Art Auction Trends

The cover story on the Weekend Journal section of the Wall Street Journal for 14 May is about some post-1870 painters who are performing better or worse than previously for the auctioneer's gavel. (At the time this is written, the article can be found here.)

Highlighted "winners" are Alexander Calder, Pierre-August Renoir, Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti, Jasper Johns and graffiti-spawned Jean-Michel Basquiat. Downsliders mentioned are Pierre Bonnard, Richard Prince, Kees Van Dongen, Damien Hirst and Edvard Munch.

Some highlights from Kelly Crow's article include:

But the playing field has been transformed by recession, and dozens of other top artists have been boosted or derailed by the boom-and-bust cycle. Some of the biggest stars from the art market's peak, such as Richard Prince and Damien Hirst, have been largely absent from auctions recently.

On the rise are Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Salvador Dali, names that a few years ago were unfashionable in some art circles. In recent years, some Western buyers dismissed their work as passé —crowd-pleasing but uninteresting. New art collectors, however, tend to gravitate to the European Impressionists that are pretty and accessible. Newly wealthy Asian buyers have been bidding up Renoirs and Monets. ...

Dealers say Renoir's soft-focus depictions of Victorian women and children are a favorite of Asian collectors, who have begun buying up iconic pieces from the Western canon. They're starting, as many new buyers do, with the broadly appealing Impressionists. Renoir's prices are lower than those of older peers like Monet.

[Regarding Calder...] The Philadelphia sculptor of kinetic abstract sculptures has floated above the recession. He had a banner year in 2009, with a record $41.5 million worth of his art selling at auction, according to Artnet, a firm that monitors sales. Six of his priciest pieces sold during the doldrums, including the 1934 mobile, "Five Pieces of Wood," which Sotheby's in London sold last June for $4.2 million. On Wednesday, another pair of mobiles sold for a combined $5.2 million.

American collectors say part of the reason for the strong sales was that the artist had been undervalued for too long, a fact that became clear as other art prices dropped. ...

Now, Basquiat's asking prices have dropped to between $2 million and $6 million and American Baby Boomers appear to be rushing back in to take advantage of the lower price tags. ...

Last fall, this Dutch master of Fauvism [Van Dongen] seemed poised to enjoy a surge when Sotheby's in New York sold his creamy spare portrait, "Young Arab," for a record $13.8 million. Russian buyers were flocking then to his emerald-and-navy portraits of women. Since then, however, Russian collectors seem to have shifted back to homegrown favorites with a similar palette, like Natalia Goncharova, and U.S. buyers haven't stepped in to fill the void. ...

During the peak years of 2006 and 2008, prices for Mr. Prince's work soared. In 2008, the artist's works sold for a combined $68.3 million at auction, but signs of trouble began to emerge: That year, at least nine pieces sold for less that their low asking prices, indicating that buyers and sellers were no longer in agreement on where his auction prices should be set....

Mr. Prince has one group of influential supporters: museum curators. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis recently mounted major Prince shows.

I'm perpetually astonished at the high prices modernist and PoMo artists command, though I'm not surprised about the French Impressionists. As this book suggests, they have been a "safe" investment for many decades.

And I'm curious about Van Dongen being mentioned. In most histories of post-1900 painting, he's been more a footnote than a highlight, so I hadn't realized that some of his works command very nice prices. I find Van Dongen the man interesting and have an odd ambivalence about his art; I probably shouldn't like it, yet I can't ignore it. One of these days I must write a post about him if for no other reason than to get my thoughts better sorted.

Nothing Doors

Something often downplayed or even missing in modernist architecture is consideration of the psychology of people who look at or use a building. This is in contrast to the Beaux-Arts style architectural training where students created renderings and building designs that evoked moods.

I was reminded of this not long ago strolling through the campus of the University of Washington when I spied this:

Law School building
It's situated near the campus periphery where newer, non-Collegiate Gothic architecture reigns. What struck me was the entrance area. Yes, once inside there is a large, high space with plenty of glass. But the doors themselves look like they came from a parts bin. The Great God Functionality worshiped by modernists would smile at form following the function of ingress and egress. But largely lost are the psychological functions of transition and perceiving the importance of the structure being entered.

What follows is a swing around the Washington campus showing entrances old and recent to illustrate my point.


This is one of the older buildings, named after Vernon Louis Parrington who taught at Washington in the early decades of the last century. The building predates the university's Collegiate Gothic phase and is undistinguished, as the entrance suggests.


Here is the main library building's front; there is no mistaking that this is the entrance area. The doors themselves are hidden at this angle, but are heavy, wooden, and have glass panes. Multiple doors are present to serve times of heavy traffic.


Nearby is the administration building, constructed in the late 1940s. It differs from most campus buildings in that it has no brick surfacing. A much more modest entry, but it is attractively designed aside from the University shield squeezed between the entrance frame and the bay window section above.


This isn't a main entrance. It's a side entrance placed where two wings of a building join. (Actually, the two present wings once were separate buildings that were consolidated several decades after they were built.) Unlike most modernist solutions, it possesses charm.


Here's an entrance to another building on the main quadrangle. It gives one the feeling that you are really entering a dignified place.


This is the entrance ensemble of what once was the womens' Physical Education building, now home of the Drama School. It's clearly an entrance, and clearly has a dignity to it.

So much for buildings mostly from the 1930s and 40s. Now for more recent doors and entrances.


Built around 1960, this Engineering building is one of the ugliest on campus. An effort was made to create a transition zone of sorts, but it doesn't succeed. The doors themselves are nondescript.


Another set of nondescript doors, this time on the Electrical Engineering building. All that glass and metal above the door is intended to create the sensation of ... well, I'm not sure.


The Engineering Library entry, like the rest of the late 1960s building, is a feeble attempt to blend modern with traditional.


Here's another blending attempt, this from the mid-1990s for one of the Business School buildings. Because it edges more towards the traditional, it strikes me as being more successful.

All of which is not to say that modernist and various breeds of post-modernist buildings can't have doors and entrances that have psychological resonance. But it takes some effort on the part of the architect, particularly one invested in classical International Style design.

First Post

My name is Donald Pittenger. Over at the 2Blowhards blog I was described as "demographer, recovering sociologist." My role was Third Banana or (on a good day) Second Banana to blog founder "Michael Blowhard." Which was perfectly fine by me. Michael is a rare talent, facile with words and ideas; no wonder he once was a byline writer (under his real name) at a major magazine.

Alas, Michael decided to retire from 2Blowards in the fall of 2009 and I carried it on. That meant having to write five to seven posts a week -- a lot more than my comfort zone of two or three. As you might be guessing, I'm creating this blog so that I can do 2Blowhardish things at a more relaxed pace. So stop by once or twice a week to see what's going on.

What will I be writing about? As the title suggests, mostly about art. Specifically, about painting, design and other aspects of aesthetics (besides all that demography-sociology stuff mentioned above, I was an art major in college.) The point-of-view is that modernism in art is an idea that has, after a century or more, been thoroughly tested and found wanting to a large extent. Not to say that it should be abolished -- just put in its proper, diminished place. Featured here will be modernist mistakes and what I think are nicer alternatives. Hence the name of this blog.

Thank for for reading. And please comment when you're in the mood.