New life for a venerable brand

There could be a second life for the venerable Marlborough galleries, which last year began the process of winding down operations. Art market rumours are that Thomas Goode & Co, a Mayfair high-end tableware company, is close to buying the London, New York and Spain gallery business. Well-placed sources say that as well as Marlborough’s galleries, which continue to trade, the acquisition would include their substantial inventory of more than 15,000 works of fine art. The total valuation is rumoured at around $250m. 

Thomas Goode & Co is owned by Johnny Sandelson, a property entrepreneur who in 2018 bought and revived the British Art Fair, alongside his brother Robert Sandelson. Marlborough was founded in London in 1946 and in its heyday was one of the first transatlantic mega-galleries, representing artists such as Francis Bacon and Barbara Hepworth. More recently, family in-fighting seemed to have torn the business apart but new ownership could offer a fresh chance for the respected gallery brand.

Johnny Sandelson and Stanley Bergman, Marlborough’s representative and trustee, declined to comment.

It was only a matter of time before more established contemporary artists got in on the act to make Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the digital distribution system that has become the latest art market craze. Ten artists, including Petra Cortright, Shepard Fairey and the collective Universal Everything, will offer their first and unique NFTs in partnership with Verisart, a blockchain certification platform, and the specialist marketplace SuperRare. The series, called 10×10, offers each work for a weekly 72-hour auction, for 10 weeks.

First to “drop” on March 1 (visual artists now drop their work in the same way as musicians drop albums) was the French-Algerian artist Neïl Beloufa with a work that is part of a real life exhibition, due to open at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca foundation this week but forced to close because of the Covid-19 pandemic. At time of writing, Beloufa’s NFT had reached 3.6 of the digital currency ether ($5,700) with two more days to run. 

Each work comes with a digital certificate of authenticity. This, notes Robert Norton, the chief executive and co-founder of Verisart, is vital in such a fast-moving, tech-based field. At the end of February, an NFT work that looked like a Banksy had to be dismissed by the artist’s authentication body.

Meanwhile, an NFT by Beeple, one of the most successful digital artists in this field, had reached $3m on Christie’s online by March 2. The work had opened at $100 on February 25 and the auction runs until March 11. Norton acknowledges that the current price inflation of NFTs is “unsustainable” but says that “Art on the blockchain is a powerful form of distribution and is here to stay.”

Today’s pricey digital artists have some stiff competition — in the unlikely form of Sir Winston Churchill. Works by the late prime minister and amateur painter soared to new heights as Christie’s broke his auction record twice on March 1. This was for his “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” (1943), from the collection of the actress Angelina Jolie, which sold for £7m (£8.3m with fees, est £1.5m-£2.5m) and his “Scene at Marrakech” (c1935), for £1.55m (£1.9m with fees, est £300,000-£500,000). A third painting, of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, also sold above estimate for £880,000 (£1.1m with fees, 1927). All three works went to the same anonymous telephone buyer at the lively, livestreamed sale. Christie’s confirms that, as a British artist who died within the past 70 years, Churchill’s estate qualifies for the Artist Resale Royalty—capped at €12,500 per work.

The Modern British auction surpassed expectations overall, making £21.1m (£25.6m with fees, est £9.2m-£14.2m). No works were withdrawn and only one out of 34 went unsold. A preceding, dedicated sale of eight works on paper offered in New York by the family of the art dealer Thomas Gibson also sold well, making a within estimate total of $21m ($25.3m with fees). These were topped by Vincent van Gogh’s “La Mousmé” (1888), bought by Dickinson gallery for a fee-inclusive $10.4m — the equivalent of £7.5m, so not quite as much as a Churchill.

The Austrian abstract painter Martha Jungwirth has joined Thaddaeus Ropac gallery and is due to have a show of new work in his central Paris gallery in September. Jungwirth, 81, has recently emerged from a period of relative obscurity and has been championed by artists including Albert Oehlen and Daniel Richter. She previously worked with Galerie Krinzinger in her hometown of Vienna and recently joined forces with other galleries around the world, including Stuart Shave’s Modern Art in London. She has now decided to simplify her representation, Ropac says. His gallery’s international profile was an important part of her decision, he adds, but admits that his Austrian roots helped too. “We have a similar cultural background and it’s good to speak to her in German. Everyone in Austria knows who she is but we want to grow her reputation geographically,” Ropac says.

If there was ever a good time for an art fair’s Online Viewing Room (OVR) then Fiac, which hosts 211 galleries virtually through this weekend, may have found it. Such platforms have been relatively few and far between since early December and avoiding digital fair fatigue was something that Jennifer Flay, director of Fiac, had in mind.

“We weren’t quite ready to go when the fair normally would run [in October] but that gave us time to assess what was and wasn’t working. We also checked with other art fair organisers and early Spring seemed like a good, quiet time,” she says.

Organisers have also identified and addressed the lack of serendipity on such websites and added a “Rencontre Fortuite” (Chance Encounter) button, which randomly selects one of the 2,000-plus works and injects some welcome playfulness on a good-looking site. Hauser & Wirth reported more than $5m of sales on VIP day, including new paintings by George Condo and Charles Gaines. Fiac online runs from March 4-7 (fiac.com).

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