Not Just for Oligarchs - Visiting London's Auction Houses

Not Just for Oligarchs - Visiting London's Auction Houses

20 October, 2011
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys looks beyond the headlines to explore the increasingly accessible attitude of London's top auction houses.

London is home to some of the world's most famous auction houses. Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams, Phillips de Pury: it is inside these famous institutions that, with the bash of a gavel, art and artefacts are sold off to the highest bidders for increasingly vast prices. The great auction is a singular moment – a barometer of the art market and, indeed, of the whole state of a globalised economy.

Back in 2008, Damien Hirst famously bypassed his galleries to flog a load of work at Sotheby's for a record £111 million. In light of the subsequent banking collapse, it came to be seen as something of a landmark event – a prominent symbol of the end of an era, a reminder that the Labour/YBA boom years were little more than an empty promise.

And yet, even today, in our 'age of austerity', with cuts and riots and scandal, London's famous auction houses are still announcing record sales seemingly every week. Even though the recent spate of Frieze Week sales produced mixed results – Phillips de Pury for example selling only 66% of lots and the centrepiece of the Bonham's sale, a vast piece by Aligheiero Boetti, failing to find a buyer – some of the prices were still eye-catching: Gerhard Richter's exquisite Kerze (Candle) [above right], for example, went for a hefty £10 million at Christie's; the highpoint of a sale that raised over £38 million in total.

It's just the latest example of the massive prices that art can fetch at auction. Even before the Frieze Week sales, 2011 had already seen Christie's in London sell five works  – three Picassos, a Bacon and a Warhol – for over £10 million each. And in June, Sotheby's sold a Guardi view of Venice for a whopping £26 million, in the process breaking all manner of sale records. Clearly there are still people with a lot of cash to flash.

But despite the often conspicuous nature of the displays of wealth at these high-profile sales, auctions in London are not solely about flogging off masterpieces to Russian oligarchs. Because these days, even the most illustrious institutions are keen to appeal to a much more diverse audience than you might at first think.

Christie's are probably leading the way here – not only has their South Kensington branch established a worldwide reputation for sales of high-profile entertainment memorabilia, but 2010 also saw the successful launch of Multiplied, the world's first contemporary editions fair, and they even have their own Youtube channel.

But, for me, the most interesting aspect of all this is the (free to visit) pre-auction views. During Frieze Week, I attended both the Bonhams and the Christie's previews and was struck by how enjoyable they both were – although in quite different ways. At Christie's, except for a few high-profile lots, much of the works are salon hung – to fit in as much art (money) in a limited (although still sizeable) space. It's fascinating viewing, and there's something very refreshing about the lack of curatorial framework. The works – of which my personal highlights include a Tom Hunter photograph, a 1982 watercolour by Anselm Kiefer and a tiny Richter overpainted photograph – are simply allowed to speak for themselves.

By contrast, the Bonhams sale – the first from their new Contemporary Art Department – consists of only 20 pieces, some, like the Boetti, colossal in scale. The approach is a very curatorial one, with plenty of space allowed for each individual work. It's reminiscent, in terms of visitor experience, of a trip to the Saatchi Gallery. Head of Sale Benedetta Ghione-Webb explains her “desire to exhibit the works in a very focused manner, to show the direction we're going in.” It's a refreshing approach and one that, judging from the results, may take a little time for buyers to adjust to.

But, despite their differences, there's something similar about visiting Christie's and Bonhams. And it's an odd feeling – a strange little frisson of excitement. It comes about partly because these pre-sale views are often open for only a matter of days before the auction, so there's a sense of urgency about proceedings. But also because the works are all, of course, for sale – and there's something fascinating about the estimated price tags that accompany each piece – frequently so much more intriguing than the reams of explanatory spiel one finds in public museums. Nic McElhatton, the Chairman of Christie's, South Kensington agrees: “exhibitions at auction houses are a very different experience to those in a museum or gallery.”

It's always instructive to see art in different contexts, and a visit to Christie's, Sotheby's or Bonhams is a fascinating experience. Almost always open to the public, usually free, and offering amazing opportunities to get close to some of the world's great masterpieces before they disappear for ever into a Monte Carlo château (or, more likely, some vast storage vault in the middle of nowhere), London's auction houses are truly the great unsung destinations for viewing contemporary art. 

www.christies.com ; www.sothebys.com ; www.bonhams.com ; www.phillipsdepury.com

Image credits left to right: wallyg; Christies.

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Tom Jeffreys