a legacy of style

Despite the challenges of the wider economic environment, recent history has proven that works from exceptional art collections continue to capture the eye and imagination of devoted collectors around the world.

David Hockney: Beverly Hills Housewife

Netting more than $483 million, the Christie's auction of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergá, held in February in Paris, was the most successful single-owner sale in European auction history, and perhaps more significantly
demonstrated that collectors continue to seize opportunities to add unique works of art to their collections in the spirit of acquiring the rare and beautiful. Since the financial market tumble, many have speculated that the days of nine-figure art sales are over; however, this recent recordbreaking auction realized nearly half a billion dollars, a spectacular achievement at any time.

"Christie's has a great deal of experience handling the legacies of some of history's most culturally relevant individuals since the days of James Christie, who famously auctioned property belonging to Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry soon after the French Revolution," says Marc Porter, president of Christie's Americas. Collections with either an attached prestigious name or a connoisseur's stamp of approval have an added premium, and results garnered for them demonstrate that collectors with the passion and the means respond when works of great quality come to market. Victor and Sally Ganz, a modest Manhattan couple, sold their phenomenal art collection at Christie's for $206.5 million in 1997; British philanthropist Simon Sainsbury's collection fetched $32.2 million in June 2008; and the sale of four Gustav Klimt paintings restituted to the heirs of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, one of the most fervently awaited events in art market history, achieved $192.7 million in November 2006. Part of the wider Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie's, it went on to become the most expensive auction ever staged, at $491,472,000.

More recently, the collection of the esteemed philanthropist Betty Freeman became one of the most coveted to come onto the radar of postwar and contemporary art collectors. Betty Freeman's passion for all things modern led her to forge friendships and acquire the works of contemporary masters including Roy Lichtenstein, Sam Francis, Dan Flavin, David Hockney, Walter De Maria, and Andy Warhol. She had been quoted as saying that she aspired to have a work by Dan Flavin in every room in her house. Indeed, she came very close, for her collection boasted five glorious works by Flavin, including "Monument" for V. Tatlin, which she described in a letter to the artist as "a shining diamond in my entry hall."

The tastemakers who formed these awe-inspiring collections often had one driving quality with which they built their collection. For Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergá, that quality was an eye for esteemed provenance; for Betty Freeman, it was the desire for modernity and minimalism; and for Simon Sainsbury, it was the vision to construct a coherent collection as a recreation of Arcadia. It is in this spirit that their legacies are immortalized, whether the works in their collections end up in institutions or in private hands.

One thing is clear: collections that are formed by discerning individuals with an eye for the rare and beautiful are capable of transcending financial turbulence and are viewed as time-proven stable stores of value by anticipatory collectors who recognize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities their sales present.