The curious case of Albert Willem and friends

How does an artist go from being previously unknown, to a star of the auction market generating six-figure results, before seeing their market crash.  Is this a sign of market manipulation, or just the temperamental tastes of the art world?  Let's discuss.

Albert Willem's naïve childlike works first appeared at a major auction house in May 2022.  His debut work, titled 'The Beach Promenade' and created in 2019, sold at Sotheby's for £100,000, seven times its estimate of £10,000-15,000.  Within a year, this stunning result had been repeated time after time.

Willem's "The Beach Promenade", which sold for £100,800 over a high estimate of £15,000 in May 2022.

By April 2024, Willem's work had appeared at auction over 50 times, fetching as much as £239,000 in January 2023 at Sotheby's (over the same £10-15k estimate), and totalling around $5 million in sales.  Then, in April 2024, one sold for the more modest sum of £10,000 and, a few days ago, one went unsold at Phillip's.

Willem's 51 auction results as reported on Artsy, since May 2022. The estimate for each sale was around £10,000-15,000.

Who is Albert Willem

Willem was born in 1979 in Belgium where he currently works.  He has said that he has no formal training in art, and reignited his childhood passion for painting at the age of 36 (having not painted since he was 12) while decorating his house with his own drawings. Willem is currently represented by Wauters MAW Art, a company incorporated by Martijn Wauters in September 2022, although there is little online about this company and Martijn appears to have been previously unknown to the art world.

Willem appeared in his first group show in 2020 and has had three solo exhibitions, in March 2022 at Waterhouse & Dodd in London, August 2022 at Rudolf Budja Gallery in Florida, November 2022 at Galerie Boulakia in London.

Willem's auction results

According to the Artsy market database, Willem's work has appeared at auction an average of 17 times per year since 2022, with an average sales price of $102,000 and an average price over estimate of 467%.  The works have consistently been estimated at £10,000-15,000, despite regularly selling for many times this amount.

Of the 51 works with sales data, 16 of these have sold for more than $100k, 28 for more than $20k, 4 for the estimate, and 3 works were passed in.  In 2022 alone, his debut auction year, 18 of his works sold for an average of $135,000 with a standard deviation of $64,000 (excluding the one work that was rather inexplicably passed in).

It has been said on various forums that, during the last few years when Willem's market was skyrocketing, you could purchase an original from his gallery representation for around $40,000 with an agreement that it would not be resold for two years after purchase.  Before his 'breakout' year in 2022, allegedly you could purchase an original direct from Willem for less than €1,000.

On a fair reading of the market, some early followers of Willem's work got extremely lucky, potentially turning a purchase under €1,000 into a value of 100x or more.  Even those who purchased at the recent prices of $40k would, at the average auction value, be looking at a return of at least 2x.

However, if indeed the latest results in April 2024 are the new barometer (or the strange examples in December 2023 where his work actually sold for around the estimate of £15,000), these new purchasers are looking at a significant haircut, or are stuck holding the bag and cannot even resell.

One reading of the results

One accusation levelled against Willem's market is that it is an example of a sophisticated pump and dump scheme, orchestrated by a number of individuals including his gallery representation (let's call this mischievous group a syndicate).

According to this accusation, and generalised just not to single out Willem in this hypothetical example:

1. A syndicate chooses a relatively unknown artist with no auction history, and an ability to produce in a short amount of time (or who has already) a large number of works.
   

2. The syndicate starts to hype the artist, place them in group and solo exhibitions at galleries around the world which (inevitably) sell out – either through actual customer demand or held back by the syndicate themselves.
   

3. The syndicate then offers the artist's work to reputable auction houses.  Why an auction house is willing to take on a previously untested and unheard of artist is probably due to relationships between member/s of the syndicate and the auction house, under which the work could be placed in a lesser known auction just to 'test' the market for the artist.
   

4. Once at auction, the syndicate then inflates the price of the works by bidding between syndicate members (or against unlucky members of the public who think they are bidding on a legitimately rising market star), before selling the work back into the syndicate or to the innocent third party.
   

