The inevitable is now the actual- Christie’s has announced retrenchment in its sales activities, with staff and departmental reductions in its South Kensington salesrooms. Ostensibly a sign of the times, Christie’s South Ken had expanded its sales, if not its actual physical plant, in order to become a retail player in the antiques and decorative arts market. Christie’s website, redesigned a little less than a year ago, is, as well, retail oriented, in the manner of eBay- designed to track lots with an eye to eventual purchase. Between ourselves, the site has become a bear to use- slow to load and cumbersome to navigate. With all that, Christie’s had an eye toward the occasional retail buyer, offering auctions even on a Sunday for the ease of younger buyers.
It is difficult to tell how successful Christie’s has actually been, in that, with the global economic slowdown, their business overall has slowed. That both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have had significant cash drains the result of very high end guaranteed lots that did not perform to estimate is well known, but the lower end of their business has some very high direct selling costs, too, witness the production of frequently issued, magazine format catalogs, and doubtless significantly more staff to cover the extended opening hours. Also, I doubt that they formerly, on Saturdays and Sundays, kept all the lights burning. Sotheby’s faced the music nearly two years ago, closing their second tier London sales room at Olympia.
At almost the same time, a couple of the best antiques and art fair promoters have announced the cancellation of some very good fairs, possibly the most prominent being the Asian art fair organized for a number of years at the Park Avenue armory by Brian Haughton. A real loss, as this has been the eastern art equivalent of TEFAF Maastricht. But, 30 dealers- the paltry number committed- does not a show make, certainly in a venue as expensive as one on the Upper East Side. At the end of the day, though, dealers have to know they are going to make money at a fair, and, if the performance of the fair has been less than stellar, it is unlikely, times being the way they are, that a dealer is willing to roll the dice. A very good dealer whose name, since I haven’t asked his permission to use it shall therefore remain anonymous, conjectures that, to have it considered as a good fair, a dealer should sell in the range of 10 times the amount of his stand rental. Assuming the stand rental is in the range of $25,000- well, you can do the math, but the $250,000 goal in better times might be now rather hard to achieve during the run of a 4, 5, or even 6 day show.