A fine-art auction at a major auction house is nothing but a thrill.
There’s the dizzying parade of art onstage, the lightning-fast action of the auctioneer, the rising excitement in the room as prices hit new heights. Yet it’s one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to acquire new art for your home, with a cadre of experts ready to enlighten, educate, and assist in building a collection. We spoke with the head of American Art at Christie’s, Elizabeth Beaman, who helped us understand the value of the secondary market to new art enthusiasts.
Mansion Global: What are the advantages of buying at auction?
Elizabeth Beaman: There's an intimidation factor with auctions, unfortunately. But I think the benefit of the auction process is the transparency that it offers. For one thing, there's no hierarchy among collectors. We put all of the material up and the highest bid wins. There's a phenomenon going on, more so in the contemporary market than the American market, where you'll have people ready and willing to buy a work of art from a gallery, and it's, "No, get in line. There are 40 people ahead of you and you'll never get this piece." Auctions are the great equalizer from that standpoint—anyone can participate in the sales.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about the auction process is that you need to make an appointment in advance to come in and see the exhibition, or to speak with a specialist—you don’t! In the five days leading up to a sale, we put everything on view that we're going to sell. All of the specialists are there on the exhibition floor armed with not only all of the information that we've compiled for the catalog, but often other information that isn't readily published, whether it be an anecdote they've learned from visiting the person who's consigned the work, or detailed information about the condition. We're able to provide comparables to help clients understand how we have arrived at the estimate that we've published, and really compare and contrast other examples that have come up at auction. These sort of specialist teams are an invaluable resource and wholly available to anyone who asks.
Another way to look at it is we're an incredible free and open-to-the-public museum. There's absolutely no entry charge to come into our galleries at Christie’s. Every week, at least during the high season, you'll have an entirely new set of objects: decorative art and jewelry, American paintings, European paintings, contemporary paintings.
MG: As a specialist in American art, are you seeing international buyers for your American sales?
EB: Yes, and I would say I expect those numbers to only grow. Right now it's relatively modest in terms of numbers of foreign collectors, but that said, those collectors tend to participate in a very major way. There are four primary artists who have really attracted an international audience: Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe. In 2013, for example, there was an exhibit of Edward Hopper at the Grand Palais in Paris, and it was one of the best-attended exhibits in history of the museum.
MG: On the secondary market, provenance (previous ownership) and exhibition history is a big deal. Can you talk about the added value of where a painting has been shown and who has owned it?
EB: If a work has been requested for a major retrospective of a particular artist, that's the sort of thing that collectors really like to see. It's a stamp of validation for that work and how it relates to the rest of the artist's oeuvre.
Provenance can be quite important to collectors, some more so than others. Though we don't typically factor it into a presale auction estimate, we've undoubtedly seen time and time again the impact that it will have on the ultimate selling price. Our next major American art sale is Nov. 22nd—we are still actively gathering properties for that sale, but we've got a major collection of American impressionism committed already, with a wonderful Childe Hassam that formerly hung in the Kennedy Oval Office.