The Great Auction Wave in contemporary art, which rose amid the financial euphoria of 1982 and crested in late 1989, is now over, vanished into the sand. Just as one of its signs was the auction-room applause that greeted some new price level -- $17 million for a Jasper Johns, $20.7 million for a De Kooning -- so its end was marked by another kind of applause.
It came on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 6, at a sale at Sotheby's in New York City. Anh in a Spanish Landscape, a large 1988 image done in broken plates by the Meatball Hero of the epoch, Julian Schnabel, was hoisted onto the auction block. It had been bought in London for $225,000 in 1989 by a Canadian speculator with Hong Kong money. Then the owner consigned it for sale to a New York gallery, where it hung for some weeks with a price tag of $650,000 on it. No takers. Feeling the pinch, the owner sent it to Sotheby's, which put what it took to be a conservative estimate on it: $350,000 to ; $450,000. But now, not a paddle moved. After some moments of embarrassment, John Marion, chairman of Sotheby's North America, who had been working the room all evening like a paramedic trying to revive an Egyptian mummy, hammered the work down, unsold, at $210,000. At which point a couple of ironists in the room had the indelicacy to clap.
Some 56% of the art in the Sotheby's auction failed to find a buyer, despite the house's pre-sale efforts to get sellers to lower their reserves. The "star" offering, Robert Rauschenberg's Third Time Painting, 1961, sold for $3.08 million after its low estimate had been reduced by $1 million on the eve of the sale, to a range of $3 million to $4 million.
Few pictures except a Sean Scully, a Brice Marden, two Dubuffets and the Rauschenberg reached or exceeded their low estimates, and most were well below them. A Rothko work estimated at $1.8 million to $2.2 million was unsold at $1.25 million. Nothing by Andy Warhol sold that night. Younger artists whose star had risen in the '80s did no better. An Eric Fischl, Northern Girl, estimated at $450,000 to $600,000, went begging at $300,000.
The following night at Christie's was a slight improvement, because the estimates were more realistic and the works themselves somewhat better. Nevertheless, 48% of the works failed to sell. The auction had one very fine De Kooning, July, 1956, which sold for $8.8 million against the estimates of $5 million to $7 million. It might have been a $15 million painting a year ago, but at least its price offset the fact that none of the other De Koonings in the sale -- all later or inferior works -- found buyers. Philip Guston's Summer, 1954, joined the De Kooning as one of the few paintings to exceed its high estimate -- $1.1 million, against estimates of $500,000 to $700,000. But again, nothing by Warhol sold, and Minimal art did badly across the board.