A billion dollars for three artists…

[25/02/2014]

 

In 2013 the art market reached an unprecedented level of dynamism with its best-ever year-total in terms of auction revenue. The market’s increasingly prosperous high end is dominated by a small number of “trophy” signatures that sell for astronomical prices. Ahead of publication of Artprice.com’s 2013 Art Market Report in a week’s time, we can reveal that the global market’s three top-selling artists in 2013 was an international trio consisting of the American Andy Warhol, the European Pablo Picasso and the Chinese Zhang Daqian. The combined auction totals (excluding buyers fees) of these there artists alone amounted to more than a billion dollars!

Andy Warhol (1928-1987): $367.4million

During the 2000s, Andy WARHOL became a regular in this annual listing, and had already taken 1st place in 2007 ahead of Pablo PICASSO. At the time, his revenues topped Picasso’s by $109 million ($430 million for Warhol compared with $321 million for Picasso). In 2013, the master of Pop art posed less of a challenge to the modern master in terms of overall result (with $6 million between them) than in terms of record: Warhol is now Picasso’s equal as regards top prices.
This is because the champion of Pop art has added $30 million to his previous record, peaking at $94 million, i.e. $1 million less than Picasso’s record (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 1932, $95 million, or over $106 million including the buyer’s premium, 4 May 2010, Christie’s, New York). Warhol achieved this new summit with Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), which went for over $105 million, including the buyer’s premium, on 13 November 2013 at Sotheby’s New York. This monumental work (c. 267 cm x 417 cm) is one of the Death and Disaster series of 1963. The work is a tragic repetition of a car accident, 15 times over, in the form of silk screened images with a blank panel on the right: a sign of obliteration or silence, or a blank sheet awaiting the next tragedy. The obsession with death, a key subject with the artist, and the monumentality and rarity of the piece on offer (the three other pictures on this subject are in museums in New York, Switzerland and Vienna) all helped it to become one of the most expensive works in the world, behind those of Francis BACON (Three Studies of Lucian Freud, $127 million, 12 November 2013, Christie’s, New York), Edvard MUNCH (The Scream, $107 million, 2 May 2012, Sotheby’s, New York) and Picasso. Thus in six years, Andy Warhol’s record rose to $94 million from the $64 million fetched by a painting of the same year with the same theme, Death and Disaster. This previous record was set by Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), a smaller work (228.6 cm x 203.2 cm), without the silent image forming a pendant to the silk screen work of Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).
For Warhol, 2013 also meant 34 million-plus results, more than 1,400 works sold, an average auction price of $252,000, and works capable of gaining several million in two or three years. Bids continue to mount ever higher for iconic works, with price increases of 58% over the decade.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973): $361.3 million

He may not be the out-and-out number 1 this year, but Pablo Picasso is the artist who sells the most. Nearly 2,800 lots (mainly prints, admittedly, and only 44 paintings) were bought in 2013, at very high price levels, as witness an average bid of $130,000 and no fewer than 52 million-plus hammer prices.
Before Edvard Munch’s record, and during the four years after the high point of Boy with a Pipe, Picasso’s prices continued to rise (+68% between January 2004 and January 2008). Bids of several millions followed on in succession: Dora Maar with cat garnered $85 million in 2006 and became the second most expensive painting sold at auction (Sotheby’s, 3 May 2006), then Head of Woman (Dora Maar), a bronze sculpture, fetched $26 million and became the market’s most expensive sculpture in 2007 (7 November 2007, Sotheby’s). Invariably, for nearly 10 years, Picasso remained the most profitable artist at auction, accounting for the best annual turnover until 2007, when he was ousted by Andy Warhol. He regained top place between 2008 and 2010, the year of a new world record of $95 million (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 4 May 2010, Christie’s) but was then overtaken the following year by the astounding annual results of Chinese artists QI Baishi and Zhang Daqian.
The world’s richest collectors certainly battle in units of millions for Picasso’s outstanding pieces, but these newsworthy bids do not mean that this prestigious name is always unaffordable – because the majority of his works (70%) change hands for less than $10,000. In this price range, of the 3,000-odd lots put up for sale each year, most involve prints (60% of transactions) and ceramics (27% of the market). We should not forget that Picasso had the most prolific output of the 20th century, including in media considered minor at the time, like engravings and ceramics.

Although 2013 saw no new records for the artist, it set the stage for an increase in value of $33.2 million for a 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the artist’s companion, who gave birth to Maya in 1935. Entitled Woman Sitting Near a Window, Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the work sold for the equivalent of $40 million on 5 February 2013 at Sotheby’s, London, compared with $6.8 million in 1997 (sale of 14 May 1997 at Christie’s, London). Picasso’s masterpieces are now in short supply and increasingly expensive, especially if the work in question is a major historical landmark (Blue and Rose period, early Cubist works), or are intimately linked with the artist’s private life. In 16 years, the price of the lovely Marie-Thérèse Walter has risen by 488%, no less.

Zhang Daqian (1899-1983): $291.6 million

Chinese artist ZHANG Daqian made his first appearance in the world Top 10 in 2010, in 4th place, with a result of $314 million. He then rose to 1st place in 2011 with a total of $550 million. To date, this figure, $550 million, remains the highest ever achieved by an artist in one year of sales.
Twenty or so years ago, Sotheby’s began to include a number of drawings by the modern master in its Hong Kong auction catalogues. His success kept pace with the prices of the moment, because his ink works were then selling at an average of $5,000 to $15,000. A sign heralding the artist’s phenomenal potential came in 1991 in Hong Kong with the sale of Mist at Dawn, an ink drawing of 1968, for $250,800 (HK$1,900,000, 2 May 1991, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong). Sotheby’s then introduced the artist to New York. His price index there turned out to be three times less than in Asia, with drawings selling between $2,000 and $6,000 on average at the beginning of 1991. In September 1991 the artist crossed the $500,000 mark in Hong Kong. In the West, it took another two years for him to pass the $200,000 threshold, with the drawing Splash Landscape (1968), at ten times its estimate (knocked down for $230,000, 1 June 1993, Sotheby’s, New York).
He achieved his first million in 1994 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong (Dawning light in autumn Gorges, 1965, 3 November 1994). Zhang Daqian has thus been part of the high-end market for more than ten years, and no-one can say that his rating is a myth, or a mere phenomenon of speculation: the artist is firmly established in the coterie of the most expensive artists in the world, even if demand is liveliest in Asia. Since 1994, he has achieved 278 million-plus hammer prices, all registered in China and Hong Kong, including 55 in 2013, in which year he generated more million-plus bids than Francis Bacon, Gerhard RICHTER and Roy LICHTENSTEIN put together! Though with a limited following in the West, Zhang Daqian’s market is nonetheless the densest in the very highest price spheres; he holds the largest number of bids over a million in the Top 10, and in 2013 garnered his third best bid, equivalent to $10 million, for Lady red whisk (China Guardian, Beijing, 10 May 2013).