Death, debt and divorce are the auction market’s traditional catalysts. But beyond this particular sale, the art market is changing in three important ways
Death, debt and divorce are the auction market’s traditional catalysts. Sotheby’s won this particular deal by guaranteeing the Macklowes at least $600m from the sale. At the time it was agreed such a fulsome promise, the biggest ever offered to a client by an auction house, seemed to hark back to a bullish age before covid-19 roiled the art market. But Sotheby’s panache was well judged: the evening brought in $676m including fees, to which the proceeds of a second auction in May will be added.
Mr Drahi’s commercial nous has brought new meaning to the famous art-market quip that Sotheby’s are “auctioneers trying to be gentlemen”, in contrast to Christie’s, a firm of “gentlemen trying to be auctioneers”. The tycoon, who took on well over $1bn of debt to finance the deal, now has access to details of the 300,000 or so richest people in the world. The new Sotheby’s is bent on selling them not just art, but handbags and history too.
In part that is because both the main auction houses are expanding beyond their conventional offering of art, watches and wine—the market’s first big shift. In 2020 Christie’s sold a dinosaur fossil named Stan for $31.8m. Earlier this year Sotheby’s auctioned Kanye West’s Yeezy trainers for $1.8m. Both firms have jumped into crypto-art, selling non-fungible tokens to techies. All of these have brought in new buyers, especially from Asia, the fastest-growing market.
When a Düsseldorf gallerist recently wanted to sell a Gerhard Richter from the 1970s, an under-appreciated period, he turned to Sotheby’s. The private sale to one of its clients was at a far better price than he would have got at auction or selling to one of his own collectors, he says.
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