Picasso, Monet, Warhol, Basquiat, and Richter Lead Artists Powering the US$1 Million-Plus Market
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Picasso, Monet, Warhol, Basquiat, and Richter Lead Artists Powering the US$1 Million-Plus Market

By ABBY SCHULTZ
Sun, Dec 24, 2023 7:00amGrey Clock 3 min

Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Gerhard Richter top a list of 50 artists leading the momentum for works valued at US$1 million or more, according to a report released Tuesday by Sotheby’s and ArtTactic, a London art market analysis firm.

The list ranked artists with an average of five artworks of US$1 million or more that sold each year between 2018 and 2022 at Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s—a methodology aimed at showing consistency. The analysis also considers sales value, liquidity, average prices, bidder confidence, and market momentum for each artist, and draws on Sotheby’s internal data on bidders and private sales.

Works by the top five artists alone made up more than a third of all US$1 million-plus sales at these top global auction houses in those years, the report said.

Shifts may be afoot, however. A “Power Rank” of top artists in the US$1 million-plus category, based on data from July 2022 to June 2023, “aims to identify artists whose markets show signs of growing momentum and interest,” the report said.

The top artists of this 12-month Power Rank are Jasper Johns, Lucian Freud, Paul Gaugin, Wassily Kandinksy, and Willem de Kooning.

“The Artists Who Power the $1 Million+ Market” is the second report by Sotheby’s and ArtTactic to explore this segment of the auction world, which proved to be “especially resilient” in 2021 and 2022, during the height of the pandemic and the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Despite representing a “small fraction” of works sold at auction, art that fetches at least US$1 million has “a tremendous impact on the market at lower levels,” the report said.

The analysis considers auction results at Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s in four categories: contemporary (including Post-War), impressionist and modern, Old Masters, and Chinese works of art. The list of top 50 artists from 2018 to 2022 who are powering the US$1 million-plus sector also includes insights from Sotheby’s private sales and its bidding activity data. Though the latter information is from Sotheby’s alone, similar activity is likely taking place at other auction houses, the report said.

“We all know that the art market has never been as transparent as the financial markets, so any information we can give our clients in terms of trends, analysis, and insight will allow them to make more thoughtful and educated decisions about their purchases, whether they see them as an investment or are pursuing a passion,” Mari-Claudia Jiménez, Sotheby’s head of global business development, said during a roundtable discussion with her colleagues and ArtTactic CEO Anders Petterson that’s included in the report.

The rare insight into private-sale data revealed that works by Alberto Giacometti, in addition to Monet, Basquiat, Picasso and Warhol, made up nearly 80% of Sotheby’s private transactions in the first half of this year. From 2019 to the first half of 2023, these same artists represented only 44.7% of private sales.

Sotheby’s internal bidding data—also rare to see—shows a rise in bidding for works with estimates between US$20 million and US$50 million in the first half of this year. “Despite market uncertainty,” this lofty segment has attracted 6.1% of bidders in the market for works valued at US$1 million or more, up from 3.8% in 2022, the report said.

Nearly 75% of Sotheby’s bidders raised their paddles for works priced between US$1 million and US$5 million from 2018 to 2022, though the percentage slipped to 72.4% in the first half of the year as 13.8% of collectors bid on works valued between US$5 million and US$10 million (up from 12.5% in 2022).

ArtTactic dug deeper into this internal bidding data to understand what category of works these collectors favoured, where they live, and how old they are. The data “provides collectors with additional context to understand some of the drivers behind emerging trends,” the report said.

Among its findings: Contemporary art was favoured by 56.1% of bidders; North Americans bid the most, representing nearly 36.4% of those vying for works of US$1 million or more; and Generation X is making their mark, accounting for the largest share of bidders in the market at 40.2%.

This generational shift is significant. Younger collectors are more comfortable buying across art categories, from Old Masters to Contemporary, for instance.

“The data in the report shows that our collectors, even the youngest ones, are interested in the entire span of history,” Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s head of global fine art, said during the roundtable. “Education is such an important factor in the art market, and people are learning about art history in many different ways today.”

These younger collectors are interested in art in part because they are more exposed to it than previous generations, Lampley said. Private collectors today are exposed through the numerous art fairs they attend in addition to public auctions, which generations ago were attended more by dealers and others in the trade who then sold the works, she said.

“There has been a great effort to make people feel included in the art world and to make it accessible, both by galleries and auction houses,” Lampley said.

Notably, there are no women artists among the top five of the list of 50 powering the US$1 million-plus market, although four made the larger list. Joan Mitchell ranks No. 17, Yayoi Kusama ranks No. 19, Cecily Brown ranks No. 39, and Helen Frankenthaler ranks No. 47.



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Wealthy Collectors Reveal Signs of Strength in the Art Market—Outside of the Auction Houses
By ABBY SCHULTZ
Fri, Nov 1, 2024 5 min

Sky-high pricey artworks may not be flying off the auction block right now, but the art market is actually doing just fine.

That’s a key takeaway from a 190-plus page report written by Art Economics founder Clare McAndrew and published Thursday morning by Art Basel and UBS. The results were based on a survey of more than 3,600 collectors with US$1 million in investable assets located in 14 markets around the world.

