Saint Laurent $28 Million Chair Defies Economic Logic: Comment
Commentary by Mark Beech
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- There will probably be a chapter on Yves Saint Laurent’s armchair when the book is written about conspicuous consumption. The chapter will recount how, in the depths of the 2009 recession, his leather chair sold for 21.9 million euros. Yes, that’s $28 million. Not that it’s just any old chair. This is the “dragons” armchair made by the French designer Eileen Gray between 1917 and 1919. It was cosseted in state in Saint Laurent’s palatial rue de Babylone sitting room, dripping with ostentation and surrounded by Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse and Munch works. As the auction ended last night, the chair stuck in the memory more than the marble torsos, silver goblets and other glittering prizes that Saint Laurent collected. TV stations went crazy about “the sale of the century.” A little premature, just nine years in, yet the chair was a symbol of success and fin-de-siecle excess: a kingly throne in the court of Saint Laurent.
As the hammer came down and lot 276 sold at Paris’s Grand Palais on Feb. 24, there was a stunned silence, followed by applause and gasps from the 1,500-strong crowd of dealers and collectors. There it was in the catalog: “Gray (1878-1976), Fauteuil aux dragons, estimate: 2 million euros to 3 million euros.” And here it was selling for about 10 times more.
The question that came up at once was what sort of person paid so much. Frantic dashing around by reporters led to suggestions that it was snapped up by a man with an American accent who immediately left the room; then that he was acting as a cover for a woman who was really doing the bidding.
Journalists later found it was bought by Paris-based art dealer Cheska Vallois, who fought off another bidder in price increases of 500,000 euros a bid. She sold the chair once before and it passed to Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge in the early 1970s via another collector.
Gericault Portrait
Earlier, a Gericault portrait was bought by French dealers Galerie Tarica, which had sold the item to Saint Laurent and Berge in 1984. A French gentleman’s agreement to buy works back at auction seemed a little too improbable to explain the sale, which defied economic gravity -- even allowing for some premium coming from the Saint Laurent provenance.
For billionaires, art dealers and some of Vallois’s clients, $28 million may be small change. But for many of us, just think what you can do with that. Maybe buy a private island, a Learjet and have enough change left over for Michelin three-star meals for life. Or if you are feeling philanthropic, there are plenty of charities groaning under the weight of the credit crisis who would find this a nice sum to tide them over until better days.
Leaving aside the hospitals that could be built or theaters that could be saved, you could fill your shopping cart with a Hirst and a Rembrandt engraving; or a small Henry Moore and a medieval manuscript.
Gold or Baked Beans
And there are always other investment opportunities: $28 million is enough to start a hedge fund. Of course the fund might be smaller tomorrow, so perhaps gold bars would be a better option. Depending on how many you buy, keep the rest of the cash for a house (or a $5 tent) and food (or $1 tins of baked beans).
At a time of economic restraint and belt-tightening, the price might seem insane. It appears excessive even to some in the art world, coming as it does at a time of falling demand and slumping prices in international auctions. Christie’s International and its rival Sotheby’s have both cut jobs.
Still, critics should remember that a different reality can prevail in the art market to other parts of the economy. Extreme wealth and emotion can push up prices to levels that might seem obscene elsewhere, yet they have an air of complete economic sense in the salerooms.
Pricey Cabinet
Depending on how you work the dollar conversion, the chair isn’t the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction. That distinction belongs to an 18th-century Florentine “Badminton” cabinet, sold at Christie’s London in December 2004. That went for 19 million pounds ($36.7 million at the time, or $27 million now).
Anyway, the price is totally of a piece with some of the other big sales of our time such as Damien Hirst’s 111.5 million pound “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale last September, which set records even as it coincided with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
There were a few dealers left scratching their heads, noting that while the chair’s brown leather looked supremely comfortable, its wooden carved arms could cut into the legs of the sitter. Some remembered the Ron Arad steel sofa that sold for 90,500 pounds in London last April, with its sellers strongly advising the buyer not to sit on it, especially with rivets in jeans, because it may get scratched.
