Even as capital market are rocked by ever greater spikes in asset price volatility – most recently in nat gas and crude oil – at a time when BTFD no longer seems to be working, forcing professional traders to consider apocalyptic scenarios, with Bank of America even contemplating what would unleash the next “flash crash”…
… it has yet to impact the ultra-high end luxury market according to the latest data from Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses, which collectively sold a near-record $2 billion in art in what Bloomberg dubbed a “monster week” for auctions.
In the perennial race between the two most famous auctioneers, Christie’s sold $1.1 billion in art this past week, while Sotheby’s moved $835 million, plus more in jewelry and watches, according to Bloomberg.
While it is notable that the high end market remains completely immune to gyrations in the market, what was perhaps most remarkable about last week’s haul is that it was padded by Christie’s $90.3 million sale of David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)”, who eclipsed Jeff Koons as the most expensive living artist to sell at auction.
The big winner is billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis who was the seller of the Hockney. The Hopper came from the collection of deceased businessman Barney A. Ebsworth. The buyers weren’t disclosed.
As for Hockney, the eighty-one-year-old British painter won’t see a cent of the proceeds. In the U.S., artists aren’t entitled to royalties when a piece changes hands; they profit only the first time their work sells. The Hockney record topples Jeff Koons, whose balloon dogs sold, also at Christie’s, for a measly $58.4 million, in 2013.
A new record for American art was also set by the company with the $92 million sale of Edward Hopper’s “Chop Suey.”
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg the highlight at Sotheby’s was the sale of a pearl and diamond necklace once owned by Marie Antoinette. The jewels sold for $36.2 million.
The auction house said it’s had a 15% increase over last year in sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary works.
The furious scramble to purchase art comes at a time when growth stocks – a traditional favorite of financial “art collectors” – have been hit hard, with many FAANG stocks in bear market territory, prompting some to ask if the world’s richest aren’t calling it a day in the stock market, and transferring their assets into a sector which has yet to suffer steep declines in prices.
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