The online art market has experienced a significant growth of 587% in the last decade, according to Hiscox’s Online Art Report 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred intense activity in this sector, with an increase of 280% from 2019 to mid-2021. However, in 2023, although the market stabilized with a growth of 6%, inflation and the economic crisis led a third of buyers to plan to spend less. Additionally, a decline was observed in the intention to purchase Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), going from 27% in 2022 to 12% in 2023.

The Evolution of the Online Art Market

The report highlights the key developments in the online art market during the last decade: the decrease of middlemen in 2013, the market taking off in 2014 with sales of approximately $1.57 billion, the triple-digit growth of online auctions and marketplaces in 2015, and the growing importance of Instagram as an exhibition platform in 2016. In 2017, third-party sales channels gained popularity, and in 2018 concern for cybercrime increased. Trust in online platforms fell from 96% in 2018 to 77% in 2019, but the pandemic in 2020 led online art platforms to be the main sales channel. The rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology characterized the years 2021 and 2022, and in 2023 a return to a new normal is observed with a more stable industry.

The Future of Art Logistics and the Metaverse

While online art sales continue to grow, the art logistics market in the USA is expected to continue its growth until 2028 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.4%, making up a $1.1 trillion industry by 2028. The transportation segment is the largest of all sectors, with a CAGR of over 6% and a steadily rising demand for shipping services across the US. The fast development of e-commerce and online platforms specializing in art object sales is also expected to contribute to the expansion of the art shipping industry.

Furthermore, the Metaverse market is gaining importance with projections indicating that it could reach $800 billion by 2024 and $1.5 trillion by 2030. Companies like All Universe aim to create a diversified Metaverse ecosystem, providing investment opportunities and profitability for its citizens.

Notable Events in the Art Market

The art market veered into correction in 2023, with the sale of Gerald Fineberg’s art collection at Christie’s on May 17 being a significant moment. The landmark 1968 Breuer building, home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, sold to Sotheby’s for over 100 million. A Christie’s jewelry auction turned into a major public relations nightmare after the Nazi roots of the fortune used to assemble the collection were revealed.

Looking ahead, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work will be on exhibit at Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York on February 10, 2024. His work, which has been offered at auction multiple times, continues to draw attention in the art world, with realized prices ranging from $900 to $110,487,500.

How not to fall for an art scam? The paperwork around an artwork has to be double, if not triple-checked, before a sale deed is signed. (Photo by Dalan Gan via Pexels)

In 2004, the art world was about a year away from experiencing its biggest boom in post-liberalisation India. As a result, a new-found interest was being seen in what had until then been a milieu of a lower lux, a world in which money and paintings exchanged hands gently—largely in the confines of the rarefied enclave of South Mumbai.

However, in the fevered gold rush that was beginning to simmer under the surface, a scandal did send shock waves through this hitherto sleepy world. Anjolie Ela Menon, then India’s biggest female artist, accused a Cuffe Parade-based gallery, of allegedly faking her works. The gallery, in turn, accused her of allegedly outsourcing all her works from the late ’70s onwards to her assistant, an impoverished guy called Hamid.

Given the magnitude—and madness—of this “fake art” story, it became a nation-wide sensation. It was picked up by every news channel and newspaper in the country. A year later, another scandal broke: in early 2005, top artists began accusing Neville Tuli’s auction house Osian of allegedly selling a Bhupen Khakkar “fake” at an auction.

The fake painting was here to stay.

The counterfeit has always existed in popular culture. The VHS film we saw in the 1980s and the DVD we picked up from a railway station stall, even the Murakami bestseller we buy at a traffic signal are examples of “fakes”, pirated content as they are. The only difference is the sum of money that exchanges hands when a “fake painting” is sold.

Earlier this month, Mumbai-based investment banker Puneet Bhatia told the police that a man named Rajesh Rajpal had sold him 11 paintings for Rs 17.9 crore. Rajpal had posited that two of these paintings were by Manjit Bawa and F.N. Souza, respectively. These claims, Bhatia later found out, were untrue.

How does the fake art operate?

The fake art world operates on various levels. For one, if the artist’s works have recurring motifs and ideas. Like Manjit Bawa’s works, which almost always comprise an animal over a brightly coloured background. These are relatively easier to replicate. Indeed, the latest scam to come to light – worth Rs 17.9 crore – involved a fake Manjit Bawa painting.

Similarly, an M.F. Husain has a signature style that has been in circulation for so many decades that replicating that merely takes a canvas and an out-of-work art graduate—so long as the fake art dealer and the graduate have an understanding. Depending on one’s greed, this formula can be scaled up to industrial scale.

Similarly, given the fact that some of our most renowned artists have drawn from India’s immeasurable reserves of folk art to build formidable career trajectories, the fake art market can sometimes mushroom in “zones of interest”. For example, if there is a huge demand for Jamini Roys and Jogen Chowdhurys, both hail from West Bengal, one can expect to find a fake Jamini Roy or Jogen Chaudhary dealer in Kolkata or thereabouts. Markets for abstractionists is a lot more area-agnostic. You can have a fake abstract factory for VS Gaitonde or Ram Kumar (artists whose abstract works sell for crores at auctions) anywhere.