That the art market is doing relatively well is backed by several data points from the survey that show collectors are buying plenty of art—just at lower prices—and that they are making more purchases through galleries and art fairs versus auction houses.

It’s also backed by the perception of a “robust art market feeling,” which was evident at Art Basel Paris last week, says Matthew Newton, art advisory specialist with UBS Family Office Solutions in New York.

“It was busy and the galleries were doing well,” Newton says, noting that several dealers offered top-tier works—“the kind of stuff you only bring out to share if you have a decent amount of confidence.”

That optimism is reflected in the survey results, which found 91% of respondents were optimistic about the global art market in the next six months. That’s up from the 77% who expressed optimism at the end of last year.

Moreover, the median expenditure on fine art, decorative art and antiques, and other collectibles in the first half by those surveyed was US$25,555. If that level is maintained for the second half, it would “reflect a stable annual level of spending,” the report said. It would also exceed meet or exceed the median level of spending for the past two years.

The changes in collector behaviour noted in the report—including a decline in average spending, and buying through more diverse channels—“are likely to contribute to the ongoing shift in focus away from the narrow high-end of sales that has dominated in previous years, potentially expanding the market’s base and encouraging growth in more affordable art segments, which could provide greater stability in future,” McAndrew said in a statement.

One reason the art market may appear from the outside to be teetering is the performance of the major auction houses has been pretty dismal since last year. Aggregate sales for the first half of the year at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips, and Bonhams, reached only US$4.7 billion in the first half, down from US$6.3 billion in the first half a year ago and US$7.4 billion in the same period in 2022, the report said.

Meanwhile, the number of “fully published” sales in the first half reached 951 at the four auction houses, up from 896 in the same period last year and 811 in 2022. Considering the lower overall results in sales value, the figures imply an increase in transactions of lower-priced works.

“They’re basically just working harder for less,” Newton says.

One reason the auction houses are having difficulties is many sellers have been unwilling to part with high-value works out of concern they won’t get the kind of prices they would have at the art market’s recent highs coming out of the pandemic in 2021 and 2022. “You really only get one chance to sell it,” he says.

Also, counterintuitively, art collectors who have benefited from strength in the stock market and the greater economy may be “feeling a positive wealth effect right now,” so they don’t need to sell, Newton says. “They can wait until those ‘animal spirits’ pick back up,” referring to human emotions that can drive the market.

That collectors are focusing on art at more modest price points right now is also evident in data from the Association of Professional Art Advisors that was included in the report. According to APAA survey data of its advisors, if sales they facilitated in the first half continue at the same pace, the total number of works sold this year will be 23% more than 2023.

Most of the works purchased so far were bought for less than US$100,000, with the most common price point between US$25,000 and US$50,000.

The advisors surveyed also said that 80% of the US$500 million in transactions they conducted in the first half of this year involved buying art rather than selling it. If this pattern holds, the proportion of art bought vs. sold will be 17% more than last year and the value of those transactions will be 10% more.

“This suggests that these advisors are much more active in building collections than editing or dismantling them,” the report said.

The collectors surveyed spend most of their art dollars with dealers. Although the percentage of their spending through this channel dipped to 49% in the first half from 52% in all of last year, spending at art fairs (made largely through gallery booths) increased to 11% in the first half from 9% last year.

Collectors also bought slightly more art directly from artists (9% in the first half vs. 7% last year), and they bought more art privately (7% vs. 6%). The percentage spent at auction houses declined to 20% from 23%.

The data also showed a shift in buying trends, as 88% of those polled said they bought art from a new gallery in the past two years, and 52% bought works by new and emerging artists in 2023 and this year.

The latter data point is interesting, since works by many of these artists fall into the ultra contemporary category, where art soared to multiples of original purchase prices in a speculative frenzy from 2021-22. That bubble has burst, but the best of those artists are showing staying power, Newton says.

“You’re seeing that kind of diversion between what’s most interesting and will maintain its value over time, versus maybe what’s a little bit less interesting

and might have had speculative buying behind it,” he says.

Collectors appear better prepared to uncover the best artists, as more of those surveyed are doing background research or are seeking advice before they buy. Less than 1% of those surveyed said they buy on impulse, down from 10% a year earlier, the report said.

Not all collectors are alike so the Art Basel-UBS report goes into considerable detail breaking down preferences and actions by individuals according to the regions where they live and their age range, for instance. The lion’s share of spending on art today is by Gen X, for instance—those who are roughly 45-60 years old.

Despite a predominately optimistic view of the market, of those surveyed only 43% plan to buy more art in the next 12 months, down from more than 50% in the previous two years, the report said. Buyers in mainland China were an exception, with 70% saying they plan to buy.

Overall, more than half of all collectors surveyed across age groups and regions plan to sell, a reversal from past years. That data point could foretell a coming buyer’s market, the report said, or it “could be indicative of more hopeful forecasts on pricing or the perception that there could be better opportunities for sales in some segments in the near future than there are at present.”

In the U.S., where 48% of collectors plan to buy, Newton says he’s seeing a lot of interest in art from wealth management clients.

“They’re looking for ideas. They’re looking for names of artists that can be compelling and have staying power,” Newton says. “That’s definitely happening from an optimistic standpoint.”

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