• Private sales with art agents becoming increasingly important internationally
• News in Brief

 
PABLO PICASSO
Garçon à la Pipe
1905
oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 32 inches

Private sales with art agents becoming increasingly important internationally

There were gasps when an anonymous private collector paid more than US$104 million for Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe) at Sotheby's in New York in May 2004. It was the first time that a work of art had broken the US$100 million barrier at auction and it took the market into new, uncharted waters. Three years later the 1905 Rose Period Picasso remains the only painting to have sold for a nine digit US dollar sum at auction but a series of huge private deals since then have pushed it steadily down the art market league table of top prices.

There is a growing public awareness of private sales negotiated by dealers, art agents and sometimes auction houses. One of the advantages is that the harsh glare of saleroom publicity is usually avoided, although inevitably news of some deals has reached the wider world.

One that did hit the headlines was the cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder's private purchase of Gustav Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I for the Neue Galerie in New York for US$135 million in June last year. The 1907 painting of the wife of a prominent Jewish industrialist in Vienna had been the subject of a long restitution battle between the Austrian government and Maria Altmann, Mrs Bloch-Bauer's niece. Klimt's glittering masterpiece, known as 'the Golden Adele' became the most expensive painting in history.

The Klimt only retained this title until November when two paintings sold by David Geffen, the Hollywood entertainment magnate, each fetched more than that. Willem De Kooning's Woman III went to Steven Cohen, the super-rich hedge fund manager who is currently one of the world's biggest art collectors, for about US$137.5 million but even that was exceeded by the US$140 million paid for No 5, 1948, a classic drip painting by Jackson Pollock. Art world rumour named the buyer as the Mexican financier David Martinez but he has always firmly denied being the purchaser.

The Geffen sell-off has been one of the most remarkable events in the art market in recent years and yet, apart from some American newspapers and specialist publications, it has received far less publicity than auction sales. Geffen also recently sold De Kooning's Police Gazette, an abstract landscape dating from 1955, to Cohen for about US$63.5 million.

At about the same time Geffen parted with False Start by Jasper Johns in a deal which illustrates well how such private sales operate. A few months previously the purchasers Kenneth Griffin, chief executive of the Chicago- based Citadel Investment Group, and his wife Anne were taken to view Geffen's collection in Los Angeles by a leading New York art dealer who acts as their consultant. They liked the Johns but there was no immediate talk of a sale. Some time later Geffen said that he might sell it and discussions began which culminated in the Griffins buying the picture, which dates from 1959, for about US$80 million.

Not all planned private sales go quite so smoothly. Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas-based casino billionaire, had agreed to sell Picasso's classic 1932 image Le Reve (The Dream) to Cohen for US$139 million last year when he decided to show the painting to some visitors. Wynn, who suffers from an eye disease that affects his peripheral vision, accidentally struck the Picasso with his elbow leaving a tear in the canvas. Cohen, unsurprisingly, pulled out of the deal.

What is clear is that wealthy collectors are not holding back to see what happens in the salerooms when they have art they want offered to them privately. Several of the biggest private deals over the past year have taken place just before major auctions in New York. In May Christie's accurately claimed an artist's auction record when Andy Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) sold for US$71.7 million. What was less well known was that about the same time the Chicago collector Stefan Edlis sold Warhol's Turquoise Marilyn privately for a price believed to be about US$80 million.

 
BORIS DMITRIEVICH GRIGORIEV
Faces of Russia, 1917-18
oil on canvas
78 3/4 x 88 1/2 inches

News in Brief

Russian billionaire buys Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya collection

The Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov bought the entire art collection built up by the internationally renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, the famous soprano, shortly before it was due to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London in September. Although the price paid was not disclosed Sotheby's said that it was "substantially higher" than the pre-sale upper estimate of £20 million (US $40 million).

The collection of 450 works including paintings, porcelain, ivory caskets, glass and portrait miniatures will be given to the Russian State by Usmanov, a metals and mining mogul. "I felt the need to try to preserve the collection in its entirety," he said.

Rostropovich, who died in April aged 80, and his wife collected the art over three decades after being forced to leave Russia with nothing by the Soviet authorities in 1974. The most important work is Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev's Faces of Russia, painted in 1917-18, which was expected to fetch £1.5 ­ 2 million (US$3-4 million).

Controversial sales boost Albright-Knox endowment fund

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York has raised more than US$67 million by selling 207 works of art from its collection in a series of controversial auctions that some of its own members tried unsuccessfully to block through court action. The sales have boosted the museum's endowment fund for art purchases to US$90 million and it hopes to use the money to become a major collector of modern and contemporary art.

The biggest single boost to the museum's funds was the record US$28.6 million paid for Artemis and the Stag, a 1st century BC/1st century AD bronze of the Greek goddess of the hunt, at Sotheby's in New York. The price made it the most expensive sculpture ever auctioned and also eclipsed the previous record for an antiquity. It was bought by the London- based dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi, better known as a connoisseur of Chinese art, who was bidding on behalf of a European private collector.

Major British art collection donated to American museum

An important collection of British art worth an estimated US$40 million assembled by the insurance millionaire Sir Edwin Manton, who died in 2005 aged 96, has been donated to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The gift dashed the hopes of the Tate in London that it might be given the British- born tycoon's collection. In the addition to major works by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough, the Manton Foundation has also given US$50 million to the Clark's research and academic programme.

Strong contemporary prices in New York

Despite the financial turbulence following problems in the American sub-prime mortgage market, Sotheby's and Christie's September mid-season sales of contemporary and modern art in New York performed strongly. Sotheby's sold 81 per cent of its 469 lots for $US13 million (£6.4 million) with an American dealer paying a record US$432,000 (£212,306) for Steven Parrino's 1988 work Scab Noggin. At Christie's above estimate prices for Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois and Alice Neel boosted the auction to a total of US$12.1 million (£6 million).