The only way is up | 22 October 2011

Homes may continue to lose value, the euro becomes shakier by the day, the unemployed stay unemployed and even the Chinese economy shows signs of overheating, but the international art market seems to know only one direction: up. For the first half of 2011, Christie’s sold $3.2 billion in fine and decorative art (an improvement of 25 per cent on 2010), while its rival Sotheby’s auctioned items worth $3.4 billion (up 38 per cent on the previous year).

The bubble appears to be far from bursting, and the autumn sales promise to provide plenty of entertainment for those who like to see big prices on both sides of the Atlantic. Leading the pack is Gustav Klimt’s 1915 oil landscape ‘Litzlberg am Attersee’, estimated by Sotheby’s New York for its 2 November Impressionist and Modern Art auction at ‘in excess of $25 million’, which many observers believe is a lowball figure. Other Klimt auction sales in recent years include the 1916 ‘Kirche in Cassone’ ($43 million, estimated $20–30 million), the 1903 ‘Birch Forest’ ($36 million, estimated $20–30 million)
and the 1916 ‘Houses at Unterach on the Attersee’ ($28 million, estimated $15–25 million).

‘Litzlberg am Attersee’ was consigned to Sotheby’s within months of being awarded to 81-year-old Montreal resident Georges Jorisch, whose Viennese grandmother had owned the painting until 1941 when she was deported to a German concentration camp where it is assumed she died. The painting bounced from one owner to the next, finally landing at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Austria, where Jorisch made a legal claim for it, a process that took years. In the interest, perhaps, of providing an incentive for the museum to comply with Austria’s 1998 Holocaust art restitution law, Jorisch promised to donate a percentage of the profits from the sale to the museum for the construction of a new wing named after his grandmother.