Word: auction
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...auction boom of the '80s, especially for contemporary works, goes pffft...
...following night at Christie's was a slight improvement, because the estimates were more realistic and the works themselves somewhat better. Nevertheless, 48% of the works failed to sell. The auction had one very fine De Kooning, July, 1956, which sold for $8.8 million against the estimates of $5 million to $7 million. It might have been a $15 million painting a year ago, but at least its price offset the fact that none of the other De Koonings in the sale -- all later or inferior works -- found buyers. Philip Guston's Summer, 1954, joined the De Kooning...
...contemporary art market, then, the fall 1990 sales were a massacre. Scared by the descent of the Nikkei stock index, the Japanese -- who in 1988 accounted for more than half the total recorded sales volume of all art bought at auction worldwide -- bid sluggishly or sat on their hands. The Japanese buyers did not even come out for a Van Gogh still life that was expected to make $12 million to $16 million at Christie's Impressionist and modern sale two weeks ago. It too was bought in, at $9.5 million. However, a fine Van Gogh ink sketch was bought...
Overall, the sales cast further doubt on auction-house techniques. Sotheby's all but ceased lending money to buyers after it was so badly burned by Alan Bond's default on Van Gogh's Irises, bought but not paid for in 1987 for $53.9 million with the help of a $27 million loan from the auction house. But this fall's victim has been the equally controversial system of guarantees, a product of the fierce competition between Sotheby's and Christie's, whereby the auction house contracts to pay the seller a given price for artworks -- whatever the outcome...
...Auction spokesmen put what spin they could on it all, speaking of increased selectivity, a healthy trimming of the market, and how first-rate things would continue to get first-rate prices. (That an exceptional painting could still make an exceptional price was in fact confirmed earlier this month at Sotheby's in London when a great Constable landscape, The Lock, 1824, was bought by Baron Thyssen for $21.1 million.) Michael Findlay, head of Christie's Impressionist and modern art sales, called the market a "roller coaster" -- inexactly, since roller coasters go up and down but always finish...