Special Sittings
“Sitting on these pieces tends to be reserved for special occasions,” said Ben Williams, a design specialist at Phillips de Pury, which sold the couch. “They’re usually just looked at as a sculptural element in the room.”
So there we are: a $28 million chair which might not even be used. Perhaps there is one solution. Let’s all club together, make an offer, cut off the dragon arm rests and make a really comfortable tub chair. For those who see it all as economics of the madhouse, this surely sounds eminently reasonable.
(Mark Beech writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer on the story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net.
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AUCTION IS NOT A TURNING POINT
Art trumped reality, if only for a fleeting moment. Buyers shelled out $264 million Monday for the Impressionist and modern works collected by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé. Amid the haul were record prices for Matisse, Brancusi, Mondrian and others. The auction's success was a stark contrast to the disappointing winter auctions of just a few weeks ago. It buoyed expectations for five more lots owned by Saint Laurent to be auctioned this week. But the event is unlikely to mark a reversal of fortunes for the global art market.
The impressive take was underpinned by a number of one-time factors. There was the setting: In a bid to put Paris back on the auction circuit, President Nicolas Sarkozy made the glamorous Grand Palais available for the event. Next was the cachet of Saint Laurent himself, whose taste was highly regarded. One of the Mondrians sold was the inspiration for one of his most popular collections. Then there was the Christie's stamp of approval. Bergé owns an auction house, yet he saw fit to call on the global auctioneer's star power to elevate the event's profile further.
Finally, the Middle East added to the excitement. The quality and rarity of the collection attracted strong interest from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, which are accumulating masterpieces for the desert museums they are building from scratch. Buyers representing the emirates reportedly made multiple offers to buy the whole lot. Bergé is said never to have seriously entertained selling in that fashion. Nevertheless, the interest of the Gulf states was well known, and more than a few of the pieces are certain to turn up in the Middle East.
With wealth on the wane, many of the world's rich are sellers, not buyers, of art these days, so it would be foolish for anyone to be too exuberant about the sale's implications. Christie's may have oversold the event as the sale of the century, even if it might have been the sale of the decade.
But just because a few billionaires dug deep for some scarce works owned by a single collector in a unique setting does not mean the art market can outrun the economic downturn. - Jeffrey Goldfarb
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YSL Doesn’t Mean the Art Market Is Recovered
February 25th, 2009
The financial news and opinion service Breaking Views tries to show its savvy with a brief entry on the art market. Though the conclusion is correct: the YSL sale does not portend a return of last year’s over-heated art market. Many of the assumptions in the analysis are wrong-headed. Here’s Breaking Views’ Jeffrey Goldfarb:
The impressive take was underpinned by a number of one-time factors. There was the setting: In a bid to put Paris back on the auction circuit, President Nicolas Sarkozy made the glamorous Grand Palais available for the event. Next was the cachet of Saint Laurent himself, whose taste was highly regarded. One of the Mondrians sold was the inspiration for one of his most popular collections. Then there was the Christie’s stamp of approval. Bergé owns an auction house, yet he saw fit to call on the global auctioneer’s star power to elevate the event’s profile further.
Finally, the Middle East added to the excitement. The quality and rarity of the collection attracted strong interest from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, which are accumulating masterpieces for the desert museums they are building from scratch. Buyers representing the emirates reportedly made multiple offers to buy the whole lot. Bergé is said never to have seriously entertained selling in that fashion. Nevertheless, the interest of the Gulf states was well known, and more than a few of the pieces are certain to turn up in the Middle East.
With wealth on the wane, many of the world’s rich are sellers, not buyers, of art these days, so it would be foolish for anyone to be too exuberant about the sale’s implications. Christie’s may have oversold the event as the sale of the century, even if it might have been the sale of the decade.
But just because a few billionaires dug deep for some scarce works owned by a single collector in a unique setting does not mean the art market can outrun the economic downturn.
