Iwan Wirth said sales at the fair supported his belief in the art market’s resilience, but other dynamics are also in play.
Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s booth at Art Basel 2024 (13–16 June 2024). Courtesy Art Basel.
Hauser & Wirth‘s Iwan Wirth circulated an unusually worded statement to the press this week after racking up sales at Art Basel in Basel.
‘[Despite] the “doom porn” currently circulating in the art press and along gossip grapevines, we are very confident in the art market’s resilience and the first day of Art Basel has confirmed our perspective,’ he said.
Relieved galleries instead shared the regular sales porn resulting from what many have described as a successful fair.
Hauser & Wirth sold dozens of works on day one. Arshile Gorky‘s charcoal and pastel on paper Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)) (ca. 1946–1947) went for U.S. $16 million and Blinky Palermo‘s acrylic and cardboard on aluminium Ohne Titel (Untitled) (1975) for around $4 million.
On day two, they sold Georgia O’Keeffe‘s Sky with Moon (1966) for $13.5 million and Philip Guston‘s Orders (1978) for $10 million, among other works.
David Zwirner likewise reported seven and eight-figure sales beginning on opening day with Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023) by art market golden goose Yayoi Kusama for $5 million. The work featured in the fair’s ‘Unlimited’ sector.
Yayoi Kusama, Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023) at Art Basel Unlimited 2024 (13–16 June 2024). Courtesy Art Basel.
By the end of day two they had reported sales of another 17 works, including Joan Mitchell‘s Sunflowers (1990–1991) for $20 million and an untitled painting by the same artist for $1.3 million. Zwirner also sold two Josef Albers works for over a million and Gerhard Richter‘s Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) (2016) for $6 million.
Notable sales at Pace Gallery include Torkwase Dyson‘s Errantry (2024)—also in Unlimited—to the Inhotim Museum in Brazil for $380,000 and three editions of Jean Dubuffet‘s Banc-Salon (1970–2024) for $865,000 each.
Thaddaeus Ropac sold Robert Rauschenberg‘s silkscreen ink, acrylic, fabric, and gold leaf on canvas Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985) for $3.85 million, and at least four works by Georg Baselitz for prices ranging from EUR 1 million to 2 million.
White Cube sold works including Julie Mehretu‘s Untitled 2 (1999) for $6.75 million, Mark Bradford‘s Clowns Travel Through Wires (2013) for $4.5 million, and Jeff Wall‘s The Storyteller (1986) for $2.85 million.
The figures included only represent a small selection of works that sold towards the high end.
Even among blue-chip galleries, sales aren’t always shared. Gagosian, for instance, had not shared sales figures with Ocula at the time of writing, though they reported sales by dozens of artists.
In his art market newsletter Wall Power, Marion Maneker said he wasn’t surprised to see galleries doing well.
‘The auction houses are scaling back, and there is traditionally a cycle where sales oscillate between private transactions and public auctions,’ he said.
‘When prices are stable or going down, it is often easier for buyers and sellers to transact through galleries; when the market is rising, works go to auction for price discovery.’
Writing for The Art Newspaper, Tim Schneider observed that while works were selling at the fair, that didn’t rule out a market downturn.
To generate sales, Steve Henry, senior partner at Paula Cooper Gallery, told him, ‘Everyone is working twice as hard.’ —[O]
