As champagne glasses clinked ahead of the Sotheby’s contemporary art sale earlier this month and the great and good of the art world gossiped about Frieze, behind the scenes things weren’t so rosy. So slim were the number of lots in one of the most prestigious sales of the year that works from the lower value day sale had to be brought upstairs and installed in the main galleries, “so they didn’t look like they’d been robbed”, according to one insider.
In fatter times, London’s marquee sales in October used to be big-ticket affairs, with several hundred million pounds-worth of art being traded at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Phillips and Bonhams during Frieze Week. Not now.
