The revival of the contemporary art market was in full swing last week as Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury & Co between them notched up £124.3 million of sales in London – three times as much as the same series made this time last year. There were some exceptional prices for younger, living artists, but others revealed a lingering fragility. The core strength of the auctions was with the historically recognised artists of the post-war era.
A key element in Sotheby's sale was the selection of works from the collection of Mr and Mrs Gerhard Lenz, who began collecting experimental European art 50 years ago, and have shown examples to much acclaim in more than a dozen museums from Barcelona to Moscow. Centred around the "Zero" group, that was formed in Düsseldorf in 1957 to abandon all traditions and start again from zero, the collection included important and well-preserved abstract, three-dimensional works, made with shimmering aluminium strips, nails or papier mâché by artists without much exposure on the international auction market such as Heinz Mack, Gunther Uecker and Jan Schoonhoven. The collection soared four or five times above estimates, setting 19 individual record prices. Uecker's panel of swirling nails, Hair of the Nymphs (1964), for example, sold for a record £825,250 – six times its estimate.
The Lenz sale also included works by more established artists of the era such as Lucio Fontana (shimmering works on copper) and Yves Klein (female body outlines made with a blowtorch). Selling for more than £3 million to a collection in Switzerland, these prices were anticipated. What the Lenz sale demonstrated was that the market loves a prestigious private collection, and is ready to set new price levels for previously under-valued post-war classics that are now safely in the history books.
By comparison, the results for bookmaker Victor Chandler's collection of Lucian Freuds, including the artist's self-portrait with a black eye, which sold below estimate for £2.8 million, were tame. The reality was that they just weren't as good as Sotheby's had made out, though Chandler will have done well if the portrait of Guy and Speck, which he bought in 1998 for £166,500 and sold for £1.3 million, is anything to go by.
Similarly, Peter Doig's huge ski painting, Saint Anton, did not attract much competition, selling for £2.8 million. But, for the owner who bought it in 1996 for £12,000, that was some result. Showing more improved form of late is Doig's stablemate at the Victoria Miro Gallery, Chris Ofili. His radiantly pink glitter-and-elephant dung painting, Through the Grapevine, bought in 1999 for around £20,000, sold well above expectations for a record £802,850 – a price that makes Tate's purchase of Ofili's 13-painting installation, The Upper Room, for £600,000 five years ago look like a complete bargain. Salzau, a small watercolour by Ofili, made £20,000, four times its estimate and five times what it fetched at auction in 2002.
Blue-chip, post-war art was also the foundation for a successful sale at Christie's, where Yves Klein was again a star, and American buyers were comprehensively outgunned by British and Europeans five to one. Klein's composition of sea sponges covered in gold leaf is bound for a Swiss collection at a cost of £5.9 million, and 71-year-old British billionare diamond dealer Laurence Graff, who counts Liz Taylor and the Sultan of Brunei among his clients, was in the mood for some conspicuous consumption. After buying an £8.1 million Picasso at Christie's the week before, he lavished £2.3 million on a dollar-sign screenprint by Andy Warhol, and then £4 million on a 1962 Klein body painting – both above estimates, and significant improvements on the $1.6 million and £388,500 these works brought respectively in 2005 and 2001.
Among the younger artists taking off were the Portuguese Joana Vasconcelos, whose giant pair of stilettos, made from kitchen pots and pans, sold for a triple-estimate £505,000, and the American Matthew Day Jackson, whose imposing portrait of geodesic dome designer Buckminster Fuller, wearing rainbow-coloured spectacles, left what seemed a sensible £30,000 to £40,000 estimate in the dust, to sell for a staggering £600,000 to Graff.
At the same time, works by other contemporaries (Damien Hirst, Raqib Shaw, Paula Rego and Paul McCarthy) all looked vulnerable, selling below estimates, mostly to the artists' dealers.
But at least they sold. In fact, the selling rate throughout the week was a solid 85 per cent of the 700 or so works – and the £124 million total, a mite higher than forecast, sent a wave of confidence through the market.