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It looks like another Picasso, one of the many proposed during the season of this month of art auctions Megawatt and Fairs in New York. But such rapid judgments are symptomatic of a sunsaturated market, explains Loïc Gouzer, who sells the “man with the pipe man” (1971) of Picasso (1971) for between 6 and 8 million dollars via his application called Fair Warning.
“There is too much art on which to concentrate and everything that everyone sells is now called a” masterpiece “. I challenge anyone to find a work of Picasso from this (late) period which is better than the one we have, but will people make it into account? In a world where it is difficult to know what is true of what is false, how to know what is good for difficulty? Said Gouzer.
Such saturation is part of the reflection behind the Fair Warning application, which sells only one work every two weeks to the sound of the credibility of a auctioneer. “It is a question of making space to look at something in a way that you would not do if the work was, let's say, one of the thousands in an art fair,” explains Gouzer, who cut his teeth with Christie where he played a decisive role in the sale of the most expensive work of Leonardo da Vinci. For a fair warning, Gouzer has an unusual vision: “I imagine that people sit in the toilet to watch the application, because it is the only time they have to focus.”
Meanwhile, Christie's recently orchestrated two private auctions, for a handful of selected customers, confirms Guillaume Cerutti, former CEO and now president of the auction house. He cannot reveal the works sold in this way, although he said that the two were “masters of the 20th century” and resulted in a final price of “more than $ 100 million”, a level that has been largely absent from traditional auctions in recent times. “For both sales (in 2021 and 2023), customers were excited by the format and flattered to be included in a selected group,” explains Cerutti. The sellers, he notes, obtained the best of both worlds-the possible advantage of the auction and the discretion of a private sale, although he adds: “It is only for the best works.”
The art market rethinks its methods, now that its protagonists are faced with uncomfortable realities that have benefited from a powerful scene since the millennium turning point. “The old models are under stress. Expenditure explodes while income and margins are contracted. Suddenly, the industry asks, where are we going now? ” said Marc Glimcher, Managing Director of International Gallery Business Pace.
His company was involved in one of the strongest rumors of the industry this year – talk about an agreement with the auction house that Sotheby's has taken a long time to go out (although now) – while other speculations, such as Christie's are in the running to buy the art fair and the publishing group, characterized a market that knows that it needs to change speed.
No one comments on anything, while Frieze last week confirmed his sale of almost $ 200 million at the Hollywood super-agent ari emanueL, costs of its role as CEO of the previous owner of the Andendaavour fair. It may seem more of the same thing, but, Glimcher says: “Ari has a lot of good ideas, it means that something exciting will happen.”
This will be necessary – art fairs represent a significant and growing external expenditure of galleries. The Art Basel & UBS report on this year's art market revealed that, although artistic show sales represented 31% of the total dealers in 2024, up 2% compared to 2023, because an expense increased by 10% to 27% of the pie. An anonymous concessionaire is quoted saying that “the costs, in general, are constantly increasing. The offer (fairs), on the contrary, remains the same, without innovations or major improvements. ”
In this context, alternative art fairs, which tend to the most experimental and smaller galleries are more and more on the stage. In New York This week comes the second edition of Esther (May 6-10), a fair that is positioned as less trade-or-business than major brand events, and focused on socialization. This year's events include performances, dinners and even a Drag clown bingo evening, confirms its co -founder Galeriste Margot Samel. During the minor attractions of London, which will direct its third edition to coincide with the Frieze fairs in October, the accent is as much on music as art, with DJs and groups thrown into the mix – rapper AJ Tracey could join the fray this year, said co -founder Jonny Tanna. “We have a cultural gap in this city and I want to show people what London has to offer,” he says. Its fair, like many alternatives and unlike major events, is free.
Christie's Cerutti says that the collaborations between the auction houses and the galleries – for a long time considered as Verboten in the industry – are very on maps, but as partnerships rather than shared commercial enterprises. In Hong Kong, the auction house has just closed an 18th century French furniture sales exhibition which organized themselves in partnership with Paris Gallery Steinitz. The new PACE outpost in Berlin is shared with the City Judiin gallery-each in turn to organize an exhibition in a restored service station from the 1950s on Potsdamer Strasse. Other galleries broke the mold: during this year's basel fair and to mark its 15th anniversary, Clearing Gallery rented a villa to fill with art of rooms in the basement, offering an alternative to its art stand and the usual gallery “White Cube” (Maison Clearing, Wettsteinallee, June 15).
It remains to be seen if new models will pass through the current stasis, but it is possible that many market players regret the crawling financialization of art in recent years – although the skirt above the role they have played there. Glimcher talks about “going back to artists, not losing sight of what we are doing”, while Gouzer says: “Many people who said they were collectors turned out to be investors and then magic, this intangible layer, left the art world.” With $ 1 billion in art on the auction block next week – including a lot of Picassos – magic may be what is necessary.
