Christie’s London, 8 King Street, St. James’s, SW1Y 6QT
www.christies.com Instagram: @christiesinc
Auction houses operate as galleries of a sort, and can present shows – typically short-lived – rather different from what one would find elsewhere. Go to Christie’s in New York at the moment, and that roves controversial: its ‘Augmented Intelligence auction’, described as the first AI-dedicated sale by a major auctioneer , has attracted a 3,000 signature request for cancellation on the grounds that tech firms’ image generation tools have used artists’ work without permission. London is more traditional. This week you can catch an exhibition of drawings by Louis Pohl Koseda, presented because he won the £15,000 Christie’s Drawing Award; a room of 18 photographs from the 90’s by Wolfgang Tillmans, arranged in his manner, though presumably without his direct involvement; and the 241-lot collection of the late Barry Humphries (1934-2023).
If the first two are along conventional lines, the third is not. It mixes the accoutrements of his stage persona (the vulgarly baroque spectacles and spectacular dresses of Edna Everidge) with his library as well as his art collection. That includes several of his own colourful landscape paintings, and plenty of his favourite painter, the Australian impressionist Charles Conder (1868-1909). He didn’t make much of an impression on me, but I enjoyed the eclectic mix of mainly-European works from Humphries’ favoured period of 1890-1920, such as the Austrian Art Nouveau painter Hanns Pellar (1886-1971). What I say, incidentally, also applies to the other leading auction houses represented in London. They’re not particularly equal, by the way: revenues have fallen recently, but the last available year’s figures – 2023 – show worldwide turnover of $7.9bn for Sotheby’s, $6.2bn for Christie’s, $1.4bn for Bonham’s and $1.0bn for Phillips. Not that Phillips is small: Gagosian is estimated to turn over a similar amount.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
