Contemporary art market faces heavy re-valuation

Pablo Picasso - La Fille de l'artisite a deux ans et demi avec un bateau - A casuality in a recent New York sale.

The once booming contemporary art market is certainly feeling a change from the early days of the heady “noughties”, for example in New York contemporary sales recently the once extremely bullish estimates have been replaced by realistic ones enabled the New York flagship sales of post-War and contemporary art to set solid selling rates. But, for both major houses, the financial gulf between this year and 2008 even was enormous.
Sotheby’s sale for instance on the 5th May was the smallest New York contemporary auction since May 2003. With a very thin catalogue, the sale total only achieved $40.1m down over 85% on the 2008 sale. One of the casualties of this sale with a heady estimate of $16-24m was Pablo Picasso’s – La Fille de l’artisite a deux ans et demi avec un bateau a study of his then 2½ year old daughter.
Christies held a sale the following day of 54 contemporary works, the pre-sale estimate was $71-104m, vastly reduced in terms of volume and price over 2008, the sale eventually achieved $80.9m against last years total of $294m. These still may seem like telephone numbers but percentage wise they are considerably diminished on the previous years results, an indication of what is to come? Well read on.

Paintings like William Weekes' early 20th century study of geese chasing an old soldier, entitled "Suspicion" is both humorous and decorative.

So where does this leave the art market? The traditional art market has historically been less susceptible to the wild hormonal and financial swings of the modern market. This is probably because buyers are more mature, not necessarily in age but in taste, and are also buying out of desire rather than supposed investment potential. It has so far suffered little from the economic downturn however we will monitor interest at Olympia and the big London sales and keep you posted.

A report last year in the Sunday times business section just before the “credit crunch” started to bite did conclude

that due to the volatility of the contemporary art market, where generally the buyers are in there for gain rather than pleasure, the author would stick his money in traditional art all day long – not as trendy but then not as dangerous either.  Safe but sure? I would certainly think so. We can help you out with traditional art, visit  www.millingtonadams.com to see more!

Tags: art, contemporary, crash, market, re-valuation