That is up now one million seven hundred thousand lots on gentlemans bid
and selling for three hundred and twenty thousand.
Thank you, Rachel. 350 sold at eighty thousand.
Thank you. 300's.
The global art market was valued at sixty seven point four billion dollars
in 2018, the second highest year ever.
The United States, United Kingdom and China are the three largest art
markets in the world. Their sales combined make up 84 percent of the
global art market, with the U.S.
capturing over half of that.
So thank you very much, Cynthia.
Woman in seven, the auction house is one of the biggest drivers of the art
market. SALES at public auctions exceeded $29 billion last year.
And then we have here a few additions works that are coming up for
auction. An Andy Warhol cowl wallpaper.
Great. Keith Haring from the fertility series.
Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith, five auction houses combined for over
half of the global sales.
And of those five, there are two that far surpass the others.
Christie's and Sotheby's, they account for more than 40 percent of auction
sales within this duopoly.
It's a competition for total sales and works of art while adjusting to
economic and buyer trends.
We're like a sports team competing against another sports team.
We've won the Super Bowl most years and we compete in almost every single
field at the very top.
I'd say we're either number one or number two in rare occasions in every
field with names synonymous with the art world.
Success for Christie's and Sotheby's is often more about standing out than
being number one. Teeth are always changing.
Prices for individual works or artists will change not just according to
the market. But according to trends, according to precedents and great
examples. By and large, the art markets really strong.
So the process of consigning a work is both simple and detailed.
Either I reach out to a client or a client reaches out to me given the
value range that I generally dealing with.
I'm usually flying off somewhere to see a work in person because it's that
important. I usually will discuss a proposal for sale with the client
before sending them a contract.
In that case, you're discussing how are we going to sell it?
Where are we going to sell it? When are we going to sell it?
What's the estimate going to be?
There are a lot of different things that we do and every work is different
and every client is different.
Then we go to the contract is with a contract signed.
Art is shipped to the warehouse and prepared for auction.
When it's brought to us, we look at it critically in the warehouse.
We assess the condition.
We check to see if the estimate is correct.
We're in Phillips Warehouse in Long Island City.
This is our hub in our main housing and work area for the New York office.
This is the cataloging area of the warehouse where every piece that comes
in for sale is examined out of the frame.
All of the details are then input into our computer system, which in the
end ends up generating the catalog.
And here we are in the framing studio in the warehouse.
And this is the area, as you can see around me, where we've got just a lot
of framing supplies and materials in preparation for making sure that I
would say ninety nine percent of the works that we sell in a sale have a
frame on them so we can get them on the wall and have people see what the
piece looks like. And a good example of what we do with framing.
This is a recently framed piece by M.C.
Escher, the wonderful and popular graphic artist.
The estimate for the Esher is 40 to 60 thousand, and we expect that to
bring over the high side.
There was one that came up for auction a year ago and I believe it
hammered at about eighty thousand.
And another piece about the same size, about the same time period.
Wonderful etching by Pablo Picasso.
And this is our photography studio, also located in the warehouse where
basically everything that would fit on these walls is photographed.
Whether it be sculpture, paintings, prints, multiples, photographs or even
three dimensional furniture objects with each piece prepared for the
public attention shifts to the exhibition where art is on display to the
public prior to auction.
The exhibition is really important because, you know, we draw on the
resources of the marketing department.
Everything comes together.
You've worked for six months to bring these pieces to auction.
They're on display with beautiful lighting.
You can stand in front of them and talk to the clients about them.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Christie's.
Welcome back this afternoon for the Chinese art from the Art Institute of
Chicago sale.
And then we have the auction.
And that's, you know, the final test of, you know, how great these things
are, how much money are they're going to make.
And there's always a surprise.
I'm going to start it straight in at one thousand one, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,
160. Let's see how far that gets us.
One hundred and sixty one. Seventy one eighty one ninety two hundred
thirty to forty. I also believe that the auctioneer is really critical at
this point. A great auctioneer can make a big difference in the value of a
sale. Now we get serious today that the hundred.
Thank you. 950 standard.
1Million. Ebola. Only one eat in person bitting is a huge part, but we
also have very active telephone bits, online beds and commission beds and
online bidding is something that we're seeing more and more of selling to
you online in Hong Kong at one hundred and ten.
Thousand dollars they're wanting.
Sold while live auctions bring excitement and millions of dollars in
sales. Choosing an auction house to sell one's art is not always an easy
decision. Christie's and Celebes both have rich histories.
Sotheby's was founded in London in 1744 as a bookseller in 1955.
It became the first international auction house after establishing itself
in New York. It would also become the first international auction house to
sell in Hong Kong, Russia, India and France.
Until this year, Sotheby's was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
A public company for 31 years.
We're really celebrating a history of innovation and being a forerunner in
the industry and transforming the industry over two hundred seventy five
years. Sotheby's boasts offices in 40 countries and ten auction locations
around the world. It offers about 250 auctions each year across over 70
categories. Christie's was also founded in London and arrived shortly
after Sotheby's in 1766.
Christie's is the largest auction house in the world and one of the oldest
art auction houses in the world were headquartered in London.
And we've been operating in New York for about 40 years.
Christie's has offices in 46 countries with 10 auction locations.
Each year, Christie's hosts about 350 auctions across over 80 categories.
It holds multiple records, including the most valuable work to be sold at
auction. A DA Vinci that sold for over $450 million.
It also sold the most valuable private collection at auction.
The collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, which achieved over eight
hundred thirty five million dollars.
Last shots at seventy one million five hundred thousand.
Year after year, Christie's and Celebes vie for the top spot in the
auction world with Christie's topping sales.
