Frieze buys The Armory Show and Expo Chicago fairs

The ambitious art fair franchise Frieze will add two big-brand US events to its portfolio — New York’s The Armory Show, which it has already acquired, and Expo Chicago, whose sale is due to close next month.

The deals mark a major consolidation move in the industry as it adjusts after the pandemic, and they take Frieze’s tally of fairs to seven worldwide. These include four in the US, underlining the continued clout of the continent in the global art market. “We had felt we could make a bigger impact in the US and were delighted to take these opportunities,” says chief executive Simon Fox. Frieze launched its existing New York edition in 2012 and in Los Angeles in 2019.

Fox says the two New York fairs should “complement each other rather than compete”. The larger-scale Armory Show caters to a more US-focused crowd and runs during New York’s busy art season in September, while the higher-wattage Frieze New York coincides with the major auction weeks in May.

Financial terms of the acquisitions have not been disclosed, but Frieze, majority owned by the entertainment conglomerate Endeavor since 2016, confirms that the additional fairs have been bought outright and will keep their existing brands, venues and teams. “We’re not coming in to change things, but to strengthen them,” Fox says, though he admits that putting “a little distance” between Frieze’s currently clashing Seoul edition and The Armory Show could be “logistically useful down the line.”

The Armory Show, founded by gallerists in 1994, has been bought from the real estate giant Vornado, and has been directed by Nicole Berry since 2017. Expo Chicago, whose roots are in the first stateside international fair founded in 1980, has been revitalised since owner-director Tony Karman took over in 2012. Its acquisition would mark something of a homecoming for Endeavor’s Chicago-raised chief executive, Ari Emanuel.

“Down but not yet out” is the conclusion of ArtTactic’s report on global auction sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips for the first half of this year, which combined fell 18.2 per cent on 2022. Total sales of $5.8bn are still above those recorded in the equivalent periods of 2021 and 2019, the report notes, with luxury categories such as jewellery and watches picking up some slack from fine art.

The number of sales is up — from 419 in the first half of 2022 to 452 this year — but average prices fell, from $139,173 to $109,485, a dynamic also evident in the gallery sector. Auction sales in New York and London, where the bulk of fine art is offered, fell 22 and 25 per cent respectively, while in Paris, which had benefited from a post-Brexit bounce, auction sales were down 36 per cent. Zurich and Geneva, hotspots for jewellery, posted year-on-year gains of 121 and 100 per cent respectively.

Christie’s confirms that its auctions fell 24 per cent and private sales 19 per cent in what chief executive Guillaume Cerutti describes as “a more challenging macro environment”. He notes that the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to “abnormal” years — weak in 2020 and subsequently inflated — but that 2023 has so far been “solid”.

Bucking the trend — and not included in the ArtTactic report — was the middle-market player Bonhams, where sales were up 32 per cent to $552mn (20 per cent excluding acquisitions made in 2022), the auction house’s best first half in its 230-year history.

Damien Hirst’s latest paintings go on view for the first time at Phillips in London next week (July 20-August 18). The showing of 102 works consists of three series: Coast Paintings ($100,000-$1.3mn), which began life on the floor of Hirst’s studio catching paint splashes; Sea Paintings ($350,000-$550,000), grey-scale works meticulously copied from photographs by Hirst’s assistants (trained by the artist, Hirst confirms); and Seascapes ($350,000-$550,000), which overlay the Sea Paintings imagery with Hirst’s own splatters.

The showing at Phillips came about “organically”, says Cheyenne Westphal, the auction house’s global chair, who has known the artist since his Pharmacy restaurant sale at Sotheby’s in 2004. The works are offered through Heni Primary, a branch of the artist’s publishers, and the exhibition is held “with the support of the artist’s galleries, Gagosian and White Cube,” a Heni statement says.

A taste for figurative art has filtered from the contemporary market into Old Masters as portraits and biblical scenes proved better sellers than still-life paintings in last week’s London sales. The seasonal trend was most obvious at Sotheby’s evening sale on July 5, where seven of 17 unsold works were still-lifes. The 49 works offered, dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries, made £32.7mn (£39mn with fees), just below their £34.8mn-£49.4mn pre-sale estimate. Generating the most excitement was a contemporaneous portrait of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife, attributed to Master John and dated c1547-48. This sold far ahead of its £600,000-£800,000 estimate for £2.8mn (£3.4mn with fees), a record for a Tudor painting.

Christie’s had the stronger equivalent sale this season, making a total £44.6mn (£53.9mn with fees) on July 6, the high end of its £30.9mn-£46.2mn estimate and the auction house’s best result in this category in London since 2016. Its star lot of 38 offered was a recently discovered and dramatic depiction of his studio by the Flemish artist Michael Sweerts (1618-64), which proved the top-priced painting of the season when it sold for £10.7mn (£12.6mn with fees, est £2mn-£3mn). For its Classic Week series of sales, Christie’s reported that 36 per cent of new registrants were millennials.

The Volta Art Fairs, which run satellite editions in Basel and New York, have appointed contemporary art consultant Lee Cavaliere as artistic director, replacing Kamiar Maleki who left to run Photo London this year. Cavaliere, who has worked in the commercial and museum fields, promises “to keep things fresh” at Volta, including a VIP programme that runs beyond the confines of the fairs.

“We want to offer gallery and studio visits all year round,” he says. For the fairs, he says that the secret sauce will be to have exhibitors with “young, hungry and slightly dangerous” programmes while maintaining the support of those galleries who have been loyal since Volta started in 2005. Volta has been owned by Ramsay Fairs since 2019.

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