Sotheby's Simon Shaw and Emmanuel Di Donna hang Modigliani

Link to Bloomberg story here.

By Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff

May 6 (Bloomberg) — Asian buyers won four of the top ten lots last night in New York, as Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art tally tripled to $195.7 million from a year ago.

The evening’s highest price, $28.6 million, was for a floral 1919 Matisse, “Bouquet de fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet.” A day earlier, rival auction house Christie’s International took a record $106.5 million for a Picasso in an Impressionist and modern sale that totaled $335.5 million.

“Wealthy investors can see the rebound is real,” said John Rogers Jr., chief executive of Chicago-based Ariel Investments, which held 3.2 million Sotheby’s shares at year-end. “This is a confidence game. They’re more confident,” he said after watching last night’s auction with his 20-year-old daughter, Victoria, an art-history major at Yale University.

The Impressionist evening auctions keep the market on track for a predicted $1.2 billion of spring art sales in New York over two weeks and provide momentum for next week’s contemporary art bidding. Sotheby’s shares have more than quadrupled since their March 2009 lows as the art market rebounded.

Most of the action at Sotheby’s took place on the phones, sapping the energy from the sedate salesroom. Collectors, including jeweler Laurence Graff and Boston money manager Scott Black, craned their necks, watching slow-paced phone bidding.

Asians bought four of the ten priciest lots, said Simon Shaw, head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art in New York.

“Historically art follows the money and the money is in emerging wealth,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, Senior Vice President of Citigroup Art Advisory Service, referring to collectors from Russia, China and the Middle East. “These paintings follow the wealth.”

Stocks Drop

Sotheby’s sold 50 of 57 lots on offer. Dealers called it a strong result, hours after the MSCI World Index of 23 developed nations’ stocks fell 1.2 percent, erasing its 2010 gain. The index is still up 23 percent in the past year. Most big lots sold near presale projections.

“The amount of wealth is so great, they don’t get impacted by the blips,” Citigroup’s Gyorgy said.
Henri Matisse’s “Bouquet de fleurs,” with a high presale estimate of $25 million, had been off the market for 28 years. The European seller was Viviane Jutheau de Witt, according to Sotheby’s. Paris auctioneer Hotel Drouot sold it in 1982 for $1.5 million, then a record for an artwork bought in France.
The painting reflects Matisse’s obsession with color and pattern. He made the work in his Nice studio, featuring a bouquet of wildflowers on a wooden table, arranged before a wall hung with a blue and white fabric.

Bronze Buyer

An unnamed collector, bidding through a Sotheby’s representative wielding paddle number 25, bought virtually every bronze on offer, spending $21.9 million during the sale on three statues by Auguste Rodin and a sexy nude by Isamu Noguchi.

“It seemed like there were three phone bidders and they were buying everything,” said art adviser Gregory Kuharic. “There wasn’t much pinging and ponging in the salesroom.”
An archetypal 1890 bucolic Claude Monet containing his signature haystacks, “Effet de Printemps a Giverny,” sold for $15.2 million. The high estimate was $15 million. Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, bought it on behalf of an Asian collector.

Amedeo Modigliani’s almond-eyed long-necked portraits of his muse, “Jeanne Hebuterne au Collier,” sold for $13.8 million, just topping the $12 million presale high estimate. One of the earliest portraits the artist painted of his future wife, the 1916-1917 canvas sold to the head of Sotheby’s Japan office, Yasuaki Ishizaka, executing bids on behalf of a Japanese collector.

Kennedy’s Picasso

The sale included a Picasso with a bold-face provenance. The cartoonish 1965 “Femme au Grand Chapeau” was estimated to sell for up to $12 million, making $9.3 million on thin bidding.
It was sold by the estate of Patricia Kennedy Lawford, sister of President John F. Kennedy. She visited the artist in his studio in the 1960s and picked out her painting. The thickly painted canvas, inspired by Pablo

Picasso’s final paramour Jacqueline, depicts a jaunty topless woman, topped by a whimsical hat.
Sculpture provided some of the best drama. “Undine (Nadja)” an unusual 1926-1927 bronze of a nude by Isamu Noguchi, better known for his abstract works, sold for $4.2 million, above the $900,000 presale estimate. The pulchritudinous figure was based on a Russian dancer known for her “Serpent” dance, according to Sotheby’s. She and Noguchi were thought to be romantically linked.