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 The big winner in New York was Picasso's "Les femmes d'Alger
(Version 'O')" which set the record at $179.4 million at
Christie's for the most expensive artwork ever sold.
In three days of sales Christie's also became the first auction
house to sell more than $1 billion worth of art. Adding in
Sotheby's sales, the total topped $2 billion.
"We've entered into a phase which I really think is a
masterpiece market," Christie's Katharine Arnold, who is running
the post-war and contemporary art evening sale on June 30, said.
Featuring paintings by Francis Bacon, Yves Klein and Gerhard
Richter, the 76 lots are estimated to fetch $132-187 million.
Not to be outdone, Sotheby's is heralding its July 1 evening
sale as "London's highest valued auction of contemporary art".
Pre-sale estimates for Sotheby's 59 lots range from $230 million
to $329 million and featured works include Bacon's "Study for a
Pope I", valued at $40 million to $56 million, and a series of
Andy Warhol "dollar" paintings.
Combined with both houses offering effectively truckloads of
paintings by Chagall, Picasso, Manet, Monet, Gauguin and even a
rare Klimt at modern and impressionist art auctions kicking off
at Christie's on June 23, there is every chance total sales
could top $1 billion, experts say.
Arnold said the skyrocketing prices for fine art being fetched
at auction were bringing more such works to market.
"There are art works in private collections which are just
starting to move, some objects that have been within families
for 60-plus years," she said.
Among those are works by the Anglo-Irish painter Bacon, one of
whose diptychs featuring his lover George Dyer and his muse
Isabelle Rawsthorne, from 1967, is estimated at 8-12 million
pounds at Christie's.
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All told, Bacon could account for something like 15 percent or more
of the value of all the paintings to be sold over the next two
weeks, indicating how his stock has soared.
"Bacon is an artist whose market has transformed radically even over
the last 10 years," Sotheby's senior specialist in contemporary art,
Oliver Barker, said.
"I think he's now become one of the absolute icons of the latter
part of the 20th century."
While the auction houses tend to see nothing but blue skies and
higher prices, other art market observers suggest external factors,
such as a Greek debt default, or a decision by central banks to hike
interest rates that would make bonds a more attractive investment,
could alter the playing field.
"There've been low interest rates especially in the United States
and that creates asset bubbles," ArtReview magazine's associate
editor, Jonathan T.D. Neil, said.
"I don't think this is a bubble yet," he said. "And if your money
can't earn a return you might as well have some good art to put on
the wall - if you can afford it."
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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