Christie’s International has assembled $350 million of art in Abu Dhabi, combining highlights from its Oct. 30 auction in nearby Dubai with a Rothko, a Bacon and two Monet works as it seeks to woo emerging-market buyers.
Christie’s is betting that cash from emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Russia will stop the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression from triggering a similar slump in the art market.
The size of the Abu Dhabi exhibition “gives you some idea of the growth and our belief that it will be consistently maintained over the next period”, said Jussi Pylkkanen, chairman of Christie’s Europe, in a telephone interview. “There’s no other way we’d be bringing $350 million worth of art to the Middle East”.
Contemporary-art auctions in London by Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Co. between Oct. 17 and 19 made a combined 59 million pounds ($91 million), against minimum estimates of 106.2 million pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations.
“There’s certainly an adjustment, but in the early 1990s, we didn’t have the breadth of buying that we have today”, said Pylkkanen. “Then the top of the market was very much driven by Japanese and there was nobody else around them and the truth is that today’s art market is a very global one”. (Bloomberg)