Christie’s owner Francois Pinault opens his palace of art
There is an obvious significance to the Parisian building in which Fran?ois Pinault, the French luxury-goods magnate, has opened his gallery. The Bourse de Commerce is a former commodities exchange in the heart of the city, and therefore could not be more appropriate for a man who has owned Christie's, one of the world's two premier auction houses, since 1998.
In the contemporary art market, what Pinault buys, others will too, and when he ups the price, they will follow again. Among his lucrative auction sales in the early 2000s were a Mark Rothko abstract for ￡16.4 million, an Andy Warhol flowers painting for ￡7.8 million and a Jasper Johns sculpture for a record ￡3.9 million. At the same time, he paid record prices for Bruce Nauman (￡9.9 million), Donald Judd (￡4.6 million) and Damien Hirst (￡1.24 million).
While these greatest hits are not in his gallery's opening exhibition, Ouverture (now open), it does exclusively cover artists that have either been recognised in the past, are being fêted or are worth placing a bet on.
In the first group, we have Maurizio Cattelan's taxidermied pigeons, first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1997. Judging by auction sales, the price per pigeon advanced from $10,000 in 2001 to $53,000 by 2011. They are probably worth much more today, another 10 years on, and if you look up at the ceiling at the Bourse, you'll see 52 of them.
Also in this group is Peter Doig's Red Canoe, for which Pinault paid ￡1.76 million at Christie's in 2013, and Rudolf Stingel's captivating portrait of Paula Cooper, the New York dealer, which Pinault bought in 2012 at Art Basel where it was priced at $3 million.
In the second group, we have figurative African-diaspora artists who are taking the market by storm, such as Kerry James Marshall and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who sell for millions. And in the third is France's most successful young artist, Claire Tabouret (born 1981), whose market took off after Pinault first acquired her work eight years ago.
After that, she said, her paintings, based on memories of childhood, sold like hot cakes. "Things were chained in a hectic way," she said, "and I was able to exhibit in large galleries." Now with a thriving market in Asia, her prices have risen to ￡622,500 at auction earlier this year.
Also in this third group is the equally young Brazilian figurative painter Ant?nio Obá (born 1983), with Sesta (2019). Two years ago, the work was shown at the Paris contemporary art fair, FIAC, priced at €7,500 to €30,000. That price will probably be exceeded after Obá's exposure in Pinault's show.
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