**Slight correction: Actually that was MOST but not all of the article.
Below is a very interesting article from Friday's Wall Street Journal.
$2 Billion in two weeks!! And that's just from Christie's and Sotheby's in New
York alone!
Notice that two of the biggest lots sold were artworks of "Movie Stars," Elvis
Presley and Marlon Brando. And yes, ok by Warhol.
A bidding war drove Warhol’s ‘Triple Elvis (Ferus Type)’ to $81.9
million, while ‘Four Marlons’ fetched $69.6 million to lead the sale of
80 works in a packed saleroom.
It's not just the art market, other collectibles like comic books, etc have
exploded over the years, breaking record after record, while the movie poster
market has been relatively flat for at least the last 15 or so years.
There's certainly not a lack of money out there.
Although there are a couple of poster buyers with very deep pockets, the poster
market is definitely lacking in major buyers.
**My question is: What have the major poster sellers done to bring new blood
into the poster market??
Art World's Record Buying Binge: Two Weeks, $2 Billion
The art market just had the biggest two weeks in its history.
Since Nov. 4, collectors have flocked to the world's chief auction houses in
New York to buy more than $2 billion of art, a historic high in which 23 works
sold for more than $20 million apiece. (In 2009, Christie's International sold
only six artworks for that much all year.)
Night after night at Sotheby's and Christies's, the titans of the world's
far-flung industries squeezed like sardines into packed auction salesrooms to
compete for hundreds of artworks created by the world's best-known
Impressionist, modern and contemporary artists.
To win, bidders often had to splurge: Billionaire investor Steve Cohen paid
Sotheby's $101 million for an Alberto Giacometti bronze chariot sculpture;
other bidders at Christie's paid $82 million for an Andy Warhol silkscreen of a
gun-toting Elvis Presley and $65 million for Edouard Manet's portrait of pretty
woman with a parasol.
On Wednesday, Christie's conducted the biggest auction in history when it sold
$853 million of contemporary art in a two-hour span.
Len Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, said he intended to bid on a few items
in Christie's sale, but rivals outpaced him. "I feel like I'm surrounded by
gladiators in this shiny big arena," he said. "Everyone wants to put their
money somewhere, but what are these guys going to do, buy another house or keep
$3 billion in the bank? No, they all want to put a little bit in art."
When it comes to what collectors want, Sotheby's chief executive Bill Ruprecht
said they want "blue blue blue," meaning blue-chip masterpieces by name-brand
artists like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol who trade widely and often enough at
auction to represent this market's version of a Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Seconds after Christie's sold Warhol's "Triple Elvis" for $82 million to a
phone bidder on Wednesday, the house sold another Warhol portrait of actor
Marlon Brando, "Four Marlons," for $69.6 million. Both Warhols are wall-power
large-- "Elvis" stands nearly 7-feet high-- and convey the Pop artist's
signature silk-screen style.
The art market cycles through good years and bad like the broader financial
markets-- art values notoriously crashed in 1990 and plummeted briefly in
2009-- but in recent seasons, art prices have only gone one direction: Up.
Dealers say that is because an influx of newly wealthy international buyers,
from Chinese tech entrepreneurs to Brazilian bankers to Middle Eastern oil
barons, have entered the art marketplace over the past decade. Most arrive
seeking to store their extra cash in any art they can find at auctions and art
fairs; others hope to reap the social cachet that comes with owning world-class
art. Investors and speculators have also joined in, seeking to profit by
buying and selling artworks like stocks.
Around 76% of art buyers surveyed earlier this fall by ArtTactic, a
London-based auction watchdog, and auditor Deloitte Luxembourg say they are
"increasingly acquiring art and collectibles from an investment standpoint,"
compared with 53% two years ago.
Unlike Europeans, U.S. collectors have long been comfortable discussing art in
investment-grade terms, and Americans now buy more art than anyone else on the
planet-- particularly the trophy pieces in these major seasonal auctions,
according to Dublin-based art economist Clare McAndrew. Last year, art sales
in the U.S. totaled more than $22 billion, up 25% from the year before,
according to Ms. McAndrew's latest Art market Report. Moreover, buyers in the
U.S. also took home around half the million-dollar artworks offered at auctions
world-wide, she added.
No wonder collectors wishing to sell their art trophies at auction lined up to
consign pieces into these November auctions. Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky
said he sold a pair of pieces (he declined to say which) in large part because
the mood remained reassuringly chipper--and because the auction houses offered
to buy his artworks if no one else did. "I thought my works were overpriced,"
he said, "but they did well-- and there were other things I wanted that sold
for too much."
Longtime New York dealer and former Sotheby's auctioneer David Nash said the
market feels bloated and "hyperinflated" to him, but he saw few signs of a
market bubble about to burst-- yet. All but five of the 80 lots offered in
Christie's $853 million sale found buyers. On Monday, Sotheby's sold 100% of
the offerings in it's estate sale of Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as
Bunny. Such "white glove" sales are a rarity in the industry. "Every season,
I say the prices can't get any higher, and then they do," Mr. Nash said.
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