The price of being female

By S.T. | NEW YORK

MUCH fanfare greeted the $388m made by Christie's post-war and contemporary evening sale in New York earlier this month—its highest total ever. Few seemed to notice that the auction was unprecedented in another way: it had ten lots by eight women artists, amounting to a male-to-female ratio of five-to-one. (Sotheby's evening sale offered a more typical display of male-domination with an 11-to-one ratio.) Yet proceeds on all the works by women artists in the Christie's sale tallied up to a mere $17m—less than 5% of the total and not even half the price achieved that night by a single picture of two naked women by Yves Klein. Indeed, depictions of women often command the highest prices, whereas works by them do not.

An analysis of data provided by artnet, however, suggests that the prospects for women are slowly improving. Compare, for example, the top ten most expensive male and female artists. Admittedly $86.9m, the highest price for a work by a post-war male artist (set by "Orange, Red, Yellow" by Mark Rothko) dwarfs the highest price paid for a work made by a woman—$10.7m for Louise Bourgeois's large-scale bronze "Spider". However, of the top-ten men, only two are living, whereas among the top-ten women, five are still working (see chart below).

"Attitudes are changing generationally," says Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of post-war and contemporary art development at Christie's. "It wasn't long ago that it was hard to be taken seriously as a woman artist. There will be some remedial catch up before women artists have parity on prices."

Compared to the top-ten post-war men, which includes a lot of American Pop and British figurative painters, the work of the top-ten women, particularly the deceased ones, leans heavily towards abstraction. Joan Mitchell, an abstract-expressionist painter who spent most of her adult life in France, is the sales turnover queen. Her work has accrued $199m at auction since the mid-1980s, when artnet records began. Mitchell's stature in the market results from an international collector base, which includes Russian, Korean, French and American buyers. Abstraction always aspired to being a universal language; perhaps the new global elite will make it so.

By contrast, the living women in the top ten are exceedingly diverse. Cady Noland, for example, who holds the record for the highest price ever paid for an artwork by a living woman ($6.6m), is a reclusive figurative sculptor whose work explores the sordid underbelly of the American dream. It has been over a decade since she has publicly exhibited her work, leading some to wonder whether she has stopped making art. Yayoi Kusama, however, an 83-year-old Japanese artist, has an oeuvre that spans five decades and a love of the media. Her work has the highest turnover of any living woman. Her monochrome "Infinity Net" paintings command the highest prices, but her colourful prints contribute to her high volume at auction. In July her profile will receive a boost due to her collaboration with Louis Vuitton on a ready-to-wear and accessories line. The exposure is likely to have a positive impact on her prices.

Cindy Sherman, a New York-based photographer, is a different style of artist again—one whose work is often interpreted as feminist. Last year an image from her 1981 "Centerfold" series set a record for the highest price ever paid for a photograph ($3.9m). Although a work by Andreas Gursky, a German photographer, has since displaced Ms Sherman's picture from the top spot, she is still one of the few women artists whose auction prices are in the same ballpark as her male peers. It is probably no accident that Ms Sherman works in a medium that has only recently been elevated to the status of art and is not overwhelmed by a legacy of male geniuses.

Intriguingly, the auction records for all three women—Mlles Noland, Kusama and Sherman—were the result of winning bids by Philippe Segalot, an art consultant who was then working for Sheikha Mayassa Al Thani, the Western-educated 29-year-old daughter of the emir of Qatar. It is probable that women feel a sense of affinity for art made by women. But perhaps more importantly, younger buyers and advisors find it weird to not include women's perspectives in their collections. It appears the future will be more female. And as Iwan Wirth, a dealer with galleries in New York, London and Zurich, puts it, "Women artists are the bargains of our time."

Almost 50 years ago, contemporary art dispensed with modernist myths that associated originality with heterosexual male virility. Openly gay men—such as Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon—fought that battle and won. Now three of the top-ten most expensive male artists are gay. In the 1960s most women artists shied away from trying to compete for sales, opting instead to focus on garnering intellectual credibility, which led them to rigorous abstract and conceptual-art practices. In the 1980s they started to branch out and diversify. Although increasingly celebrated by museums, women are still emerging when it comes to the art market.

An auction evening sale affords superlative marketing. Oftentimes the simple act of including a young artist, or an unknown older one, results in a high price. Whether their works move from being cultish lots to international trophies depends on collectors, but it's good to see the auction houses finally giving more women a chance. For money is a powerful symbol of cultural worth.