State of the Market

Last year's drop in the stock market and the long New York City newspaper strike both hurt Manhattan's long-booming art galleries, and as dealers began sizing up their season's-end experiences last week, it was obvious that the slump had one particular victim: the abstract painting that after the war made Manhattan the center of the art world. "There has been a cresting of the abstract-art market," says Phillip Bruno of the Staempfli Gallery. "Those painters in the $5,000 to $15,000 range have been hit hard. Prices have been too high and a re-evaluation was necessary." The art boom has not collapsed, but it has drastically shifted.

Most dealers agree that the giants of abstractionism will go on selling forever, even though their prices are already beyond the reach of all but the rich. But, says Bruno, "two years ago you could sell a $100,000 Pollock by writing four letters. Today it would take 50 letters." Manhattan's galleries are still flooded with second-grade abstraction, but it is no longer considered much of an investment. Today the investors buy pop art, which is a good deal cheaper and also gets most of the publicity. Says Dealer Lee Nordness, whose own semi abstract and representational artists made 30% more money than last year: "I know several dealers of abstract expressionism, especially second-generation abstractionism, who have had a great deal of trouble. There are even dealers who have urged their abstractionists to switch to pop art."

Wait & See. The avant-garde Green Gallery did three times as much business as last year (which means that it just broke even). But its five abstractionist shows sold only three paintings, while its pop artists accounted for 80% of its sales. "It is generally true," says the Green Gallery's Richard Bellamy, "that there has been so much inferior abstract art in the past six years that the public has reacted to it. Those collectors who can't swallow pop art have adopted a wait-and-see attitude."

Grace Borgenicht, whose excellent gallery took a steep 50% dive, blames the drop on "the carefully publicized vogue for pop art, on the one hand, and the confusion in the minds of others as to the direction of the art scene. The decline in prices of some artificially raised 'name artists' has to a great extent frightened those who are unsure of their tastes." Dealer Catherine Viviano, who found the season "pretty bad," flatly denies that the slump had anything to do with economics. "Trends are changing," says she. "Pop art has helped to make people feel insecure. No one seems to be sure any more what a work of art is."

Time for Oldtimers. Actually, there are still buyers who are sure -- and are even ready to take a chance on comparative unknowns. But aside from the pop artists, like Robert Indiana, the painters who did best last year were representational. The Tibor de Nagy Gallery had ten shows last year of which only four made money. Though Robert Goodnough, a first-rate abstractionist, did well, the bestsellers were Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter and Jane Wilson -- none of whom paint abstractions. One of the most spectacular successes of the season was 27-year-old Sidney Goodman of Philadelphia, whose one-man show in Manhattan took place during the newspaper strike and was nearly sold out by the end of the first day. But it may be that the oldtimers fared best of all. The Downtown Gallery was one of those reporting a healthy increase in business, and that gallery concentrates mostly on established older names such as Ben Shahn, Stuart Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe, the late Arthur Dove, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Max Weber. These are artists that the country's new museums are eager to acquire. Furthermore, says Downtown's Edith Halpert, the recent Kandinsky, Rodin and Armory shows, as well as scores of exhibitions of older American art, have created an interest in "source paintings" of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Coptic v. Contemporary. Dealers Robert Graham and Andre Emmerich confirm the trend. Emmerich's profits in contemporary art, which is largely abstract, went up only 2% . But his sales of Coptic and pre-Columbian art were up 25%. Graham has two galleries in the same building: the one devoted to contemporary work did about half as well as last year, while the one dealing in 17th, 18th and 19th century art, largely American, did one-third better than last year. A pastel by Everett Shinn of the Ashcan School is worth 14 times today what it would have fetched in 1945. "Americans are becoming more concerned with their heritage," says Graham. "More museums are bidding for those works also."

Duveen, which deals chiefly in old masters, had as good a year as any. And if anyone had any doubt that Americans were still willing to pay record prices for good established art, he had only to go over the results of last week's two auctions of impressionist work at Sotheby's in London. The most dramatic sales were of two Degas pastels, one for $128,800 and the other for $294,000--"fantastic, especially for a pastel," said Auctioneer Peter Wilson. The buyers: a gallery and a private collector, both from California.

* The price estimate for the 9-ft. Pollock comes from Dealer Sidney Janis; for the Indiana, from Owner Joseph Hirshhorn; for Shinn, from the Graham Galleries.

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