Christie's rose period
Sales are up at the fabled auction house despite a drop-off in demand last year for Asian art, historic Chinese collectibles and fine wine
Growing demand for contemporary art helped sales climb 10 per cent at Christie's International last year, even as its market shrank in Asia and the Middle East.
The London-based auction house sold £3.9 billion (HK$48.47 billion) of art and collectibles in 2012, setting a pound-sterling record for the company for the third successive year. Public sales of works by post-war and living artists grew by a third to continue as the company's most lucrative category, raising £986.5 million in 2012, Christie's said. All auction sales quoted include fees.
Continuing uncertainty in the financial markets and concerns about tax rises in the United States have encouraged wealthy collectors to spend more money on art. Big-ticket buyers are concentrating on gold-standard contemporary names such as Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon and Gerhard Richter.
"It's not non-collectors looking to move cash into art," Steven Murphy, Christie's chief executive, said. "Existing clients are spending more, and many of our new bidders have previously bought from dealers and art fairs. They like the transparency of auctions."
Post-war works captured eight out of 10 of Christie's biggest auction sales in 2012. Rothko's 1961 painting Orange, Red, Yellow became the most expensive contemporary work of art at auction when it sold for US$86.9 million in New York in May.
It was the priciest of 49 works that sold for more than US$10 million at Christie's in 2012. The previous year, 32 works broke the eight-digit barrier.