This is a historic sale that took place at Christie’s in New York. A sale that crossed the billion dollars. The collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen who died in 2018, made up of works by big names in painting, has broken all records. Sign that the art market continues to progress despite the economic uncertainties linked to the war in Ukraine and inflation, five paintings entered the closed club of works sold for more than 100 million dollars at auction during this memorable evening at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
The most expensive, The Poseuses, Together (small version) (1888) by Georges Seurat, a painting considered a masterpiece of pointillism, another version of which hangs at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, reached $149.24 million, including fees, announced Christie’s. The company did not provide information on the identity of the buyers, a custom for auction houses.
Christie’s, controlled by the Artémis holding company of François Pinault, had announced that the entire amount of the sales would be donated to charities. Despite his falling out with Bill Gates, his partner in the birth of Microsoft in 1975, the American billionaire Paul Allen, had signed his “Giving Pledge” in 2009, pledging to donate the majority of his fortune.
#AuctionRecord From the Paul G. Allen Collection ‘Les poseuses, ensemble (Petite version)’ by Georges Seurat set an auction record for the artist with a price realized of $149.24 million, almost 5x the artist’s previous record pic.twitter.com/pnAWYnfoAh
— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 2022
Billionaire jack of all trades
While only 60 of 150 lots were sold on Wednesday (the rest will be on Thursday), the value of the collection has already surpassed the previous record for the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, who reached 922 million dollars at competitor Sotheby’s in the spring.
According to a calculation by AFP, the sale totaled around 1.5 billion dollars. The billion was exceeded for lot number 32, a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Woman of Venice IIIsold for 25 million dollars, an almost trivial figure on Wednesday evening, in the crowded auction room of Christie’s.
By the German-American painter-sculptor Max Ernst, whose sculpture The king playing with the queen left for $24.3 million, to American Jasper Johns, one of the few living artists in the collection, including a lithograph Small False Startwas sold for 55.35 million, passing through Diego Rivera and Lucian Freud, numerous auction records for artists fell one after the other.
This avalanche bears witness to the quality of the collection amassed by Paul Allen, a jack-of-all-trades billionaire, who had founded a “pop culture” museum in his hometown of Seattle, and who owned several sports franchises, including the Seattle Seahawks.
#AuctionRecord From the Paul G. Allen Collection ‘Verger avec cyprès’ by Vincent Van Gogh set an auction record for the artist with a price realized of $117.18 million pic.twitter.com/H4PEusfmo0
— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 2022
Safe investment
So after The Poseuses by Georges Seurat, a Mount Sainte-Victoire (1888-1890) by Paul Cézanne, herald of cubism, reached 137.79 million. Records were also broken for Vincent Van Gogh, whose Orchard with cypresses was sold for $117.1 million, or for Paul Gauguin, including a painting from the Tahitian period, Maternity II (1899), went for $105.73 million. A work of Gustav Klimt, Birch Foresthit $104.5 million, another record.
With these sales, and that of a portrait of Marilyn Monroe Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by Andy Warhol, who left in May for 195 million dollars, the year 2022 should remain as one of the most expensive in the history of the art market.
According to experts from auction houses, art is more than ever a safe investment in the eyes of the very wealthy, despite an uncertain economic context. “Clients want to diversify their assets, to profit from the art and because they know that most works continue to increase in value over time“, explained a few days before the sale, the co-president of the Impressionists and Modern Art department at Christie’s, Adrien Meyer.
“There are more billionaires than masterpieces“available on the market, he summarized, and”demand is very diverse“, with an increasingly strong presence of customers from Asia and the Middle East.
#AuctionRecord From the Paul G. Allen Collection, Paul Cezanne’s ‘La Montaigne Sainte-Victoire’ set an auction record for the artist with a price realized of $137.79 million, more than double the artist’s previous auction record pic.twitter.com/EhTqYcI1fK
— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 2022
