Christie’s announced 2011 sales of £3.6 billion ($5.7bn), up 9 per cent compared with 2010. This includes private sales of £502 million ($808.6m), an increase of 44 per cent on 2010.
“Christie’s ability to curate and offer sales of art to a growing audience has led to continued demand across geographies, collecting categories and at all levels. This is a very encouraging set of results”, said Steven P Murphy, Chief Executive Officer, Christie’s. “While we are seeing more investors collecting, there are many more collectors who are increasing their investment in their collections as the explosion of interest in art, fuelled by globalisation, facilitated by the technology that increases access to information and images, meets the art that is coming to the market.”
Post-War and Contemporary led the art categories with auction sales of £735.7m ($1.2bn) – an increase of 22 per cent. The second strongest category was Asian Art which increased 11per cent and totaled record annual sales of £552.9m ($890.1m). The highest price of the year was paid for Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1997), I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in it!, 1961, on 8 November in New York for $43,202,500 / £26,785,550, a world record price for the artist at auction.
In 2011, Christie’s sold 719 works at auction for over $1m (607 in 2010). Average sold rates (by lot) stayed at 79 per cent, on a par with the previous year. Results also illustrate solid demand at every price level, not just for the most expensive works, with the highest selling rate for works sold between £250,000 and £1m at 87 per cent.
The market at the lower price levels also performed strongly with Christie’s in South Kensington saleroom, offering works of art from £1,000, recording its highest annual total for the second successive year £115.9m ($186.6m).
The international appetite for collecting is also reflected in increased buyer activity in 2011.
US and European clients accounted for 77per cent of registered bidders, with 14 per cent of clients registering from Greater China, an increase of 2per cent on 2010. Registered clients from Russia and the CIS increased 15per cent over the year. New clients represented 12per cent of the value of global sales.
Christie’s continue to invest in online initiatives making the art market increasingly accessible. The website,
www.christies.com, welcomed 77 per cent more unique visitors than the previous year. In total 29 per cent of Christie’s bidders transacted online.
Christie’s Live, the interactive online bidding platform, drew 25 per cent more bids than the previous year and with two works of art selling for over $1m. As part of the sales series dedicated to the Collection of Elizabeth Taylor, Christie’s held the company’s first ever Online-Only sale which ran in parallel to the live auctions at Christie’s New York. The two-week time-based auction was hugely successful with over $9.5m in total sales and bidders from 25 countries around the world who competed for 973 additional items from Miss Taylor’s personal collection.
In total, more than 57,000 online bids were received, as collectors rapidly drove prices from the $50 starting point up into the thousands.
The crescendo of the year was the Collection of Elizabeth Taylor which was seen by 58,000 people in an eight-city tour before being sold at auction in New York in December. With bidders from 36 countries, every one of the 1,778 lots found a buyer contributing to total sales of $157m.
Auctions in Dubai realised £11.6m ($18.6m). April 2011 marked Christie's 10th sale season in Dubai and in this period of time the auctions of art have realised over $215m and established 320 new world auction records for Middle Eastern artists.
The 10th sale season was marked by an extraordinary charity sale for Edge of Arabia which totaled over $1m against a pre-sale estimate of $100,000. The highlight of the six lot charity sale was Abdulnasser Gharem’s The Message/Messanger, which realised $842,000 and made him the most valuable living artist from the Gulf.
In October, Christie’s introduced a new 2-part sale format to align the sale of Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art with our general format for this category. Part I offered classical 20th century art from the region and Part II the following day concentrated on contemporary art. All 3 art sales in 2011 sold over 80 per cent by lot as this vibrant market continues to develop.
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