Some Gloom, Some Records at Up-and-Down Night at C
发起人:popking  回复数:3   浏览数:4670   最后更新:2011/12/18 10:43:03 by Stevenj
[楼主] popking 2008-11-08 13:42:22
NEW YORK—On another ugly day on Wall Street, during which the Dow plunged 443 points, the financial gloom seeped into Christie’s Impressionist Modern evening sale, which tallied $146,715,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $240.7-337.2 million.

Of the 82 works on offer, 36 works failed to sell, for a buy-in rate of 44 percent by lot and 37 percent by value. Still, 27 of the 46 works that did sell earned in excess of $1 million, and artist records were set for Juan Gris and Henri Laurens.

Like its archrival Sotheby’s, Christie’s guaranteed some of the evening’s biggest lots, assuring a minimum price to owners of six valuable works, no matter what the outcome. The guaranteed trove had pre-sale expectations of $64.5-88.5 million, and all six works sold, realizing a profit-making $74,639,000.

“There’s still a little life left in this market,” said Christie’s CEO Edward Dolman moments after the sale, “and I think that’s what people should be concentrating on.”

Of the guaranteed lots, the standout star was Gris's rare and widely admired Cubist masterpiece from 1915, Livre, pipe et verres, which sold to New York dealer Franck Giraud of Giraud Pissarro Segalot for a record $20,802,500 (est. $12.5–18.5 million).

“It’s a fantastic picture,” said Giraud, moments after the 90-minute sale. “But I was surprised there was competition. It could have been cheaper!”

The dealer said that he was bidding on behalf of an American collector “who wanted the picture for a long time and brought it home.”

Reflecting a widely held belief among the trade, Giraud added, “It shows that the market is intelligent and there’s a lot of competition for rare things. If it’s a replaceable item, you can wait for another time when it may be cheaper.”

The painting eclipsed Gris’s previous mark, set in May 2007 at Christie’s New York when Le pot de geranium (1915) made $18,520,000.

The evening’s other record came a few lots earlier, when Henri Laurens’s La Lune (1946), a sculpture of a striking female form, sold to Swiss collector Georges Marci for $1,874,500 (est. $600–800,000).

“You couldn’t get anything of this caliber in a contemporary sale,” said Marci, as the relatively sparse crowd exited the salesroom.

“I came back twice to look at it,” said the seasoned collector, who buys in both modern and contemporary arenas, ”and decided I had to get it, though I went a little higher than expected.”

Other big -ticket items included Alberto Giacometti’s stunning bronze cast Trois homes qui marchent I from 1950, which sold for a price-corrected $11,506,500 (est. $14–18 million) to an anonymous telephone bidder. The work last sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 1999 for $5,722,500 (est. $3–4 million), at a time when the art market was surging, just before the dot com crash of 2000.

The guaranteed cover lot, a rare and early color-charged painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Studie zu Improvisation 33 from 1909, in oil and gouache on board in the artist’s painted frame, made $16,882,500 (est. $15–20 million), selling to an anonymous telephone bidder.

In terms of the buyers' geographic breakdown, Americans led the charge at 61 percent, followed by Europeans at 26 percent and “other” at 11 percent. Two percent of the lots were taken by Middle Eastern buyers.

And what does this week of high buy-in rates signify?

“There’s still a great deal of money left in the art market,” said seasoned Christie’s auctioneer and market historian Christopher Burge. “We’re incredibly pleased with the overall result.”
[沙发:1楼] popking 2008-11-08 13:43:53

The evening's star lot, Juan Gris's "Livre, pipe et verres" (1915), sold for

$20,802,500 (est. $12.5–18.5 million), a record for the artist.

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