Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder
Scott Reyburn reports on the recent, and upcoming, sales in London. It appears that at least one of the big boys is beginning to understand that too much work is not a good thing … Christie’s cuts its London auctions, leaving Sotheby’s to go it alone with an “Imps and Mods” week. Do not forget, that not only did we have those major sales in New York last month, but Art Basel just ended and reports from the dealers were impressive. My opinion is that more cutting is needed.
As for the Sotheby’s sales that took place this week, the results were hit or miss. As we have seen before, some of the misses were caused by aggressive estimates and some of the hits happened because of those guarantees (you have to feel bad for some of those guarantors … well, maybe not). We will give you a more detailed report in our upcoming issue of Comments on the Art Market.
Source: Fewer and Smaller: A New Normal for London’s Summer Auctions – The New York Times