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Christmas is nearly right here, which suggests Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti did his finest to deliver festive cheer by crunching the public sale home’s 2024’s numbers throughout his end-of-year press convention Tuesday. Cerutti mentioned the home’s projected gross sales for this yr complete $5.7 billion throughout each artwork and luxurious, round an 8 % drop from final yr’s complete $6.2 billion.
Throughout Tuesday’s Zoom presser, Cerutti rehashed the rhetoric he utilized in July, when he described the market panorama as regularly “difficult.” “Regardless of a difficult setting for the artwork market, this yr has been a productive one for Christie’s,” he mentioned Tuesday. “We stay up for 2025 with confidence.” Cerutti argued that, regardless of the lowered complete, underlying efficiency indicators have been confirmed sturdy fundamentals. “Our key efficiency indicators of general promote via fee of 86 %, hammer vs. low estimate index at 112 %, and bidders per lot of three.7 confirmed progress year-over-year,” he mentioned.
Christie’s fortunes have improved because the yr has progressed, according to the encouraging outcomes at Frieze London and Artwork Paris Basel in October. The home introduced in $486 million from its twentieth century night public sale throughout its marquee New York gross sales in November. That included the sale of this yr’s Most worthy work bought at public sale—René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1954) for $121 million. In truth, it was the one work to high $100 million over the past 12 months. The identical night, Ed Ruscha’s 1964 Commonplace Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, bought for greater than $68 million, a brand new public sale file for the artist. (Artnet‘s Kenny Schacher reported that the client was none aside from Amazon founder and spaceman Jeff Bezos.)
Christie’s didn’t solely promote the costliest portray of the yr, it additionally bought 2024’s Most worthy jewel, Cerutti mentioned proudly. The Eden Rose, a ten.2-carat pink diamond, went for $13.4 million in New York in June—that Magnificent Jewels sale achieved a complete of $44.4 million, with 90 % of the 144 heaps bought. Following on from this, the December luxurious gross sales in New York have been led by one other Magnificent Jewels public sale totaling $49.2 million with 97 % of heaps bought.
It was no shock that Cerutti’s focus was on the tail finish of 2024; in July, Christie’s reported that it generated $2.1 billion in reside and on-line public sale gross sales within the first half of 2024, a 22 % drop from the identical interval final yr. Within the first half of 2023, Christie’s introduced in $2.7 billion in reside and on-line public sale gross sales. That determine was already down 23 % from the $3.5 billion generated throughout the identical interval in 2022.
Regardless of not releasing its personal gross sales figures in July, Christie’s CEO reported on Tuesday that they’ve grown by 41 % to $1.5 billion over the past yr, contributing 27 % to the home’s general gross sales. (Final yr’s personal gross sales complete was $1.2 billion.)
The Americas contributed 42 % to world public sale gross sales, with new purchaser numbers up 18 % for twentieth/twenty first century artwork. Not solely this, however greater than 1 / 4 of Christie’s patrons and bidders within the area are millennials or youthful. That is maybe no shock, given 30 % of the home’s shoppers are actually 43 or youthful. The shifting demographics could be why 81 % of 2024’s bids have been positioned on-line.
Cerutti additionally famous that in London, the variety of bidders and patrons rose by 15 %, with new patrons up 29 %. This regardless of Christie’s wiping its June night sale in London off the calendar.
