---

A version of this analysis was commissioned by London-based Pictorum Advisory for their October Quarterly Report.

---

There is a palpable bleakness in the international auction market of late. Phillips reported a 39 percent drop in global sales during the first half of 2023, from $746 million in the first half of 2022 to $453 million this year. Christie’s global sales for the first half of 2023 were also down 23 percent compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, Sotheby’s is reportedly not releasing its half-year figures in July, implying a similar sales slump. According to ArtTactic’s RawFacts Auction Review First Half 2023, there was an 18 percent decline in sales across all major international auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, compared to the same period last year.

Amidst growing economic uncertainty, industry insiders tend to look at the auction market as a bellwether for larger art market conditions. While the notion is contentious, it is the very the nature of all things to reveal its true colours during turbulent times. Hence, this might be a good time to study potential inflection points in the auction market in a bid to grasp the nature of the fiscal beast.

Manchester-born art collector Pauline Karpidas is known for her summer “workshops” at her home with her late husband, the Greek engineer and businessman Constantinos “Dino” Karpidas on the Greek island of Hydra. The seasonal gatherings, which ran every July from 1996 until 2017, drew illustrious attendees like Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Grayson Perry.

Across 30 and 31 October, Sotheby’s Paris will be auctioning 300 works from her collection stored at the Hydra home, including works by the aforementioned YBA, photographs by Nan Goldin, sculptures by the French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, and more. The works are estimated to fetch more than €11 million across both sales in Paris.

The Karpidas sale is notable for many reasons. Firstly, the location of the sale is yet another brutally clear sign that the European art trade’s center of gravity is shifting from London to Paris. One of the official reasons given by the auction house is that the works are coming from Greece and hence, logistically easier to move them to another EU country.

The other official reason is that the market for the Lalannes’ works lies in Paris. Placing “Les Lalanne” at the forefront of Sotheby’s sale at the end of October, highlights the significance of the artists’ works in Karpidas’ collection.

Yet, this only exemplifies the auction house’s concerted efforts to position French art and artists front and center in a bid to cater to the French capital’s collector base, even with a collection historically prized for its eminent British art.

The late Greek-American dealer Alexander Iolas, known for discovering Andy Warhol, connected Karpidas with the LaLannes. Subsequently, Karpidas and her husband often visited at their home and studio in Ury, outside of Paris. Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s European Chairman, told The Art Newspaper that Karpidas supported the Lalannes before they had patrons and even before they were seen as artists.

However, with today’s blurring of boundaries between contemporary art and design, the Lelannes’ sculptures may have found their mainstream niche. At least, Sotheby’s seems to be betting on this, putting nine works by the husband-and-wife duo on the block in its evening sale, with the most expensive, by Claude Lalanne—Très Grand Choupatte (2008), estimates between €1m and €1.5m.

Another reason the Karpidas sale is intriguing to industry insiders has more to do with Sotheby’s past sale of Pauline Karpidas’s Andy Warhol, 200 One Dollar Bills from 1962, which hammered well over its $8 million estimate, hitting as high as $43.7 million. Not only did the sale set a record for the highest price ever reached for a Warhol work at Sotheby’s at that time, this particular auction happened in November of 2009 during the last recession.

It could be said that some artists’ works are more recession-proof than works from a single collection, no matter how acclaimed and prestigious the origins of said collection. One such artist the international auction houses seem to be counting on is Gerhard Richter whose resold works have been hitting higher prices of late, compared to previous market phases. 

In May 2022, as the global health crisis began to segue into the global financial crisis, Christie’s sold the 1994 Richter painting, Abstraktes Bild, once owned by Eric Clapton for $36.5 million, a slight gain on the $34 million paid a decade earlier for the same work.

This spring saw Sotheby’s sell a 1986 two-panel work by Richter in London for $29 million, well above the $9.7 million it sold for in New York, 15 years ago. Unsurprisingly, this November, Phillips in New York is bringing back the 1987 two-panel work that garnered $33 million in 2018, with estimates for the upcoming sale in the $30 million range. If the trend persists, it may indicate some consistency in the maelstrom of uncertainty that is the auction market.

All in all, with the constant pressure of inflation, recession, and a long-awaited, highly discussed market correction, it is clear the auction market has increasingly little room for the art world’s favoured smoke and mirrors.