Glen Rubsamen paintings line a wall of Brändström & Stene's booth at the ArmoryShow.
Photo by Jeremiah Teipen
Crash, what crash? Sales hold up despite market jitters
Georgina Adam, Judith H.Dobrzynski and Brook S. Mason for the Art Newspaper 28.3.08
If the Armory Show was supposed to be a test of how the art market was faring amid tumultuous financial markets, initial results revealed that the fair more than passed—and exceeded the expectations of many of the more jittery dealers.
Georgina Adam, Judith H.Dobrzynski and Brook S. Mason for the Art Newspaper 28.3.08
If the Armory Show was supposed to be a test of how the art market was faring amid tumultuous financial markets, initial results revealed that the fair more than passed—and exceeded the expectations of many of the more jittery dealers.
Now that many have made sales, dealers readily admit that they arrived on Pier 94 with butterflies in their stomachs. “If I had applied two weeks ago instead of a year ago, I wouldn’t have come,” said Andreas Brändström of Brändström & Stene (118) in Stockholm. “The collapse of Bear Stearns is a huge issue in Europe,” he said. But by the second day, he said: “My sales are even better than last year’s.”
“I had no idea what to expect, what with the whole economic situation and the low dollar,” said first-time exhibitor Urs Meile of the Zurich and Shanghai gallery (552). “There was a very good atmosphere yesterday, not at all depressed,” he said. On the first day he sold Le Darang’s untitled painting from 2008 for $35,000 and Le Songsong’s thickly impastoed We Are from Africa, 2007, for $160,000, among others.
Within two hours of the opening, Victoria Miro (1005) had sold half of her stand, with a number of Grayson Perry pots priced between $30,000 and $125,000 quickly finding buyers from Europe, the US and Venezuela. A collector had reserved Peter Doig’s orange-hued City Entrance, 1998-99, (in the region of $1m), while five abstract paintings by the young Argentinian artist Varda Caivano had found buyers at $12,000-$17,000.
Other big sales included two Jenny Holzer’ LED light pieces priced from $300,000 to $400,000 and a $75,000 marble footstool, Selection from Survival, 2006, and several of her editioned photographs at the Chelsea-based Cheim & Read (623). White Cube (801) sold all three editions of Tracey Emin’s neon, I Promise To Love You, 2008, for $110,000 each. Gursky’s C-print Pyongyang II, Diptychon, 2007, a diptych tagged at $1.2m, also sold at Matthew Marks (509).
In the middle and lower price brackets, dealers were also doing brisk business.
“We were positively surprised by how secure people are; they are continuing to buy,” said Georg Kargl of Vienna (719). “We sold a couple of things in the first few hours in the medium price range, around $25,000.” He cited Thomas Locher’s painting Marx/Capital, 2007, at $30,000; a Mark Dion sculpture, The Tar Museum, 2006, at $18,000 and Michael Gumhold’s untitled 2008 painting for $4,500.
Gallery Side 2 of Tokyo (680) sold Shot 72, a painting by Udomsak Krisanamis, for $15,000 and two paintings by Yuko Murata for $5,000 each.
Dealers seemed to have prepared for a difficult Armory by bringing safe, somewhat conservative works, many sized to fit in any home. “There’s nothing that’s mind-bogglingly new and shocking here. There are a lot of solid pieces and a lot of mid-range prices,” said Graham Steele of White Cube. Off the record, another dealer put it differently: “It’s a bit boring,” he said.
In fact, it was the few large installation works in the fair that seemed to be hitting resistance; Thomas Hirschhorn’s huge Tool Table, 2007, at $180,000 at Arndt & Partner (629), and Sylvie Fleury’s hot pink crashed car, Skin Crime No. 6, 1997, at Eva Presenhuber (611) had not found buyers by day two. European dealers also had something else to worry about—fluctuating exchange rates. “The dollar is a problem because the rate changes every day.
If it falls three or four percent, I lose,” said Andrée Sfeir-Semler (816). “Now my prices are in euros.” Nevertheless, she sold at least three works on the first day.For Europeans, though, the low dollar makes New York a bargain hunters’ paradise, and the fair management reported that the number of Europeans registered for VIP cards was up 33%. European buying was up significantly. “I sold to Swedes, Danes, Russians, Germans and Swiss,” said Zach Feuer (311). “Buying here used to be dominated by New York collectors,” he said.But the fair is not immune to US economic woes. Despite selling almost everything on his stand, including a George Condo nude for $225,000 and John Armleder’s fireplace installation, Siphonophora, 2005 for $290,000, Armory first-timer Simon Lee from London (1011) experienced some market caution: “A client put a reserve on Pistoletto’s mirrored Tre Uomini, 2007, at $480,000, but then came back and said ‘no, that’s too much at the present time’.”
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