Every month in The Hammer, art-industry veteran Simon de Pury lifts the curtain on his life as the ultimate art-world insider, his brushes with celebrity, and his invaluable insight into the inner workings of the art market.
I write these lines on November 5 as the world at large holds its breath while the American population casts its vote in what has been labeled by both sides as the most consequential presidential election ever.
Polarization is at an unprecedented level not just in the United States but in most parts of the globe. Seen against this background, what happens in the microcosm of the art world and in particular in the art market seems fairly irrelevant. The days when a majority of the most successful contemporary artists were mobilizing for the first and second presidential mandates of Barack Obama seem like lightyears ago. I remember selling top quality works donated by many of them in fundraisers held at Phillips in both 2008 and 2012. Even the 2016 auction that I conducted at Gagosian New York in support of the candidacy of Hillary Clinton seems like centuries ago.
We live in a very different world now. Generally a diminishing tolerance for people who don’t share your political ideas has spread in the world at large and has even managed to make inroads in the art world. If voting were limited to artists there would be a very different outcome of the election, than if it was limited to the collectors of their work. I am an idealist and would like to continue believing that art, culture and sport will go on being the only ways to build bridges and foster a better understanding between people of different geographical, economic, racial or religious backgrounds. Greater tolerance towards both global and domestic competitors would achieve a much better focus on the issues that are most essential to the survival of the human race and of our planet.
The Macklowe Collection sale at Sotheby’s. Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
This year has so far been relatively choppy for the art market. Some of it is due to the fact that there have not been any big estates coming up for sale like the Paul Allen Collection or the Macklowe Collection that were sold in previous years. What happens at the top of the pyramid usually sets the tone right down to its base. The slowdown of the market though is fairly mild and can in no way be compared to what happened in June 1990 when Japanese buyers, who had dominated the art market in the latter part of the 1980s, stopped buying overnight. It took several years for the market to gradually recover.
The second significant readjustment of the art market took place in October and November 2008. During the summer of that year I sensed that there might be trouble ahead. I was conducting, as in previous summers, various charity auctions in the Hamptons. They included the annual benefit for Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, the one for Russell Simmons’s Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation and the summer fundraiser for Guild Hall, the latter two both in East Hampton. The tents, where these auctions took place, were packed as usual with affluent patrons including big hedge fund honchos. The big difference though was that this time they were mostly sitting on their hands and that coaxing bids felt like extracting teeth.
Yves Saint-Laurent And Pierre Berge’s Art Collection Auction Sales, In The Grand Palais In Paris, France On February 23, 2009. Photo by Jean-Luc LUYSSEN/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.
The winds were clearly turning and there were dark clouds hanging over the forthcoming fall auction season in London and New York. This prompted me to look for partners with deeper pockets in order to be better equipped to weather the storms on the horizon. This led to me selling the majority of my stake in what was then called Phillips de Pury & Company to the Mercury Group, who to this day still own the third big international auction company. We signed the contract on October 4, and by October 8 the global financial markets were in free fall. I thank my lucky stars for this as the October and November auctions at the three main auction houses were a bloodbath with more than 50 percent of the lots failing to sell. The sudden near total halt of the art market was short lived since the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé Collection that was sold at Christie’s Paris in March 2009 became the highest ever selling single owner collection. The confidence in the market was instantly restored and the market has mostly developed upwards since then.
When at the end of 2012 I sold my remaining stake in Phillips to the Mercury Group, I assumed that I would never swing my hammer again conducting any auction anywhere. How wrong I was in that assumption! The pace of the innumerable auctions that am asked to conduct, mostly for charitable causes around the globe, has never ceased to intensify ever since. The past two months exemplify this trend. I sometimes regret that my hammer doesn’t indicate the amount of dollars it has clocked up over my many years in the business in a way that an old car would show the miles driven over its lifespan.
My summer ended with one of my favorite events: the annual Midsummer Nights Gala & Auction at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. Samuel Keller, its brilliant and super charismatic director asks each year another artist to curate the event. After artists like Maurizio Cattelan, Marina Abramovic, Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Douglas Gordon who did it in previous years, this year Precious Okoyomon staged the event that helps the Fondation Beyeler year after year to stage world class blockbuster exhibitions. Precious decided that I should dress up as a milkman and enter the sale room on a bike holding a crate full of milk bottles.
I left at the crack of dawn the next day to Venice to conduct the amfAR auction and gala that this year was honoring Richard Gere, Antonio Banderas and Mohammed Al Turki. After that on to London where I had the pleasure of holding the hammer at the magical “Annabel’s for the Amazon Gala Auction.” Next was Florence to jointly conduct an auction with my friend Fabrizio Moretti to benefit the Andrea Bocelli Foundation. It’s not every day that the Salone dei Cinquecento built in 1494 at the Palazzo Vecchio is your sale room! On to Stockholm where the fabulous Carl Kostyal lent his gallery for the staging of a wonderful auction to benefit the Mentor Foundation under the auspices of Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden. Next stop Los Angeles, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hosted an Oktoberfest in his private home to benefit After-School All-Stars, one of the largest non profit organizations in the US working to close the opportunity gap for low income youth. The dress code was Dirndl and Lederhosen.
Simon de Pury with Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden. Courtesy Simon de Pury.
What did all these charity auctions have in common? They all raised badly needed funds for worthy causes and all of them were characterized by super active spirited bidding. So if, as I did in 2008, I were to analyze the activity of benefit auctions, one could conclude that it augurs well for the upcoming round of auctions in New York.
The triumphant Art Basel in the beautifully restored Grand Palais in Paris in the presence of most of the heavy hitters from the U.S., China and the Middle East are another indicator that would make me optimistic ahead of the November New York auctions.
So if my naturally optimistic nature is being seriously challenged by world events of the last years, I remain cautiously optimistic for the microcosm of the art market.
Simon de Pury is the founder of de PURY, former chairman and chief auctioneer of Phillips de Pury & Company, former Europe chairman and chief auctioneer of Sotheby’s, and former curator of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. He is an auctioneer, curator, private dealer, art advisor, photographer, and DJ. Instagram: @simondepury.