What does such an auction record say about Andy Warhol’s work?
Auction house Christie’s praised the silkscreen Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) by Andy Warhol as one of the most important works of art ever, but the main focus was on how much would be paid for the portrait of Marilyn Monroe. The auction is therefore regarded as an economic indicator: how is the art market doing after the past two corona years?
So expectations were high in New York. Christie’s estimated that the work would fetch $200 million. Some experts even came up with $400 million. The New York Times explained the auction beforehand as a posthumous battle between Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). In 2013, $105.4 million was paid for a Warhol, then a Basquiat went under the hammer in 2017 for $110.5 million.
For the Marilyn screen printing on Monday in New York, 195 million dollars (185 million euros) was paid. That was a bit anticlimactic after all the excitement, but it’s still the highest amount ever paid at auction for a 20th-century work of art.
More important auctions of modern and contemporary art will follow in the next two weeks. The new record may have fueled the purchasing appetite of the world’s super-rich.
Who’s willing to pay $195 million for a Warhol?
Art buyers in the top segment often remain anonymous. And often the works are stored somewhere in a vault in Asia or in one of the Gulf States. Art with this value is regularly seen by private collectors/investors as a status symbol or investment object. Not as something for the couch.
This time, the buyer is no stranger: 77-year-old Larry Gagosian, the world’s most influential art dealer, was in person at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza auction room to bid. However, it is not known whether he bought the work on behalf of a client or for himself. Because of the money, he doesn’t have to let it go.
In the latter case, the circle is complete: Gagosian sold the screen print in 1986 to the Swiss art dealer Thomas Ammann for an undisclosed amount. It was the foundation of Thomas (1950-1993) and Doris Ammann (1944-2021) who now had the work auctioned. Proceeds go to health and education programs to improve the lives of children worldwide.
Has the art market recovered from the pandemic?
Galleries were closed, trade fairs were cancelled: 2020 was a really bad year. As early as 2021, the international art market took revenge: worldwide 65.1 billion dollars (58.8 billion euros) worth of art was purchased from galleries and auction houses. Those estimates were made in March by Swiss bank UBS and Art Basel, one of the world’s leading art fairs.
Their annual study focuses on the top segment. One in three of the collecting super-rich bought more than $1 million worth of art and antiques in 2021. According to Art Basel and UBS, this fanatical group can mainly be found in China, and to a lesser extent in Germany, France and the US.
They buy from galleries and art dealers, but in 2021 it was mainly the auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s that showed the greatest economic recovery. Art and antiques auctions sold for USD 26.3 billion, a growth of 47 percent compared to 2020.
Andy Warhol’s record auction seems to indicate that trend will continue this year. An auction record in the photography world may also be shattered next weekend. A rare 1924 vintage print by Man Ray goes up for auction in New York on Saturday. It is the well-known portrait of Alice Prin, better known as the surrealist muse Kiki de Montparnasse, with two f-shaped violin openings in her naked back. With an expected price of between 5 and 7 million dollars, Andreas Gursky’s Man Ray Rhein II (4.3 million dollars).
So is art a good investment?
These kinds of records only say something about the tip of the market, which has an awful lot of money to spend. If less wealthy private collectors have their collection auctioned (because of lack of money, because of a divorce or because they are getting older and living smaller), the yield is often quite disappointing.
A wisdom in the art world is that you should compare a new painting with a new car: as soon as you drive out of the showroom, you have lost half its value.
Gunshots
In 1964 Andy Warhol made a series of serigraphs of Marilyn Monroe, who had died two years earlier. Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is part of a series of five identical portraits of the Hollywood star, but in different colors. Performance artist Dorothy Podber fired a revolver at a pile of canvases in Andy Warhol’s studio, right between Marilyn Monroe’s eyes (The Shot Marilyns† Only the blue-green (‘sage’) was not damaged. That explains the title.