It’s not clear where Goldfarb thinks he’s hearing talk of the art market out-running the economic downturn. The market–if thousands of individual actors can be said to have on intention–is looking for signs that it can survive the next few years. What the YSL sale tells us is that the very wealthy have enough confidence in the future of the world economy that they’re willing to spend some of their increasingly valuable cash on items for this one-time event. Many of the buyers are purchasing a connection to what they perceive as glamorous era.
In economic terms, it isn’t important whether they’re getting any real value with their purchases. What’s important is that they expect to replace their cash with enough cash in the future to make it worth their while to own that connection.
Any way you cut it, that’s a good sign for the future of the art market once we get past the dark days ahead.
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YSL Final Tally 374,392,500 Euros ($479,222,400)
February 25th, 2009
The YSL/Bergé Sale is finally over.
With the vast majority of the 700 lots sold the total is €374,392,500 or $479,222,400.
Results for the entire sale can be seen here.
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294#action=refine&intSaleID=22294&sid=45bb7853-0f74-4ff4-bf93-a5b4ef159fcb
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YSL Final Day
February 25th, 2009
They’re Still Buying in Paris
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The bidders in Paris aren’t shopped out yet. These four busts representing the continents were estimated at €300,000 but sold for €841,000 or slightly more than $1 million. Across the board decorative works are selling for multiples of the high estimates giving some evidence that–like the famous Warhol and Onassis sales–provenance far outshines intrinsic artistic value in the work’s appeal.
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This pair of statues of Cupid and Mercury were estimated at €120,000 and sold for €385,000 which is about $500,000.
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Ivory figure of the Virgin Mary estimated at €180,000 and selling for €385,000.
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This Southern German stag was estimated at €15,000 but sold for €295,000 which must put it in the running to be the object in the sale selling for the greatest multiple of its estimate.
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The sale has moved on to Venetian works of art. The copper gilt flasks, above sold for €361,000 (6x the high est.) These enamelled Venetian dishes , below, were estimated at €120,000 and sold for €337,000. Another piece of Venetian enamel ware sold for €421,000 or twice its high estimate.d5171626l
The statue of Hercules, below, sold at €247,000. The estimate was €60,000.
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Posted in Art Fairs, Christie's, Paris
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Christie’s YSL Auction Raises $477 Million as Qing Bronzes Sell
By Scott Reyburn
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The biggest auction ever held in Europe ended last night with Yves Saint Laurent’s two Qing bronzes as the star lots, after objections from the Chinese government and a legal challenge failed to halt their sale.
Christie’s International’s six-session sale in the Art Nouveau exhibition hall of Paris’s Grand Palais raised a combined 374.4 million euros with fees ($477 million), beating estimates of 200 million euros to 300 million euros. The London- based auction house said nearly 96 percent of the 689 lots sold. Estimates don’t include Christie’s fees.
“After this, people will believe that it’s a good thing to buy art,” Pierre-Yves Machault, a Paris-based dealer, said in an interview. “It will help them understand that if you buy good things, they will keep their value -- even if you’re not Saint Laurent. It makes me more optimistic.”
The biggest-grossing auction of a private collection was boosted by the quality of items on offer and the number of people who shared the taste of the late fashion designer and his former partner Pierre Berge, said collectors. The proportion of lots selling at some other auctions -- and prices of works -- have dropped in the economic slump.
The mid-18th-century Qing dynasty heads of a rat and a rabbit sold for a total of 31.4 million euros. They both made 15.7 million euros, against low estimates of about 8 million euros each, said Christie’s. They were bought by Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s international co-head of Impressionist and modern art, on behalf of an unidentified telephone bidder.
Plundered Treasures
The sculptures, thought to have been designed by the Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Castiglione, were among 12 zodiac animals from a water-clock fountain in one of the imperial summer palaces. The building was set ablaze and its treasures plundered and scattered by British and French troops in October 1860 at the end of the second Opium War. On Feb. 23, a Paris court ruled Christie’s could sell the bronzes.
