The New Landscapes for Auction Houses with Katharine Arnold and Maria Los
Katharine Arnold is Co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s and Maria Los is Deputy Chairman and Head of Client Advisory at Christie’s.
Katherine:
'I’m staggered by how nimble and creative our industry has been to respond to some challenges. Clients and colleagues have been impacted in difficult and personal ways which can over shadow the business of buying and selling art. Christie's and our industry in general have leapt to the challenge. We’ve talked about what our auctions need to look like, what they should contain, what people are wanting to buy, and how we should use on-line as a platform that is as versatile and responsive as possible. The art market had lagged behind others in transitioning online and one aspect of that is that standing in front of the art piece, the aura of the artwork, is something that we all believe in - so how we replace this experience with an online platform needed thinking through. We’ve found better ways of photographing and videoing works of art so clients are able to see them in the most attractive and compelling ways. We've re-thought how online is not just a strategy, but a conduit for every part of our business (private selling and auctions). As soon as lockdown happened, and live auctioning was no longer an option we quickly moved to bring works of art online in a private sales capacity. People are buying directly from our website, where images are good enough quality, and buying them at asking price. If you had asked auction houses about this a year ago they would have never believed this.'
Maria:
'At the beginning of the pandemic my first concern was to check in with the clients, initially clients said they weren’t focused on their collections and were more focused on family and businesses. However, for many others being at home actually meant they had more time with their collections, and the focus shifted to what else were they looking for and brought up questions about what we could offer them as a company. Our online and private sales came very quickly and very organically from these discussions. Holding auctions online is something we’d grown to be very comfortable with, as we had our first online auction 10 years ago with the collection of Elizabeth Taylor. It was a full week of live auctions and it made over $10 million dollars online. The private sales have been the most surprising - it has been very interesting to see how much is able to take place in such a short amount of time. One statistic that is very interesting is that we are selling 4x more than this time last year in private sales, and I think that is because of increase communication and time invested.'
Katherine:
'April of this year we transacted privately, more than any other month in 2019. In terms of selling directly from the website we had someone from Japan who we had never transacted with, and who bought a Kusama, and bought it at the asking price directly from the website. Some people actually like this impersonal and private way of buying through the internet. So we’re now giving clients a variety of ways to interact with us.'
Maria:
'I want to talk about our ONE global sale of the 20 Century - June is usually our biggest sale month - a time we congregate as a field, we had to find a way we could continue to hold big auctions and sell. We came up with the revolutionary idea that they would have one sale as online auction and 4 sale sites online internationally. The sale begins in Hong Kong, then moves to Paris then to London, finishing up in New York. It’s a creative idea that we're very excited by and hope it will unite colleagues and collectors all over the world, and will be able to build exhibitions for all venues and pull together as one.'
Katherine:
'One of our driving ideas was that clearly the art market had felt some degree of fatigue over the past few years, and we were hearing collectors saying the requirement to travel to multiple fairs was starting to take away some of the pleasure of buying and collecting art. This year people clearly have had a lot on their minds these past few months, so we wanted to consolidate into one attractive and interesting sale of the best of the 20th century, including all styles of art and bring it across 4 major sale locations. We felt we could create an event that people could get exited about. At Christie’s most of us are a team that have been very united, and with many more shoulders and collaborations we’ve emerged as stronger team to face challenges. We’re trying to put out quality sales, of less volume. In the auction room there will be telephone bidders and drama between auctioneer and bidders. It’s ultimately down to the performance of the auctioneer, and the different flair and styles of auctioneers that create drama.'
Maria:
'Seeing 4 different styles of auctioneers in action, will be very special and unusual adding to the theatre.'
Katherine:
'When the live auctions were postponed there was a hiatus and little was able to held physically. We were blindsided by the aggression and speed of the pandemic, but we responded to bring sales that were appropriate online very quickly, postponed other sales to later in the year and then started to think innovatively. It was a difficult period, global disruption has affected everyone in business so we were lucky to be able to fulfil a greater number of private sales in April. Being very versatile online was a key part of our strategy.'
Maria:
'Private sales have made a huge difference, and we have also had some private selling exhibitions online which have been very successful.'
Katharine:
'There are 2 aspects to consider in a period of uncertainty - there is a case for collectors who want to diversify their portfolios and do see art of great quality as a tangible asset that you can invest in. This could be similar to the 2008 crisis.
But as an industry and as collectors we should also be supporting younger artist and studios and galleries who will be struggling.'
Maria:
'I think art world has grown a lot since 2008 thanks to digital. More collectors are buying now, it will be a process, but the masterpiece level will forever remain. Thanks to education, we have more collectors out there. We will find ourselves in a different place in a new normal and our business will rebound.’