Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Christie’s, kicked off London’s new season with some sobering statistics at this year’s Art Business Conference on September 10. He disclosed that, between 2010 and 2023, the value of sales at his auction house grew 32 per cent in the Americas and 22 per cent in Asia Pacific but fell 6 per cent in Europe (including the UK). Across a similar period (2012-23), he reported that buyers from the Americas and Asia Pacific grew 27 per cent and 33 per cent respectively, while falling 37 per cent in Europe.

The real challenge now, Cerutti said, is not about the post-Brexit “rivalry” between London and Paris, but more “how can we pull together . . . the commercial field and the museum world . . . to keep Europe at the centre?” Because of Brexit, he conceded, London has lost being a “fabulous entry point” to the rest of Europe.

Other speakers voiced concerns about the more recent news that London’s wealthy, including donors to the arts, could leave the country in expectation of higher taxes under the UK’s new Labour government. Charlotte Appleyard, director of development and business innovation at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, cited a recent report by advisers Henley & Partners that expects 9,500 millionaires to leave the UK this year.

Cerutti said that, for the art market at least, this was unlikely to be a big problem and assured the audience that “we will continue to fight for London”, including by supporting events such as the 1-54 contemporary African art fair.

One highlight that Christie’s has already secured for the city’s October auctions is Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Monkey (Blue)” (2006-13). The guaranteed work comes with a £6.5mn-£10mn estimate and is sold by fellow artist Damien Hirst, who showed it in his gallery in 2016. (Christie’s would not confirm that Hirst was the seller.) It goes on show in London’s St James’s Square from September 30 to October 9.

The London building belonging to Marlborough Gallery, which closed this summer after 78 years of business, is on the market, priced in excess of £25mn. The 10,300 sq ft, 10-floor freehold building on Mayfair’s Albemarle Street, called Scandia House, is “a rarity” on the property market, says David Rosen of Pilcher London, which is offering the space.

In June, Marlborough trustee Franz Plutschow said that closing the gallery, which also operated in New York, Madrid and Barcelona, came “after long and careful consideration”. Representatives from the gallery did not respond to requests to comment on plans for its other buildings or the dispersal of the gallery’s stock, rumoured by parties close to the business to be worth about $250mn.

Meanwhile, the gallery’s artists are gradually finding new ways to market. The New York-based British painter Bill Jacklin, who first showed with Marlborough Gallery in the 1970s, is now collaborating with Portland Gallery, which will bring three of his paintings to this month’s British Art Fair, priced between £24,000 and £36,000 (September 26-29).

British collector Charles Saatchi is having a collection clear-out, starting this week with the first part of an online sale of about 500 works, to benefit London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital. The first tranche of 150 works, on offer through Artsy until September 25, have estimates that range from £300 to £60,000. These include photographs by John Stezaker (est £2,000-£3,000), Hannah Starkey (est £1,000-£1,600) and Tanyth Berkeley (est £400-£600), plus a taxidermied horse on a “Jesmonite blob” by the Iranian-born Soheila Sokhanvari (“Moje Sabz”, 2011, est £2,600-£3,600). The September works have a low estimate of £200,000, with further sales on Artsy in October and December.

Separately, Bonhams will auction the Saatchi Collection’s vast coal-sack installation by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama for between £30,000 and £50,000 at its Modern and Contemporary African art sale on October 16. The 2013 work was first shown in Saatchi Gallery’s Pangaea: New Art from Africa to Latin America exhibition in 2014.

Reported sales from fairs in Seoul and New York have come in slower and lower than in more economically healthy times. Gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac said the pace of sales was “somewhat slower than last year” at Frieze Seoul (September 4-7), but it did sell work by the gallery’s latest charge, 81-year-old Korean artist Lee Kang-So (“The Wind Blows”, 2024, $180,000). 

More sales were reported from The Armory Show, now owned by the Frieze franchise, though with 235 exhibitors, this fair is twice as big as its Seoul event. Anne-Claudie Coric, executive director of Galerie Templon, found the fair “a remarkable concentration of New York energy” and reported sales by gallery artists Jim Dine, Alioune Diagne, Chiharu Shiota and Omar Ba (€50,000-€150,000). Oliver Durey, director of Larkin Durey, described the fair as “sustainable and well-tempered”, reporting sales between $18,000 and $110,000.

Some galleries sold across both fairs, albeit at different price levels: Korea’s Johyun Gallery reported 10 works by its charcoal artist Lee Bae were sold at Frieze Seoul for $56,000 each, while three works by the same artist sold at The Armory Show for between $90,000 and $300,000.

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