Lucian Freud - Expensive and Fleshy

Lucian Freud, grandson of the founder of psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud, passed away on 20 July 2011.

Living artists over 80

Every other Friday Artprice posts a theme-based auction ranking. This week: the 10 best auction results generated by living artists over the age of 80.

Living artists British vs. American

Every other Friday Artprice posts a theme-based auction ranking. This week’s ranking focuses on the 10 best auction results for living artists.

Impressionist & Modern sales in London: the right balance?

The results of the Impressionist & Modern February sales in London were respectable compared with the results of the same sales a year earlier, although somewhat less spectacular.

June 2010: major sales in London … and in Paris!

The major London sales during June were stacked full of high quality works: an ultra-rare Manet self-portrait, a Fauvist work by André Derain with an extraordinary background and an absinthe drinker from Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ - the results could not fail to better the previous years’ totals.

Lucian Freud in Paris

From 10 March - 19 July 2010, the Centre Pompidou in Paris is hosting an exhibition of Lucian FREUD ’s work. The British artist has not been exhibited in France since the first retrospective at the same museum in 1987.

Contemporary Art sales in London: excellent results

With a total revenue figure up 255% compared with February 2009, Christie’s and Sotheby’s Contemporary Art sales have confirmed the recovery of the top end of the art market (combined revenue of $79,5m in February 2010 vs. £22.3m from the same sales in 2009).

Contemporary Art sales in London

Christie’s and Sotheby’s apparent price optimism for their Impressionist and Modern sales on 2 and 3 February 2010 is equally visible in the catalogues for their Contemporary Art sales on 10 and 11 February. The two majors are expecting a combined total of £69m from their evening sales, a figure which would represent a 54% more than February 2009 high estimate.

Contemporary art loses its shine

The market for contemporary art, the most speculative segment of the art market (+108% since 2003), has not withstood the shocks of the current financial turmoil. The results of the prestigious November sales in New York organised by Sotheby’s and Christie’s on 11 and 12 November are most discouraging.

The New York miracle

The gloomy financial climate of the beginning of the year fuelled fears of a rapid deflation of the speculative bubble the art market has been enjoying over recent years. These fears seemed all the more justified as European art prices contracted by 7.5% in the first quarter of the year. With the dollar weak, it remained to be seen how the New York art market would react -particularly in the high-price segments. Not surprising therefore that the Impressionist & Modern Art sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s of 6 and 7 May, followed, a week later by the Contemporary Art sales, were observed with much interest, particularly by investors who had watched Sotheby’s stock price reduce to less than 30 dollars at the start of the year.

‘Contemporary Art – evenings sales’ in London: £140 million

Having achieved a historic result in this sector on 16 May last in New York ($384,654,400), Christie’s opened the ball of the London contemporary art sales on 20 June with sale proceeds of £67,470,800 in 83 lots. The following day, Sotheby’s outstripped its competitor, selling 66 lots for a total of £72,427,600. In 2006, the total London proceeds of the two auction houses’ contemporary art evening sales amounted to close to £56 million.

TOP 10 ARTISTS

The Top 10 artists grossed USD 576 million in 2005, compared to USD 393 million in 2003, a figure that represents 13.6% of the total art auction market. Unusually, a contemporary artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and an old master, Canaletto, were among the top sellers. The top three names however are unchanged...

Top prices for 4,614 artists since the start of 2005

Prices of fine artworks continued on an exceptionally strong growth trend in the first half of 2005, and logically enough, the general increase in art prices of 4.1% also generated a sharp rise in the number of auction records.

The Top 10 Artists by turnover

The first half of 2005 proved very eventful for the art market. After several months of high bidding (251 works breached the USD 1 million mark) and a rise in global Fine Art sales turnover of more than 5%, there has been a major change in Artprice’s Top 10 ranking of artists by revenue.

Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, stars of the contemporary art sales in London

Like last year, the art market's leading auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's, counted on Francis BACON and Lucian FREUD to underpin the success of their contemporary art sales in London.

Boom in contemporary art auctions

The evening auctions of contemporary art at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London on 23 and 24 June 2004 echoed last month’s good results in New York. Both auction houses raked in near to GBP 14.1 million, with more than 90% of lots sold at each session.

Prints that pass the test of time

As Artprice.com puts 1,500 print price indices online, we look at the profitability of print as a medium.