Video art: Top 10 auction results

Every fortnight Artprice provides you with a new or updated ranking in its Alternate-Friday Top Series. The theme of today’s TOP article is the Top 10 auction results recorded in video art.

This week Artprice has decided to compile a Top 10 auction results for the Video Art segment.This art medium, in vogue with a variety of different artists, has been slow to penetrate the world of museums, galleries and particularly auction sales. However the Video Art medium offers an enormous range of possibilities for artists including image manipulation, narrative power and temporal depth. Video Art, highly sensitive to the new technologies domain, is continuing to develop at the cutting edge of the IT and communication fields. This very contemporary and fast-evolving means of expression is the favourite medium for a number of artists who rarely attract the art world’s spotlights. A small number of these video-makers are trying to interest the still small number of collectors willing to take the risk of venturing into this market.

Three names stand out
At the top of our ranking since 14 October 2006 is Bill VIOLA whose video installation Eternal Return (2000) fetched £330,000 at Phillips de Pury & Company in London. Bill Viola is currently the most well-known video artist of our day. Since his first video to sell at an auction, Incrémentation fetched £40,000 on 27 June 2002, this American artist has enjoyed a dazzling ascension, giving him five places in our top 10 auction sales ranking: the third, fourth, fifth and eighth places (see table).
Nam June PAIK, a veritable pioneer in the video art field and an internationally recognised artist, has 4 sales in the top 10. In second place in our ranking is his famous installation Wright Brothers (1995) which fetched double its low estimate at $540,120 in November 2007 at Christie’s in Hong Kong. In May of the same year, the South Korean artist posted another record (7th in the ranking) with Baby Buddha (2001) which fetched $293,940 (Christie’s, Honk Kong again). In 2010, four years after his death, his works have made frequent appearances at auctions. In fact, more than thirty of his works have already been sold, with the best result of the year being $308,159 for his Rocketship to virtual Venus (1991) which has given him sixth place in the ranking.
The third artist in the ranking is Mike KELLEY. Less known for his videos (only three) than for his installations, paintings and photos, Mike Kelley takes the ninth place in the auction sales ranking with Nativity Play ($250,000 in 2008 at Christie’s New York).

Top ten hammer price: Video art

Video art, a still unstable market
After a first exhibition in 1974 at the famous alternative gallery “The Kitchen” in New York, it took 18 years for Bill Viola’s works to arrive on the secondary market. Moreover, that first auction sale in 2002 was the best artist’s first auction result of the year in all segments of the contemporary art market. Today, in spite of that brilliant start, his works have only been exchanged at auction a total of 37 times (of which 24 times for video installations). But the value of the works has continued to climb. For example Viola’s Witness (2001) has progressed from $320,000 in 2005 to $500,000 in 2007, a 56% increase in two years!
Despite the notoriety enjoyed by these three artists, there have been relatively few video installations sold at auction. Clearly, video art is finding it difficult to carve out a strong niche in the secondary market and reach the prestige sales that generate record auction results.
While 2007 was a very good year for video art, particularly for Nam June Paik whose auction revenue total equalled that of his previous ten years combined (€2.24m), 2010 could well see a number of new records. Already two bids this year count among the all-time top 10 with, in fourth position Bill Viola’s Surrender (2001) ($421,794 at Sotheby’s London) and in sixth position Nam June Paik’s Rocketship to virtual Venus (1991) ($308,159 at Christie’s Hong-Kong).

Video installations are still rarely offered by auctioneers and rarely presented by galleries. It would appear that the nature of the medium and uncertainty about the future of works with inherently ‘programmed obsolescence’ acts as a barrier for the majority of collectors.