Buyers eagerly await the next masterpiece to go on sale
The world record £65 million or $104.3 million paid anonymously at Sotheby's last night for a work of art is easily explained. It is about that special problem of the super-rich which does not worry ordinary humanity: where to park their wealth.
Leaving money in banks which pay under one per cent per annum for cash is not even an option for billionaires. Putting it on Wall Street or the FTSE has handed as much misery as reward to investors since 2005.
But buying up undisputed art masterpieces like Sotheby's Giacometti is a guarantee of strong capital growth and high return. Walking Man I had it all. It was by far the dearest of Giacometti's sculptures at auction in the Eighties when the other version sold for £3.74 million in 1988. Among the Swiss sculptor's works, it is revered. It is a rare lifetime cast from Giacometti's own hand. It is lifesize, just one of two made on this scale (for the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York). It will always be popular and will always attract ready buyers, for it is easy on the eye and easily understood.
The enormous price promises this year to stimulate other owners of top Impressionist and Modern art works around the world to unclench what they've got.
Buyers from the UK, Europe, Russia, China and the US showed last year that they are awash with money for art. The problem in 2009 was that art owners proved reluctant to sell.
"The climate is changing. Sellers have got their confidence back," asserted auctioneer and Sotheby's chairman Henry Wyndham after the sale.
More than a few bidders at New Bond Street agreed with him. Chelsea dealer in Impressionist and Modern Art Ivor Braka declared the Giacometti price "a marvel" and predicted: "What happened tonight is going to tempt a lot of people to sell top things at auction. It refreshes the appetite of the market." Mayfair colleague Richard Nagy added: "There's money dammed up out there looking for masterpieces to spend it on. It's going to be different from here on."
