Guffwatch - have we reached peak Koons?
November 18 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
Despite the headlines around Christie's $852m contemporary sale last week, it seems there are one or two stories that got buried amongst the hype.
The first is that, according to The Art Newspaper, almost half the lots in the sale were guaranteed lots. Therefore, we might be entitled to ask whether the sale really did total $852m, given that sometimes the price paid for a guaranteed lot is actually less than the 'price' reported by the auction house. For a recap on how the guarantee system works, see here.
Secondly, it was interesting to see the re-emergence of Jeff Koons' 'Pink Panther', which sold for $15.8m, against an estimate of $8m-$12m. This figure, however, represented a loss on the last time 'Pink Panther' sold, at Sotheby's in 2011 for $16.8m.
Regular readers may remember that back then, the 'Pink Panther' was the subject of more than one Guffwatch (here, and here, where Koons says the piece is 'all about masturbation'), after Sotheby's gave it the full Guff treatment when they estimated the work at $20m-$30m. Then, Sotheby's said that it was one of the greatest works of contemporary art ever created:
'Representing the highest tier of Jeff Koons' artistic achievement, Pink Panther is immediately identifiable as a masterpiece not only of the artist's historical canon, but also of the epoch of recent Contemporary Art...
The 'Pink Panther' was apparently underbid on this occasion by the mega dealer Larry Gagosian. It seems, though I can't be sure, that the buyer at Sotheby's in 2011 was the guarantor, in which case it's a rarely open example of someone taking a hit on Koons. There's three other examples out there too, so if you've got one, don't hold out too much hope for it.
Anyway, might the fact that the 'Pink Panther' struggled to get away for anything like its previously hyped level suggest that the market's wider enthusiasm for Koons isn't as great as we've been led to believe?
