Overheated Art-Market Links: Does Anyone Know What’s Going On?

—In case you were maybe thinking of bidding on Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Takashi Murakami during this week’s big contemporary sales, please be advised that they are on Richard Feigen‘s hitlist of nine overvalued artists, published today in Bloomberg. Feigen is a knowledgeable, veteran dealer who is always a helpful source for journalists (including me), but is he really the right go-to person on what’s important in today’s contemporary artworld?
Old timers (especially generalists like Feigen, not primarily focused on contemporary art) often have trouble seeing the merits of current work, and are typically heard uttering variants of Feigen’s lament—that the $850,000 value of his 1557 Frans Floris painting “wouldn’t get you a minor Basquiat.” So it goes.
—In other news of hot contemporary art, the Mumbai-based Daily News & Analysis reports on the superheated market for new art from India:
International galleries have begun to fish in Indian waters for the Next Big Thing. So with the invasion of all these art dealers, gallerists, curators and art writers on the prowl like treasure-hunters, the heat is now on the artists to churn out works as if there were no tomorrow….Many artists’ studios emulate assembly line productions—-they could just as well be making cars or toys.
—Among the many ill-informed press analyses interpreting Sotheby’s soft Impressionist/modern results, this one about the auction house’s “disastrous sale,” from the Manchester Guardian, stands out for cluelessness:
Overall, Sotheby’s brought in $270 million from Wednesday night’s sale, failing to meet even its low estimate of $401 million including commissions….Some experts put the total value of guarantees as high as $240 million, which would have left Sotheby’s with just $30 million to pay for the marketing and organisation of the sale. “That’s deadly,” said Milton Esterow, editor of the New York-based magazine ARTnews. “The cost of these sales is enormous.”
Listen up! The total value offered in guarantees is NOT the same as the amount of money LOST on the guarantees—not even close. The auction house only loses if bidding on a guaranteed work falls short of the amount guaranteed.. And we already know what Sotheby’s lost on the guarantees in that sale, because the auction house has told us—$14.6 million. This is no cause for joy, but not “disastrous” either (the freefall of Sotheby’s share price notwithstanding).
—Enough of this seriousness. Let’s have some fun for a change: Contemporary dealer Jeffrey Deitch, “A Fool for Art,” is profiled by Calvin Tomkins in the Nov. 12 New Yorker. Unfortunately, the only link is to an abstract. Actually, there’s some serious art-market talk here too, including the bit about how fabrication costs for Koons’ “Celebration” project had “nearly brought Deitch to financial ruin.” He appears to have recovered nicely, however.
—And in non-market contemporary artworld news, New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger in the Nov. 19 issue weighs in with an early, highly favorable review of the new SANAA-designed facility for the cutting-edge New Museum in New York. Maybe someone should ask director Lisa Phillips which artists are “overvalued.”
On second thought, please don’t.