All but two years since 2008.
The areas that create revenue are primarily the paintings departments,
first and foremost in terms of value, postwar and contemporary art, which
has been the great boom market of the last 10 years, impressionist and
modern art, which is the favorite for many people.
And what drives so much museum attendance, Asian art and tried and true
jewelry, watches and other luxury goods.
We're known for selling everything.
But the leading grossing categories of late have been impressionist and
modern and postwar and contemporary art.
20TH Century art is definitely in the headline generating sector.
Equally were known for selling jewelry, furniture and decorative arts
wine. Broadly speaking, 20th century art would be over 30 percent of our
gross revenues. There's also Phillips, the third largest London based
international auction house founded in 1796 with a narrower focus.
We've continued to focus on 20th and 21st century.
And we have expanded further our geographic reach and now have sales in
Hong Kong, Geneva, London, New York.
While total sales have yet to exceed $1 billion, they've seen a one
hundred twenty nine percent increase since 2014.
The auction world and the art world generally is an increasingly
transparent environment, which I think is great.
There is more and more data available to everyone just as often as a
client is calling me because they know me dust and that's a privilege that
I work hard for. There are clients who are calling both sides and very
often they tell us I think what makes people choose one option, health
versus another, is the combination of all of the factors, the pricing, the
marketing, the digital outreach, the client base, the specialists and the
ability to carry out the promises that you make when you're bringing an
object or a collection to market.
I think focus is the most important differentiator for Philips.
We do focus very much on contemporary lifestyle, on contemporary tastes
and contemporary art. And as such, we offer a slightly different feel.
Our brand resonates differently.
I think in the market then Christie's and Sotheby's, we have a fresher,
younger approach.
The reason that people choose Christie's is multi-fold.
One can see the reputation of the particular department more and more.
Its the ability of the auction house to tell a story globally to many
different buyers all around the world and through digital campaigns, tell
different stories to different cultures.
And that is really the driver of what's been selling collections for the
last few years. On rare occasions, securing a work of art comes down to a
simple game of chance.
In the early 2000s, there was famously a consignment coming from a
Japanese vendor with a wonderful collection who had a very good
relationship, both with the Christie's representative and our competitors
representative. And it was so difficult for him to make a decision.
Despite our drawing distinctions in terms of performance pricing,
distribution. Network marketing abilities.
He's still found himself unable to make the decision.
Ultimately told them that the winner would be decided on a game of rock,
paper, scissors, and each of the auction houses had to send a delegate to
do the Rock-Paper-Scissors for the pursuit of this consignment.
I think it's a terrible way to choose an auction house because he wasn't
evaluating the real reasons, but just luck and fate.
But it went their way. Fortunately, this is not the norm.
When you decide who is going to sell something worth tens of millions of
dollars where the variability between estimate and ultimate sale price can
be also a ratio of tens of millions of dollars, perhaps it's a really
significant decision.
Securing art is not the only challenge for auction houses.
It's also about attracting talent as competition has increased in the last
decade. Well, I tell you, it wasn't the case.
I mean, this this movement of people between the major auction houses did
not happen at all.
You know, for the beginning of my career, you know, through the nineteen
nineties, you were either one the house or the other house.
I think it's because the art business has grown so dramatically in the
last ten or fifteen years.
Opportunities have changed so much as the businesses have grown so much
that we have alumni and friends all through the art business.
I have loved my job in all of my career, but I wanted to be part of a
changing organization that's continuing to redefine what an art auction
house is and how we can continue to evolve the art industry.
That was really exciting to me.
And that's why I keep. The auction houses must also meet the changing
demands of the buyers.
Buyers are getting younger and this means engaging with buyers in ways
they are comfortable digitally.
Most interestingly, in the last year, we also saw 11000 new buyers coming
into Sotheby's. Of which 60 percent of them came through online.
So we're dedicating a lot of effort and resources to innovating.
Our online platform and the ways that we reach out to clients online,
Christie's and so the each had over $200 million in online sales last
year. The extraordinary thing about the art market actually is that over
the last 20 years, realistically, the top, top, top clients haven't
changed much. But below that are in quite a way below them.
Is this explosion of interest in contemporary art worldwide from a much
younger generation of people.
The most obvious person being the Japanese collector Mazower, who has made
a fortune from fashion retailing on the Internet and so is a very young
age, is with us in the market buying Bhasker at $100 million.
And we would not have seen that 20 years ago.
The best indicator of what industry people will come from is what industry
is making the most money.
We sell a luxury object for a lot of money, so if it's bankers who are
making a lot of money, our audience base will grow in the banking
community. If it's a great time, Protec, we'll have more tech people.
If it's a great time in real estate.
We'll have more real estate people.
And the biggest driver of that then isn't just what people in this country
are doing, but what is changing in the global economy.
So we've seen enormous growth from all over Asia.
But despite growing global concerns, the auction houses remain optimistic
for the art market. The political climate in Europe and Brexit creates
some trepidation.
The political climate in China and Hong Kong create some trepidation.
And the tariff disputes also create trepidation.
That said, what we've seen is that works of art are seen as a stable,
constant store of value.
They're personally edifying to anybody who has them.
They are good for the community when people buy them for museums or create
museums. All else being in flux.
It seems like an island of stability and calm in terms of people's desire
to commune with works of art and to live with them.
The world is generally a much richer place than it was a few years ago,
and I think everybody sees that trend continuing.
I have to say that the trend is for wealthy people to get even wealthier.
The scale of the wealth in the hands of people now is breathtaking and
they are collectors and they will be desperate to acquire iconic works of
art.