and close within Sotheby’s published estimates.The report can be viewed in more detail here
When the final hammer dropped on Tuesday afternoon, the 223 lots on the block had grossed a total of $198 million USD (£111.7 million), breaking initial auction house estimates of $116.5 million USD (£65 million), and yielding sales more than 40% higher than anticipated. Some of the biggest successes of the two day sale were Hirst’s spin and butterfly paintings (both of which the artist has announced he will stop producing), and several formaldehyde encased animals, including a tiger shark entitled The Kingdom, which sold for $17,115,756 USD (£9,561,250), shattering its high estimate of $10.885,573 USD (£6 million). However, not all pieces fared as strongly, with some even going unsold or below estimate.
Reporting on the auction’s strong results, The New York Times quoted Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, who stated, “Damien Hirst is a global artist who can defy local economies,” and Hirst’s personal business manager, Frank Dunphy, who said, “I woke up this morning in the teeth of the gale of recession, but we came out as confident as ever.” While Hirst may have defied the odds of a gloomy economic climate and re-solidified his position as a global art juggernaut, time will tell if these astounding results will transfer into a larger resurgence of art buyer confidence.
Read on for detailed results and auction highlights.
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Phillips de Pury Contemporary & Street Art Results
This past Saturday, Sept. 6th, marked the much anticipated Contemporary and Urban Art Auction at Phillips de Pury, London. To date, this is largest sale of its kind, with several artists coming to auction for the first time. Speculation over the past few years, coupled with the recent dip in market confidence had many collectors watching closely as the results rolled in. The Art Collectors highlights the sale after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
Hirst to Retire…
Well, not exactly. In a recent Sotheby’s online promotional video interview, Damien Hirst revealed plans to cease production of several of his hugely successful series by the end of 2008. These include the artist’s butterfly and spin paintings, medicine cabinets, and eventually his formaldehyde animals. The announcement comes just in time for Hirst’s self-consigned fall sale at Sotheby’s, where several works from the soon to be retired series will be on auction. Scheduled for September 15th and 16th, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever will feature 223 new works by Hirst, spanning his entire creative output, and is expected to garnish an estimated $130 million. Public viewing of the exhibition runs September 5th to 15th. In addition, all lots and estimates can be viewed online now at Sotheby’s.
Watch the interview here and a video preview of the auction here. Click through for more auction pics. Read the rest of this entry »