New York’s billion-dollar May art auctions could actually be a success

IT’S HARD to imagine less auspicious conditions for May’s New York auction season. , hobbled by high prices and , which managed to sink even lower as Mr. Trump’s tariff war seemed to whatever emerged during fairs and earlier this year.

“After the Trump election, we felt that a lot of the volatility and guesswork that had been plaguing the market was kind of settled business,” says , the executive vice-president and chairman of the Americas at ���dzٳ�����’s. “Everything was kind of going in the right direction.” But 100 days later, she says, “the kind of disruption and volatility that we saw continued, and markets do not like uncertainty. So that’s been a bit of a challenge.” (Currently, contemporary art seems to be exempt from tariffs, although it is certainly not exempt from their broader economic repercussions.)

And yet despite the many headwinds in their faces, the auction houses have managed to put together what is, under the circumstances,�� a robust sales slate. In just the single week beginning May 12, plans to sell between $600 million and $811 million worth of art. anticipates selling between $485 million and $673.5 million of art in the same week. And , the perennial bridesmaid of the contemporary auction market, anticipates selling between $74.7 million to $108.9 million. (Estimates do not include auction house fees known as buyer’s premiums, but totals do.)

“I’m feeling very, very confident about everything we have and how we priced it — and interest thus far,” Ms. Dennison says, speaking a few days before previews began. “We’re not sitting here wondering if anybody’s going to show up. We’re kind of trying to keep them out the door for a few days while we make everything look gorgeous.”

FILLING THE SALES
As always, auction houses are faced with two (oddly distinct) mandates: Finding art, and selling it.

It’s the former, auction house specialists say, that proved the toughest part of the season: With a new crisis , collectors have been understandably reluctant to submit their multimillion-dollar artwork to the mercy of the market.

“The clients that I deal with when I put together a sale are impacted by larger events in the economy,” says Alex Rotter, who was just appointed global president of ���������پ���’s. “Now, if somebody dies and it’s an estate, then it’s a very different story, because then it’s not dictated by a greater economic or any other big picture considerations.”

Accordingly, this year’s sales at ���������پ���’s and, to a lesser extent at ���dzٳ�����’s, are built around estates. ���������پ���’s has this season’s trophy, the collection of the late Barnes & Noble founder , whose 39 artworks are estimated between $252 million and $326 million — they hit the block in on May 12. “What the Riggio collection has, which is very advantageous for this market today, is a little bit of everything good,” Mr. Rotter says. “It’s almost a various owner sale put together by a collector, because it spans Surrealism to Warhol to Picasso — it’s everywhere in the 20^th ����Գٳܰ���.”

For its part, ���dzٳ�����’s has work from , along with by Roy Lichtenstein from the artist’s estate.

But estates, however robust, are not enough to fill an evening sale, let alone the week’s many day sales, which are filled with hundreds of lots apiece. Believe it or not, specialists say that there actually were living, breathing consignors who decided to pull the trigger.�� “We’re seeing discretionary selling,” says Ms. Dennison. “And there, I guess it’s a question of the financial deal and what you can say to a consigner to make it attractive.”

The most ubiquitous of these deals is what’s known as a guarantee, where either the auction house or a third party buys the work in advance in exchange for a percentage of the upside if it sells for more.

There’s also a contingent of consignors, Mr. Rotter says, who are relatively unbothered by yielding less than they might in a bull market. “People said this was a convenient time for them to sell,” he says, adding that one consignor told him “We want to sell this; it’s a beautiful painting, we enjoyed it, and it will sell for what it will sell for.”

THE MOST EXPENSIVE LOT OF THE WEEK
As always, the majority of the action will be in the evening sales. Almost certainly the most expensive lot of the week will hit the block on May 13^th at ���dzٳ�����’s, when a sculpture cast in 1955 by Alberto Giacometti, Grande tête mince, will be sold with . It joins what happens to be a preponderance of sculpture in both ���������پ���’s and ���dzٳ�����’s evening sales: ���dzٳ�����’s modern evening auction has 11 sculptures; ���������پ���’s 21^st century evening sale has 12.

Both Ms. Dennison and Mr. Rotter noted that there’s more sculpture than usual in the sales, though neither thinks that’s anything more than an accident. That said, Ms. Dennison has a theory that interest in sculpture has increased with more collectors moving into glass towers. “They have a lot of windows and not a lot of walls, and are very light sensitive,” she says. As such, “people can always find space for something on a pedestal or a coffee table or hanging from the ceiling.”

What is not accidental are collectors’ stated spending habits, which appear to be locked in. “I can’t convince anyone,” Mr. Rotter says. “I see it in the behavior of clients: They’re either 100% in, or they’re 100% out, there’s no ‘Ohhh, I’ll just buy the weaker one,’ which I’ve seen in markets where you can sell anything.” — Bloomberg