Saint Laurent Art Sale Brings In $264 Million

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: February 23, 2009 New York Times

PARIS — Despite the global economic crisis, a lot of money seems to be left over. On Monday, the private collection of Yves Saint Laurent and his partner became the most expensive one ever sold at auction, bringing in more than $264 million on the first night alone.
The only significant failure in the sale, one of six auctions of the collection being held over three days by Christie’s, was an apparently overpriced Picasso from the artist’s late Cubist period. The auction house pulled the work when bids stopped at 21 million euros ($26 million) on a painting that had been estimated at 25 million to 30 million euros.

But records were set for Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, James Ensor, Piet Mondrian and Giorgio de Chirico. The Matisse, a colorful painting from 1911 of a vase of cowslips on a carpet, sold for $40.9 million, double its estimate.
The auction unfolded in the cavernous Grand Palais in central Paris, where thousands of visitors lined up for hours over the weekend to get a chance to see the collection in what became a kind of temporary museum. Mr. Saint Laurent is regarded with great affection and awe here as a paragon of French style, and he evokes an era when no country could challenge French prominence in the world of fashion.

The Matisse was believed to have gone to an American, but Christie’s refused to identify the buyer. Few Matisse paintings of quality come on the market, and each of the three Matisse paintings did better than its estimates.

A remarkable painting by Ensor, “The Jealousy of Pierrot,” sold for $5.38 million. Thomas Seydoux, a Christie’s expert in Impressionist and modern art, described it as “the climax of Ensor’s work,” and noted that it last sold in 1987 for $700,000. “Those masterpieces are never on the market,” he said.

The Duchamp, “Beautiful Breath, Veil Water,” was a Dada hallmark. Its label depicts the artist dressed as a woman, Rrose Sélavy, a punning alter ego he created in 1920 in a photo taken by Man Ray. It sold for $10.1 million, more than six times the estimate, after a bidding war between two anonymous American collectors. “People had waited a long time for this to go on the market,” Mr. Seydoux said.
Mr. Seydoux accepted some blame for the Picasso’s failure. He said he had based his estimate “on the exceptional quality of that period, but I got carried away.”
Isabelle de Wavrin, deputy editor of BeauxArts magazine, said that while Mr. Saint Laurent loved the Picasso, “Picassos are not rare.”
“But everyone is looking for a good Matisse,” she added.
Jean-Marie Baron, an art dealer who bid on some art but could not afford to go high enough, said the sale suggested that to some extent, “the art market is still good and still strong. Almost everywhere they met the high estimate.”
Pierre Bergé, who was Mr. Saint Laurent’s business and personal partner for many years, said in a brief interview that he was very happy with the results. “But you have to know that I’m very cool about things every day,” he said.
He was more emotional later at a brief news conference. “The day Yves Saint Laurent died, I decided this collection had run its course,” he said. “It was something we created together.” Mr. Saint Laurent died last June at 71.
Mr. Bergé said he explored the possibility of creating a museum for Mr. Saint Laurent’s fashion and art collections but that the project proved too difficult. “Selling it was the only possible solution,” he said.
The proceeds, separate from the commissions that his own company, Pierre Bergé & Associés, will presumably share with Christie’s, are to go to the foundation he established with Mr. Saint Laurent, to various cultural projects, to charity and to found a new research center to combat AIDS. Mr. Bergé said he would keep the Picasso for his foundation.
French museums pre-empted the sale of three works: the record-setting painting by de Chirico, which is thought to be an allegory about the return of Napoleon; “At the Conservatory,” an Ensor satire; and “The Lilacs,” by Édouard Vuillard.
A rare wood Brancusi statue, “Madame L.R.,” originally owned by the artist Fernand Léger, sold for $33.3 million, and it was also a good night for the Mondrian market, with a 1922 composition in white, blue, yellow and black selling for $24.59 million, a record. A monochrome by Mondrian, whose art inspired one of Mr. Laurent’s best-known collections, sold for more than $16.4 million.
The final prices include taxes and the commission paid to the auction house: 25 percent, excluding tax of the first $26,000; 20 percent, excluding tax from that amount up to $1.03 million; and 12 percent excluding tax on the rest. Presale estimates do not reflect commissions.
More than 1,200 buyers, dealers, collectors and wealthy art lovers were in their seats as Christie’s staff members took bids from those abroad on 100 telephone lines. Most of the buyers were said to be American and European.
The sale has five other portions over the next few days, including furniture, silver and Asian art. A dispute has unfolded over two Qing dynasty bronze animal heads, a rabbit and a rat, originally looted from an imperial palace in China but purchased legally. China has demanded their return, but a French court ruled Monday evening that the auction of the heads can proceed as scheduled on Wednesday.
The issue has become a heated one in China, stirring nationalist indignation. Mr. Bergé countered that the heads belonged to him, saying he would give them to China if Beijing would “observe human rights and give liberty to the Tibetan people and welcome the Dalai Lama.”
A Christie’s official then hastened to emphasize that while Mr. Bergé was entitled to his opinion, the auction house had the greatest respect for China and Chinese art. Mr. Bergé, 79, said: “They are my heads. I own them and I said what I meant.”
Before the sale, President Nicolas Sarkozy toured the auction offerings, and accepted from Mr. Bergé a legacy to France from Mr. Saint Laurent: a 1791 portrait of a child by Goya.
Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting.

How to Value Art


The major prerequisite for collecting art and design is an innate desire for the object. While historical, critical and even social context may enrich the story behind an object and explain its conceptual or physical production, it is the initial connection between viewer and object that sets tone and dialogue.


