My research into the role of ‘high-end’ auction houses and their success (or not) in the past few years has been relatively illuminating and yet, most articles that I have found of interest have been from newspapers or online information facilities such as the dollar-centric Forbes.com. However, hard facts, written by disinterested parties have been illusive.
The scandals involving price-fixing that rocked the two big companies – Sotheby’s and Christie’s – at the beginning of the decade seem to have been forgotten and business continues as usual. As I mentioned, in an earlier blog, people wanting to sell there valuable goods and chattels seem happy to overlook such improprieties in order to get the very best price for their works. Whether this has been part of Christie’s decline in Australia or not, remains an unknown. More than likely it can be believed that (despite some fairly fantastic prices achieved at auction historically) the Australian market is small compared to the other main centres and they are just following the way of many conglomerates and downsizing in order to increase overall profit. The idea of gentlemen or women at these companies has been taken over by hard-edged business people at every level.
Market success has been most spectacular at Sotheby’s - especially in the past year or so, and the best website that have encountered, at least for the Australian market, has been John Furphy’s Australian Art Sales Digest (www.aasd.com.au). It demonstrates clearly who is winning the auction wars in this country.
Most of the auction houses have excellent websites, though for ease of use and accessibility, I have constantly found Sotheby’s to be the most enjoyable. It can be quite thrilling to search for an obscure work on paper by Cocteau from mid 20th century and to be able to just type in the word and find examples waiting in New York, Paris or London. I have no doubt, that Christie’s is excellent as well, (they obviously just copy-cat each other to work out what works best). They both are leagues ahead of any of the competition.
The ‘problem’ with eBay and Amazon.com seems to be minor as far as taking away the major sales from the face-to-face houses. Sotheby’s once again, solved the problem, by effectively getting out of the lower end of the market and focusing on the high end. Its success can be read in the huge profit posted recently.
Picasso's Dora Maar au Chat (Photo: Geoff Caddick/EPA/Corbis)
Finding much information about any of the minor auction houses on the web has been challenging. Indeed, it seems to be missing completely for the most part. They come and go. We have new ones (Mossgreen, Shapiro, Deutscher-Menzies) and others have gone (Christies and Cromwell’s). The competition is tough, (hasn’t it always been?) but choice can only be good for the selling/buying public.
Another subject that seems to quite illusive on the web is that of commissions – currently a steep 20% to the buyer and the same to the seller at Sotheby’s. How auction houses can still lure clients is an interesting question when dealers offer competitive rates.
It seems (Christopher Webb -The Age “Sotheby’s going, going crazy”), nevertheless, that the directors at Sotheby’s have plenty to raise a glass (or tinny) to.
Justin Miller (one of the directors at Sotheby's) (Photo: James Davies)