“We consider the auction to be contrary to the basic spirit of relevant international conventions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters in Beijing on Feb. 24. “It will seriously damage the cultural rights and national feelings of the Chinese people.” Christie’s said in an e-mail that it supported the principle of repatriation and respected Chinese culture.
The animal heads were included in a session of 64 lots of antiquities and Asian art, archaeology and furniture. The session made 42.9 million euros, against an estimate of 19.1 million euros to 24.8 million euros.
“This was a once-in-a-century sale,” Hugh Edmeades, deputy chairman of Christies South Kensington, said in an interview. He has been involved in single-owner collections at the London-based auction house since the 1980s and said, “I can’t remember anything like it. I’ve never seen people queuing for hours to view an auction before. Patriotism was definitely a factor.”
Abramovich, Gagosian
About 35,000 people went to the presale view, said Christie’s. On Saturday, the line in front of the Grand Palais stretched nearly a kilometer. Among the VIP visitors was Russian billionaire art collector Roman Abramovich, accompanied by dealer Larry Gagosian. Christie’s owner, French billionaire Francois Pinault, was also at the sale.
An early 18th-century Gobelins tapestry of a Brazilian native potentate being carried through a jungle in a hammock fetched 553,000 euros yesterday. The 12-foot-high hanging had been expected to fetch 100,000 euros to 150,000 euros.
“That was a crazy price,” said Machault, who specializes in tapestries. “The top of the tapestry was restored and it was worth half that.”
When the auction was first announced in July 2008, before the economic crisis began to depress selling rates and prices, Christie’s valued the collection at up to 500 million euros. With estimates reduced, auction house executives and dealers were looking to the sale to boost art-market confidence.
Dragons, Quartz
The record 21.9 million euros paid by the Paris dealer Cheska Vallois for Eileen Gray’s “dragons” armchair stunned the audience on Feb. 24 during the 59.2-million-euro sale of 20th-century decorative arts. In the same auction, a telephone bidder paid a 10 times-estimate 46,600 euros for a lump of black quartz that had been owned by Saint Laurent.
Similar mineral samples can be bought in specialist stores for less than 500 euros, said dealers. Saint Laurent’s silver fetched 19.9 million euros against an upper estimate of 7.1 million euros on Feb. 24. All 111 lots sold. A 17th-century German silver-gilt ceremonial cup sold to the Paris-based dealers Galerie J. Kugel for 853,000 euros, more than eight times the low estimate.
“These results reflect what happens when auction houses sell well-provenanced, high-quality works from a legendary collector,” said Edmeades. “Buyers have to take the opportunities that are presented to them, regardless of what’s happening in the wider economy.”
Russian Collectors
The 61-lot session of modern art on Feb. 23 made 206.2 million euros. New artist records were set for Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and James Ensor. Seventy percent of the buyers at that session were European, 30 percent from the U.S., and one individual from Asia; Russian collectors bought at least one of the most-expensive lots, Christie’s said.
Matisse’s 1911 still life of cowslips in a vase, “Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose,” led the first sale with a price of 35.9 million euros paid in the room by the New York-based dealer Franck Giraud, against a low estimate of 12 million euros.
“My clients have gone back in time,” said New York-based dealer Christoph Van de Weghe. “If they have $1 million to spend, they feel confident about buying older names. The prices of young artists have gone up too quickly. And these buyers don’t want to leave their money in the bank or in the stock market.”
Civil Union
Saint Laurent and Berge co-founded the Yves Saint Laurent couture house in 1961. It closed in 2002, the year in which the Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation was established. Berge became the sole owner of the collection in 2008, following the death of Saint Laurent in June, aged 71. Earlier in the year the two of them had formed a civil union.
The majority of the proceeds from the sale -- held in collaboration with Berge’s own Paris-based auction house, Pierre Berge & Associates -- will benefit the foundation and medical research against AIDS, said Christie’s.
(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in Paris at sreyburn@hotmail.com.
Last Updated: February 25, 2009 21:08 EST