One collector may be drawn to nineteenth-century landscape etchings while another finds value in late twentieth-century color photography; the emotional connection a collector feels towards a work of art or an entire collection creates personal value.
Although personal value and preference may vary greatly, the methods by which one translates an appreciation and passion for art and design into dollars and cents remain the same. A variety of factors must be considered in determining an artwork’s monetary value.
Condition is one of the most important factors in assessing value. Has the object been maintained in the same condition since its creation? If there are changes in the condition, what are they? Have they affected the structure of the object? Have they affected the appearance of the object? Has the object been restored since its inception? If so, has the original integrity of the work been upheld?


Other key elements are the sales and acquisition history (the Provenance) of the object, as well as recent prices realized for similar works by the same artist. This information may be found by looking at public sales records; one efficient and complete tool for finding this information is artnet’s Price Database.
Artworks and design objects may be most effectively assessed by examining the market for similar items, sometimes referred to as “comparables.” Many variables affect the relevance of a comparable, most importantly its sale date. As with any market, the art market is fluid; comparable sales with dates over five years old may have little or no impact on an artwork’s current value. Recent sales indicate the most reliable information in determining the value of a work.
The most accurate evaluation of comparables comes from searching for works within the same medium (painting, sculpture, watercolors, drawing, collages, prints). For example, paintings tend to achieve higher prices than works on paper; the print market is more or less self-contained and specific. Therefore, a print sale, no matter when it occurred, has little relevance in determining the value of a painting, as opposed to the sale of a comparable painting by the same artist that took place during the past year.
The greater the volume of public sales records for an artist, the more important it is to find comparable sales of works within the same criteria. If an artist is new to the auction market and has only ten public sales (in various media), any price realized will be important in determining the value of the work. In the case of an artist whose work has appeared at auction often, and who has perhaps two hundred, or even two thousand sales records, finding an average price for similarly measured, “comparable” works is essential in understanding present value.
Subject matter, or the image depicted in a figurative work, may provide clues to trends within certain genres. For instance, still lifes from the Impressionist era, such as works depicting a bouquet of flowers or a bowl of fruit, have a slightly different market than a landscape painting or a commissioned portrait by the same artist. Thematic factors are combined with creation- or execution-date, followed by medium and size.
Pablo Picasso provides an excellent example of this point. Straddling between figurative and abstract, the works he created between approximately 1908 and 1914 are the product of his investigation into basic geometric elements of form, a method known as Cubism. As these Cubist works differ in style, date and subject matter from his 1940s and 1950s portraits, they also hold very different values.


Rarity is determined by the frequency with which a work by an artist appears on the market, or the number of a specific type of work that is currently available from a particular period in an artist’s career. When combined with demand, rarity becomes very important in appraisal. Visiting Picasso’s career can again be helpful in demonstrating this fact. A naturalistic or figurative Picasso painting from the turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century is extremely rare, compared to a similarly figurative work from the 1920s. Works from the earlier era, referred to as his “Blue Period” – due to the heavy usage of blues and darker, more dramatic hues – rarely come to market. In addition, they are in demand by museums and important collections. Because of these two combined factors, rarity and demand, when a Blue Period painting does appear for sale, its price is very high.


Conversely, works by an artist or from a specific era which appear often and abundantly in public auction sales may achieve lower prices. This is most common when the style or genre falls from fashion, causing less demand. A unique work, such as a painting or sculpture, that has appeared at auction more than once is considered “not fresh” to the market, and often attains much lower value than a work new to the market. A work that appears at auction and fails to sell is considered “Bought-In.” In most cases, when a work has been “Bought-In” recently or repeatedly, the value of that work is adversely affected.Although an artwork’s value is subject to a wide range of variables, these variables are not always relevant. For example, guidelines for insurance or sales appraisals may be more specific than the introductory definitions described above. Or a collector might assign an artwork or design object a value based on a more emotional level. In any case, understanding the background of an object and its current market can serve the buyer in making an educated purchase.

Reinventing Art
NEWSLETTER February 2009
Though it might seem that a majority of Bill Mack’s oeuvre concentrates on reliefs depicting the female form, he does in fact create artworks portraying a variety of other images including
portraits, animals, mothers and children, men and more. However, his images of the female form have been his most successful and thus, more high profile and in demand in galleries. This can be explained in part, because the female is one of the most frequently depicted images throughout art history.

According to Mack, “God created the beautiful female form and as
artists, we attempt to replicate this beauty to the best of our ability.”
Mack is often asked why he doesn’t use female figures that are more
“round and full-bodied” like classical images created by earlier artists
from Michelangelo to Ruebens to Renoir. Mack explains that these
artists created images of the idealized female of their time. As far back
as the ancients, a full-figured female body represented abundance,
prosperity and fertility. Today, the idealized female form is more
muscular and athletic. Hence, when Mack creates reliefs representing the female form, he chooses to create artworks based on the idealized female of today.

In his series The Female Nude In Art History, Mack is offering his
first ever, one-of-a-kind, Original Reliefs. In this series, he skillfully
merges contemporary and classic female form and pose. In so doing,
Mack visually demonstrates the extensive use of female imagery in art
throughout history by integrating the works of timeless artists, such as
Renoir, Picasso, Chagall, and others, with two previously sold out
Mack reliefs, Spirit and Spirit Detail.

In this series, Mack first modifies the works of the other artists as needed to fit his relief. Then he collages their work over the contours of his own work…his relief. He then hand paints the relief to better
synthesize the two images. Additionally he adds shadowing and
definition to cause the Spirit figure to emerge through the color and
often complex imagery of the other artist’s work. In effect, he is
paying homage to the artists and their artworks, as well as the female
form. The finished pieces are artistic and stylized fusion; Original
mixed media reliefs, which incorporate collage, acrylic, oil, epoxy, and urethane over a resin relief.