5. In this way, it looks like there is intense bidding for a new and exciting artist, and the syndicate at worst has lost only the fees associated with the auction.  For example, at Sotheby's, the fees are 20% on the buy-side and 10% of the sell-side, plus 2% commission if it exceeds the high estimate – so a work that sells for £100,000 (over a high estimate of £15k), will incur total auction fees of around £32,000 if the seller and the buyer are the same entity. It may also be that the highest bidder of the work simply never pays the auction house for the work.  Defaults are said to be surprisingly common and, like many aspects of the art world, are not reported.  A work that remains unsold because the highest bidder defaulted on payment is still marked as sold, and with the highest price, even though it never was actually sold.
   

6. In parallel to bidding prices up at auction, the syndicate works with a gallery to sell works by the artist on the primary market.  The works would be sold at an attractive discount to the recent auction results, but still way above what the works would be worth in a free market and without the booming auction figures.  The purchases on the primary market come with the proviso that the works cannot be resold for a certain period of time.  Such no-resale clauses are relatively commonplace and are designed to protect an artist's market from opportunistic flippers. The sales pitch from the gallery is simple – "congratulations, you're in luck, I happen to have access to a couple of incredible works, but you have to let me know within the next day because I have so many people asking about him obviously".
   

7. The profit from the primary sales of the artist's work offsets the loss from pumping the artist at auction.
   

8. Because the purchasers buying on the primary market are restrained from selling for a period of time by the no-resale agreements, there is a lower risk that third parties will flood the market with works.
   

9. If the artist can produce the works quickly, or had many available to sell, the primary sales can far exceed the small number of works that will appear at the big auction houses, and so the syndicate is in net profit.
   

Of course, this cycle cannot go on forever and demand for the works on the primary market may dry up, or people may clue on to the scheme.

Eventually, the syndicate will stop bidding up the works at auction and let natural market forces take over.  Works that previously sold for six figures may then return to normal pricing.  The syndicate has made their money from the primary sales, and the buyers who paid over value at primary are left holding the bag (and not to forget the biggest losers of them all, those who played in the rigged auctions and outbid the syndicate).

Applying this to Willem, it is alleged that various individuals conspired to inflate the price of his works by bidding his works up at auction to six figures.  This activity created a demand on the primary market, which offset the losses incurred through the auction fees.

The alternative view

The alternative case is that Willem's quirky paintings found a natural fit in the low-interest, booming art market of 2022, his style consistent with the anti-painting paradigm of the time (for example, see my post on the rise of ugly paintings and the Artnet article on the similar theme).

Speculators and flippers quickly jumped on the bandwagon, and wanted to get a piece of the rising auction prices – buying up the works for grossly inflated amounts and crowding into his primary market, which of course the traditional players were more than happy to satisfy.  However, with the recent market downturn and perhaps a more refined assessment of Willem's works, his market cooled and some individuals got, and will get, burned.

It would not be the first time that the art market has churned through rising art stars, as was seen with the Zombie formalism wave in the 2010s (see the article here).  It does not take a coordinated, Machiavellian syndicate to give rise to the results seen in Willem's market.

Conclusions

It is a curious case indeed, and not one in which Willem is alone.

For example, also cited in the forums are the markets of the artists Duncan McCormick and Raghav Babbar (who have both perhaps coincidentally shown with Waterhouse & Dodd).  Since December 2022, McCormick's paintings have been sold at auction for an average of $122,000 (21 works), against estimates of around £10,000, and Babbar's paintings have sold more spectacularly for an average of $478,000 (6 works), against estimates of around £20-30,000.

Duncan McCormick's "Rose Bay Lovers", which sold for £151,200 over a high estimate of £12,000 at Sotheby's in January 2023.

This is also not exclusive to emerging artists.  It's well known that, for example, the Warhol market is controlled by a small number of players, including the Mugrabi family, who ensure that the price for Warhol's works are sustained at a certain level – eg by underbidding the works or knowingly overpaying for works that are lagging.

So long as the art world remains as opaque as it is today, and sellers and purchasers of works at auction remain anonymous, it will be difficult to distinguish between an art world pump and dump vs market fluctuations.  In either scenario, it reinforces the old adage of caveat emptor – buyer beware.

Disclaimer: This author is not making any accusations against any of the individuals or companies referred to above. This blog was written purely for informative purposes and some of the informed contained within relies on hearsay and may be inaccurate. There is, as explained above, a legitimate reason to explain the behaviour of the market.

George