The Acid Test

The Acid Test

Bridget Riley Andy Warhol Cy Twombly Gerhard Richter Francis Bacon Jean-Michel Basquiat Lucio Fontana Thomas Struth

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The art market was put to a test it had never before had to face: For the first time in auction annals, a series of sales in a broad range of categories appealing to very different constituencies took place in rapid succession in New York at the very time when all hell was breaking loose on Wall Street. Yet the auctions focusing on the art of the past up to the mid-20th century were as successful as they had ever been. What made such a contrast between the stock and art markets possible?

Part of the answer can be inferred from the first two sales, both held on January 23, the day when the Dow Jones Industrial Index lost 370 points. The very first session, which failed to grab media attention, was particularly revealing, owing to the nature of the art on offer. In the morning Sotheby’s put on the block the entire collection of Italian Old Master drawings formed by the New York connoisseur Jeffrey E. Horvitz and followed up in the afternoon with a sale of drawings from various owners.

As the auction started, the keen interest felt by the attentive collectors and dealers filling the room soon became evident, even though the offerings were not of the highest quality. Not one sketch worth bidding for was ignored. By the end of the morning session, 62.5 percent of the lots had found takers, with the mediocrities dropping uncontested. High prices were paid here and there. An extraordinarily bold sketch of a man by Guercino, estimated to be worth $100,000 to $150,000, soared to $199,000. The buyer was the renowned international dealer Jean-Luc Baroni. To all intents and purposes, it was business as usual.

In the afternoon, as if encouraged by their own strong showing in the morning, bidders displayed an enthusiasm reminiscent of the wildest moments of 2007. A sheet covered on both sides with studies of heads by Fra Bartolommeo was the talk of the room. The Florentine master (1472–1517) left a substantial graphic oeuvre, most of which is locked up in museums. This sheet, recognized as the work of Fra Bartolommeo long ago, had dropped out of sight for decades. The word among dealers was that it had surfaced as an anonymous Italian-school sketch in a minor auction in Switzerland, where one of their savvy Paris colleagues had spotted it. At the sight of the rediscovered sketches, collectors and dealers alike lost their heads, setting the work flying to $1.9 million, an auction record for the artist.

In that session, works of any quality from the very good to the outstanding were fought over. Old Master drawings, once abundant, have now become so scarce that collectors feel they cannot pass up an opportunity when it comes their way. Competition breaks out over the best, even when no name is attached. Thus, the head of a boy admirably sketched around 1500 and catalogued merely as “Netherlandish” shot up to $79,000, exceeding by half the upper end of its estimate.

The rarity test had been passed with flying colors in a field where a high degree of connoisseurship is required. This however left out the vast number of works that are simply pleasing without being unforgettable, including decorative art. Hence the significance of another sale conducted that same day, at Christie’s. Its main focus was Chinese export porcelain produced in the 17th and 18th centuries for Western markets. The morning session, which dealt with property from various owners, was the really crucial test, because it did not have the benefit of a famous provenance. Remarkably, it took off with a bang.

The first lot, a large blue and white charger of the Kangxi period, probably dating from the 1670s, went for $5,250, exceeding the high estimate by $2,000. Nice pieces of no special merit also fared well. A pair of Kangxi famille verte dishes brought $3,000. Among the rarities, an unusually large pair of hawks flew off to $121,000; Becky MacGuire, a Christie’s specialist whose forecasts are generally sound, expected them to be knocked down between $12,000 and $18,000. The total sold was $3.1 million. Modest as this may seem, the sale was an astonishing achievement, with only 40 of the 415 lots failing to find takers.