Top auction houses to put art market rally to test

AUCTION houses pinching themselves after bumper 2011 sales are now turning their attention to 2012, amid cautious optimism that the two-year bull run for top works of art will continue.

Sotheby's and Christie's, the world's leading auctioneers, hold a series of big sales in London over the next two weeks at which the old rivals expect to raise more than £500 million (around US$800 million).

Super-wealthy collectors from China have joined the art elite, which now unites established markets like the United States and Europe with relative newcomers from Russia, India, the Middle East and beyond.

Booming art demand from China may cool off, however, with recent rapid growth seen as unsustainable in the short term.

Among the London highlights is Christie's "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" by Francis Bacon, which is expected to fetch around £18 million (around US$28 million) on February 14.

The record for the artist stands at US$86.3 million set by Sotheby's in New York in 2008 for a triptych.

A week earlier, at its main impressionist, modern and surrealist auction, Christie's hopes to raise between £12 and £18 million for Juan Gris's Cubist still life "Le Livre" and £6 to £9 million for Joan Miro's "Painting-Poem".

On February 8 at Sotheby's another important Miro goes under the hammer, "Peinture", estimated to be worth £7 to £10 million and not far off the artist's auction record of US$17.1 million set at Christie's in New York in May, 2008. Several works by Gerhard Richter, both abstract and figurative, feature at Sotheby's contemporary art sale alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Orange Sports Figure" valued at £3 to £4 million.

Reuters