Things could have been a lot worse but for the landmark Yves St Laurent sale across three days in Paris in February. The biggest auction globally since the millennium, it totalled £304.9m ($443.1m), making Paris the firm’s top-performing centre for the first half of this year. The result is that Christie’s are claiming a 61 per cent global share of auctions for the period.
Among the wealth of statistics the company have released are those linked to their online bidding service LIVETM, which they report brought them 29 per cent of all bidders in the first half of the year.
As previously reported, Christie’s do not report turnover or profit because they are not a publicly quoted company, but sales totals give some indication of performance across their various rooms.
The St Laurent result aside, King Street remains their most important saleroom in Europe, with a six-month sales total of £225m ($337.5m), while South Kensington contributed £33.6m ($50.3m). The company’s US operation notched up £308.6m ($462.9m) for the period, while Hong Kong contributed £86.3m ($129.4m).
Taking the results by discipline, Impressionist and Modern art was the biggest single contributor globally, accounting for £413.8m ($620.7m) in sales, followed by contemporary art at £128.2m ($192.3m). Next came Asian art at £111.3m ($166.9m).
