Bloomberg reports that Christie’s is scapping plans for an art investment fund and loan division.  The article also briefly discusses what we’ve talked about many times before: the downturn in the high-end art market, despite recent successful sales.  Pictured above is an affordable oil on canvas being offered in Christie’s Interiors Sale in early September.

You may remember my previous post questioning the ethics of selling a Warhol depicting Michael Jackson immediately following Jackson’s death.  Well, perhaps others felt queasy, too, because the auction might have been a big fat flop: Vered Gallery isn’t releasing the exact sale figure of the painting, saying it’s “over $1 million,” and it was sold to a speculator, not an art collector or institution.  Considering previous Warhol sales figures of $28 million and $71 million were slapped all over the Gallery’s website, a sale in the $1 to, say, $3 million dollar range is a bit embarrassing.  Could it be karma?

Carol Vogel of The New York Times compliments Sotheby’s on a relatively successful Impressionist and Modern sale that took place in London on Wednesday.  I say “relatively” because last year’s equivalent sale brought in over $200 million; given the current economic circumstances, however, selling 27 lots in just 50 minutes for around $55 million is a victory for the high-end art market.  The Christie’s sale, held a night prior, is described as being “bloated” and filled with “mediocre material,” and brought in a roughly equivalent amount of money in a sale with 44 lots, 14 of which failed to find a buyer.

Pictured above is the star of the Sotheby’s sale, Picasso’s 1969 Man with a Sword, which sold for approximately $11.5 million to Samir Traboulsi, a Lebanese financier.  This begs the question: Samir, are you single?

Check out the full NYT article here, Sotheby’s auction results here, and Christie’s auction results here.

Okay, perhaps two street art posts in a row has you craving one of my drier art market posts!  It’s your lucky day.  This AP article picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle outlines how the current economic downturn is negatively affecting sales at many online auction sites.

I’ve observed that high end art doesn’t sell well online.  Many of the websites that cater to the middle or lower-end art markets have serious flaws: an overabundance of crap (Ebay), high buyer’s premium and impersonal service (igavel)…I could go on.  I think I’ll put together a pro/con analysis as a resource for AAC readers sometime in the future.  Without a doubt, most of the online auction sites make the experience of looking at art feel highly transactional and unthoughtful.  It’s interesting that none allow for dialogue amongst viewers and potential bidders.

But, all that being said, I’ve bought pieces online after simply falling in love with an artwork that’s simply unavailable anywhere else or if I find a piece I like that’s selling substantially under its current market price.  If you’re confident that a piece is legitimate (which not all sites guarantee), good deals can be found if you have the patience for it all.

Writing this little post made me curious; I haven’t searched for my favorite artists on ebay in a long time.  Surprisingly enough, after about ten minutes and maybe a dozen artist searches, I found a seemingly-real silver gelatin print by Larry Clark from his Tulsa series being sold by a seller in Tokyo for $2,000 (pictured above; click on the picture to go to the ebay page).  What can I say, heroin chic never went out of style in my book!  The print has some condition issues and doesn’t mention anything about edition size– and this is where having a gallerist’s insight is helpful.  I can check out past auction results on findartinfo.com, and I’m pretty sure I recall an image from the same series in an edition of 15 selling at Swann Auction Galleries for around $7,000 last month, but all this illustrates that if you’re not an expert in the market of that artist it’s a tough call.

The New York Times reports that architectural artifacts from the old Chicago Stock Exchange building are increasingly becoming hot commodities on the auction block.  Museums, including the Met and the Seattle Art Museum, have acquired and are prominently displaying these treasures- attractive for both their aesthetic and historical appeal-  in their permanent collections.  Check out the full article and the accompanying slide show.

Pictured above are lovely elevator enclosure panels designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, circa 1893, for the Chicago Stock Exchange.  They’re being offered by Christie’s New York this Tuesday, June 2nd, with an estimate of $20,000-$30,000.  Perhaps I should encourage my building’s super to make the investment so as to replace our circa 1983 elevator design?

Thanks to Donn at The Art Law Blog for keeping me abreast of developments in Joe Simon-Whelan’s lawsuit against the Andy Warhol Foundation…I’d forgotten about this since the story broke last year!

A federal judge has issued an opinion that allows a significant portion of the lawsuit to move forward.  From The Art Newspaper:

The complaint alleges that the Warhol Foundation’s ongoing catalog raisonne project and Authentification Board have for two decades fraudulently rejected legitimate works to artificially limit supply and thereby increase the value of Warhol works held by the foundation.  These trade-restrictive activities violate the federal Sherman Anti-Trust Act and related New York State Donnelly Act.  Mr Simon-Whelan is seeking unspecified monetary damages, but his relentless multi-year campaign against the Foundation suggests that he wants a moral victory as well.

If Simon-Whelan’s claims end up being true, can you imagine the art market chaos for Warhols that would ensue?  If I were shopping for seven figure artwork (one day, fingers crossed), I would surely steer clear of the artist’s work until this case is decided. 

Pictured above is the gorgeous Lemon Marilyn from 1962 that sold at Christie’s in 2007.

I wish that I had the time to do on-site blogging for all the sales, but you’ll be forced to deal with some real professional reporting on this one…upbeat assessments of Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Sale held this week from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Reuters.

Pictured above is a 1967 Dan Flavin that sold in the sale for $362,500 (including buyer’s premium), just under estimate. Official results are available on the Christie’s websites.

::In my dream house, Dan Flavin art serves as my nightlights::

Souren Melikian of The New York Times must enjoy playing naysayer– he’s written the first article I’ve seen this week giving a positive spin on this week’s Modern and Impressionist sales at the major auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.  When all else fails, assess the art market in terms of supply and demand!  Click here for the complete article.

Pictured above is one of the big winners at the Christie’s sale, “Portrait of Madame M.” by Tamara De Lempicka, which sold for $6.1 million including buyer’s premium.  Did you know Madonna is a huge fan and collector of her work?  Huh.

It was a buyer’s market at the Christie’s Dubai sale last week.  While within the auction estimate, the evening brought in less than $5 million as compared to the $8.65 million made at the same sale a year ago.  The most expensive lot was Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli‘s “The Wall and the Script” (pictured above), which sold for $218,500 including buyer’s premium.  In last year’s sale, a piece by the same artist sold for just under $3 million.  Check out the complete sale results at the Christie’s site here and read the Reuters article giving an overview of the auction here.

Also, today Sotheby’s had its corporate credit rating cut into “junk” territory by Standard & Poor’s, with an analyst from the agency stating the auction house is “likely to breach a financial covenant in the near term.”  That article, also from Reuters, is here.

And I don’t want to leave you on a depressing note, so here‘s a slideshow from The New York Times showing the newly renovated American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that opens on May 19th.  Beautiful!  I’m not sure when they took those pictures…it’s been raining non-stop in New York for days!

Mandatory reading from The New York Times!  Carol Vogel speaks with Ann Temkin (chief curator for painting and sculpture at the MoMA), Marc Porter (president of Christie’s America), Steven P. Henry (director of Paula Cooper Gallery), Matthew Marks (of Matthew Marks Gallery), the dreamy Tobias Meyer (worldwide head of contemporary art for Sotheby’s), and others about why high-end collectors are seeking fast liquidity in private sales as opposed to public auctions.  Check out the article by clicking here.

Just to fixate on Tobias Meyer, pictured above, for a moment– if you haven’t seen him command an auction in his well-tailored suit/tuxedo and charming accent, you should.  It’s mesmerizing.  If you missed the 2006 New Yorker piece about him, “The Alchemist,” it’s worth a read.