The mid-year reviews from Artnet, published under the sonorous title ‘The Intelligence Report’, are always an interesting read. Artnet knows about just every auction house in the world that specialises in fine art and antiques, big and small,; and for this half-term review it polled 1,041 of them for sales reports on anything valued at more than $500 to include in its Art Price Database.
The key headlines:
One reason for the decline in total sales is a dearth of high-priced masterpieces coming up for salon to the market; but even those that have come up for sale have largely made the low end of their estimates. In short, there’s a distinct lack of demand for works at high price points.
Artnet can’t help but conclude that the market is going through something of reset. Or recession, as some might put it. As these figures indicate, Artnet’s half year numbers don’t include sales through though dealers or those made direct from artists or their agents. The accompanying commentary has a lot of input from dealers, however. “It’s no surprise that buyers are freaked out and that sales are slow to nonexistent at galleries, dealers said. ’Literally no one is buying art,’ one gallery owner said. One of his clients, a major collector, is now shopping for $500 art at antiques stores and picking up works directly from artists’ studios at half the price galleries charge …”
There’s also a feeling that sellers are having to agree to unpalatably low reserve prices at auction, or even to sell with no reserve at all – common enough at the lower end, but formerly unheard of for mid- to high-priced works.
And some buyers are reacting to the intensifying commodification of art. That, combined with a primary market feels overpriced and economic factors like “punishing interest rates, ongoing geopolitical tremors, and the melodrama of a U.S. presidential election”, have had collectors hanging on to their chequebooks.
At least big auctioneers and the art fairs seem bullish about the future, talking about corrections, pointing to activity in specific sectors, and coming up with tricksy solutions like Christie’s flowers-only show in New York last May (where Andy Warhol’s 1964 Flowers sold for $35.5 million). And there are still notable results in Artnet’s database, like catch-up recognition for artists such as Leonora Carrington and Joan Mitchell and the unstoppability of Basquiat.
Download your own copy of The Intelligence Report: Mid-Year Review 2024 here.
Be the first to comment