Christie’s New York
Bear with me art-lings. It’s CultureGrrl number-crunching time!
Christie’s has had a penchant for what we can euphemistically describe as “creative accounting” in reporting its year-end sale totals. Apparently, my past critiques of that auction house’s self-serving statistical shenanigans (here and here) didn’t make much of an impression. So fire up your calculators, market watchers. Here we go again:
In a Jan. 28 press release, Christie’s reported a 2009 recession-era worldwide sale total (including both auctions and private sales) of £2.1 billion/$3.3 billion—a drop from its 2008 total of 24% in British pounds, 35% in dollars. It was the firm’s lowest tally (in pounds) since 2005.
In his comments to Scott Reyburn of Bloomberg, Edward Dolman, Christie’s CEO, tried to make the best of this decline:
These figures were much better than we expected. The art market is vulnerable and we thought we’d be
down 50 percent, as we were in the last recession in 1991.
Unmentioned by Dolman was the fact that, in dollars, the decline from the pre-recession 2007 totals was, in fact, very close to the 50% drop that he had feared from this recession. The current downturn began in the second half of 2008—a year when the decline in sale totals was 11% in pounds and 19% in dollars, notwithstanding the fact that the market was still robust during the first half of the year.
If we compare the £3.1 billion/$6.3 billion total in pre-recession 2007 to the 2009 totals of £2.1 billion/$3.3 billion, we get a decrease of 32% in pounds or 48% in dollars. The latter figure is in spitting distance of the 50% decline that Dolman told Bloomberg he had been pessimistically anticipating.
But Christie’s dizziest statistical spin is its claim to a “56.4% global auction sales market share against its main competitor.” That nameless nemesis is, of course, Sotheby’s.
At the bottom of its recent 10-page press release, Christie’s tell us how it arrived at its claim to 2009 market-share superiority:
All market share totals are based on publicly available competitor information.
So let’s take a look at that publicly available information—on Sotheby’s website:
Sotheby’s has not yet issued its official report on 2009 results (expected soon). But at the very end of its online compilation of 2009 auction results, Sotheby’s reveals that its worldwide auction sales totaled $2.28 billion for the full year. It also states, at the top of the report, that “sales results do not include post-auction private sales [emphasis added] or sales cancelled after the auction.”
Here’s what a Christie’s spokesperson, Alexandra Buxton, told me in response to my query about the composition of its reported numbers:
Our sales totals DO include sales that occur after an auction [emphasis added], but not sales that are subsequently cancelled. We do not report sales totals excluding post-auction private sales.
In other words, Christie’s market-share comparison is apples-to-oranges. Its purported 56.4% market share is beefed up by its (unquantified) post-auction private sales, whereas Sotheby’s online 2009 total omits those sales. If you do the math, you’ll see that Christie’s $2.91 billion auction total is 56.4% of the $5.19 billion total for both houses, which Christie’s arrives at by adding its total that INCLUDES post-auction sales to Sotheby’s total that EXCLUDES them. In other words, it’s a false comparison that works to Christie’s advantage.
Once Sotheby’s issues its official year-end report, we’ll be able to compare total sales (public and private) of the two houses in a meaningful way.
Christie’s also makes much of the fact that “average auction sold rates [by lot] rose 5% to 80% from 75% last year. The percent of lots sold at or above high estimate also increased to 36%, illustrating sustained price levels.”
Actually, what this illustrates is that Christie’s (like its competitor) has lowered its estimates and expectations to levels at which more works are likely to find buyers. That may signify a bottomed-out market, but not a robust one. Signs are somewhat encouraging that the beginnings of a rebound may be in prospect for the first quarter of 2010.
Enough auction analysis. Let’s now crunch some CultureGrrl numbers:
My warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Repeat Donor 112 from Davenport, IA, and CultureGrrl Donor 113 from New York City, not to mention my SECOND current museum advertiser. Speaking of sale records, might someone purchase a third museum ad for my righthand column?