PARIS, April 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With $1.6 billion hammered around the world in fine
art auctions during the 1st quarter of 2021, the art market may
look like it has already returned to a "normal" rhythm. True, the
Q1 total is exactly the average Q1 total over the ten Q1 periods
preceding the health crisis (2010 - 2019). But this impression,
based on auction turnover alone, hides a very different situation
from that which prevailed two years ago.
Q1 fine art auction turnover since 2000
Fine art lots sold and unsold in Q1 auctions since
2000
thierry Ehrmann, President and Founder of Artmarket.com and
its Artprice department, acknowledges that "it is still a
little early to disentangle the effects of each of the powerful
factors currently shaking the art market: Covid, Brexit, NFTs, etc.
But their consequences are already visible".
Artprice is therefore redoubling its efforts to ensure
continuous monitoring of the market's most sensitive indicators and
keep a close eye on its overall health. Artprice wishes to share
the conclusions of its econometrics department in order to
contribute to the market's transparency.
1. A record number of transactions
Despite the logistical complications linked to the health
crisis, fine art auction transactions have never been as numerous
as in Q1 2021. In total, 112,200 lots were sold around the world,
i.e. 6% more than in Q1 2019 (105,600 lots sold). The digital
transition undertaken by the major auction houses has enabled the
emergence of an online market that is particularly suited to the
middle market.
2. A declining unsold rate
An key indicator of the balance between supply and demand in the
market, the unsold rate varied only very slightly over the period
2010-2019, fluctuating between 31% and 34%. In other words, the art
market has become accustomed to seeing a third of the lots offered
for auction fail to reach their reserve prices. But in Q1 2021,
only one in four sales (25%) failed: demand is therefore increasing
a little faster than supply!
3. A gradual geographic rebalancing
Q1 turnover figures are usually dominated by London, which hosts the first prestige sales
of the year. In 2021 the agenda had to be postponed by several
weeks but nevertheless went ahead. However, the dominance of the UK
capital appears weakened: London
accounted for 37% of global sales revenue in Q1 2021 versus 48% in
Q1 2019. New York, which managed
to generate 27% of the global turnover in the first three months of
the year, appears to be the main beneficiary.
4. The NFT revolution
The sale of Beeple's NFT Everydays marked the start of a
possible revolution on the art market. The work was purchased for
$69 million in a Christie's online
auction using the Ether cryptocurrency. Indeed, this new
market appears to have become even more 'intangible' since
Sotheby's generated $16.8 million by
selling "The Fungible Collection", a digital work offered online in
unlimited quantities and created by the anonymous and mysterious
Pak.
5. Red-chips dethrone blue-chips
Since the end of 2020, art auctions around the world have
hammered some surprising results for extremely recent works.
Journalist Scott Reyburn (in The Art
Newspaper) cites, as an example, Christie's "20th Century:
Hong Kong to New York" sale on 2
December 2020 and says he was surprised to see Dana Schutz's canvas Elevator (2017)
fetch $6.5 million and Andy Warhol's "classic" Campbell's Soup
Can (1962) sell for just $6.1
million (especially as the latter reached $7.4 million in 2014). Reyburn concludes
that the arrival of new collectors, in search of the latest
novelties ("red-chips") is overtaking the desire to possess
"blue-chip" artworks.
www.theartnewspaper.com/analysis/the-rush-for-red-chip-art
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