BRIGHT LIGHTS & BRIGHT SPOTS!
This has been an unusual summer for New York City’s fine arts market. Normally, galleries, auction houses and private dealers plan to escape the heat and humidity out on Cape Cod or up in the Adirondacks, soaking up the sunshine between sips of chilled wine and gourmet snacks. But this time, the fancy shops sprinkled through Soho, Chelsea and the Silk Stocking District, home to the classiest establishments where the well heeled could obtain the objets which cement their claim to to cultural superiority found staffs of many of the major institutions at their post, open for business to trade their wares for as much cash as you could spend.
From the low end galleries on the less fashionable streets in Chelsea to the mega galleries and auction houses on the Upper East Side to the somewhat run-down side street showrooms near Gramercy Park, everyone was open for business.
None of the famous names have shuttered their doors.
Why is this? There are three major factors: For wealthier buyers, this unpredictable election year has made many trying to conserve liquid assets. It is also true that many new collectors are still recovering from the boom and bust of the NFT phenomenon that collapsed last year and is now widely discredited by art market analysts. In short, the players big and small have been facing a buyers market.
Nevertheless, the flight to quality hasn’t fully taken hold.
There were some interesting bright spots: a couple of auction sales revealed that buyers were quite willing to open their wallets for artworks of known quality and reputation.This was most evident in two auctions over the Summer at second tier auction houses. The first was the sale of the estate of Stephen Sondheim at Doyle on June 18. The other was a major sale on June 6 of works by LGBTQ artists (or those who were of kindred spirit), at Swann Galleries in August.
In the case of the Sondheim sale the lure for many buyers was the chance to own something that had a direct link to the famous theatrical impresario. This resulted in lots of bric-a-brac, used books, care worn furniture, and an astonishing number of 19th century game boards and decks of old playing cards. Prices regularly rose to 10, 20 or 30 times their professionally estimated value. However disappointing this was for bidders who wanted the object rather than its possible link to theatrical glory, it was clear that many buyers were theater lovers who cheered those who paid the inflated prices.
The Swann LGBTQ auction was more promising, as the artworks went under the hammer with a minimum of theatrical drama.
Similarly, too, was an earlier auction of contemporary art at which prices for works by artists like Sonia Delaunay, Yayoi Kusama and Mark Tobey stayed at or near the price estimates.
-Josh Martin
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