Educating the educated

It is not as if the art world has turned a blind eye to the scourge of fake paintings. For instance, the Piramal Museum of Art admirably held an exhibition titled “Like Without Reference — the Cultures of Forgery” in 2017. Here the privately owned museums sourced real works and juxtaposed them next to a fake replica of the same work, and a walkthrough with its curators showed viewers the nuances that went into spotting an off-kilter M.F. Husain or a Raja Ravi Varma. It was also ominously revealed then that the capital of fake art in India had shifted from Kolkata to New Delhi to Mumbai!

How to protect yourself from a scam

The first and only rule of thumb—and something no art dealer, gallerist or buyer can afford to circumvent—is provenance. The paperwork around an artwork has to be double, if not triple-checked, before a sale deed is signed. And moreover, merely “certificates of authenticity” cannot be relied upon as “provenance”. A huge problem in the art world currently is the now ubiquitous “certificate of authenticity”. An artist dies, a dubious art dealer rushes to the closest relative he or she can find, and gets that relative to sign a “certificate of authenticity”. Some don’t even bother to visit a relative to make a “certificate of authenticity”; they create it themselves. I mean, why waste those PhotoShop skills?

Provenance is the only right way to go about this. Conducting an assiduous check on the paper trail of an artwork, its journey from point of origin (i.e., artist’s studio or bonafide exhibition from a reputed gallery or a real relative who is not an autograph-vendor) to end buyer is the only way to authenticate an artwork. It’s hard work. But it’s always good to keep in mind that a stint at Arthur Road Jail is even harder work.

Everyone enjoys a good thrift shop find but few are lucky enough to encounter a windfall of art and other treasures worth exponentially more than their purchase price.

Laura Young, herself the owner of a thrift store, snagged what turned out to be an ancient Roman bust at a Goodwill in Austin, Texas, for just $35. The marble bust is believed to have been created between 100 B.C.E and 100 C.E. in Italy. Before its rediscovery, it was last seen at the Pompejanum—a full-scale replica of a Pompeii villa commissioned in the 1840s by King Ludwig I of Bavaria.

The area around the Pompejanum was heavily bombed during World War II and some believe the bust could have been taken by a U.S. soldier fighting in the area.

Though technically discovered more than five years ago, the treasure was on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art while the museum worked with Young and the Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces to return the piece earlier this year. The value of the bust is not currently known.

Here, we have compiled a list of the top five thrift store flips in the art world in 2023.

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI CHANDELIER

Alberto Giacometti, Chandelier for Peter Watson. Photo courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Year Made: 1947-1949

Thrifted Price: $700 (in the 1960s)

Sold Price: £2.4 million ($2.9 million)

Percentage Flip: 414,185%

In the 1960s, British painter John Craxton recognized the chandelier displayed in the window of a shop as one commissioned by his late friend Peter Watson, an art collector. Craxton held on to it for decades until his death in 2009. It was sold at Christie’s auction in London earlier this year.

QING DYNASTY JARS

An associated pair of Chinese doucai ‘lotus and chrysanthemum’ jars. Photo courtesy Roseberys.

Year Made: ca. 1735-1796

Thrifted Price: $25

Sold Price: $74,318

Percentage Flip: 297,172%

These two jars were purchased by an unnamed seller from a thrift shop before they were sold by the London auction house Roseberys earlier this year. Further details about their discovery were not immediately known, other than that the finder has pledged to donate some of the proceeds from the sale back to the thrift shop, operated by a charity. The 4.5-inch-tall vases, created using the doucai technique, are decorated with blooming red and yellow chrysanthemum heads and lotus flower tendrils. They were fired in the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province and bear the mark of the Qianlong Emperor, the fifth of the Qing dynasty, who reigned from 1735 to 1796.

PABLO PICASSO CERAMIC PLATES

A hand-painted plate from Pablo Picasso’s “Visage Noir” series of ceramics, discovered at a Salvation Army by Nancy Cavaliere. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Year Made: 1940s

Thrifted Price: $8 total or $1.99 for each of four plates

Sold Price: $31,000 (Calculated off the sale of three plates. The fourth, bearing Picasso’s signature, has not been sold.)

Percentage Flip: 516,566% (Calculated off the sold price for three plates at $2 per plate.)

In 2017, Nancy Cavaliere bought four ceramic dishes from a Salvation Army in New York for a collective $8. She later discovered that they were made by Pablo Picasso and revealed her findings on TikTok. The plates belonged to Picasso’s ‘Visage Noir’ series of hand-painted ceramics, produced in a pottery studio in the southern French town of Madoura in the 1940s. Cavaliere sold three of the four plates to Sotheby’s for roughly $12,000, $13,000 and $16,000. The fourth piece has Picasso’s signature signed by his hand and was stored in a safe deposit box. Cavaliere plans to sell it in 20 years and give the money to her daughter. Though the sales were reportedly made 2018, Cavaliere did not reveal them until this year – earning her a spot on the 2023 list.

NAMIKAWA YASUYUKI CLOISONNÉ VASE

A tiny vase made by samurai Namikawa Yasuyuki will be sold at auction. Photo courtesy of Canterbury Auction Galleries

Year Made: 1868-1915

Thrifted Price: £2.50 ($3.20)

Sold Price: £6,300 ($7,664)

Percentage Flip: 239,400%

A woman named Karen and her partner Ahmet (the couple has opted to remain anonymous) spotted the rare Japanese artifact while shopping in a U.K. thrift store and contacted Canterbury Auction Galleries to authenticate the work. The tiny vase was made by 19th-century cloisonné artist (and one-time samurai) Namikawa Yasuyuki. It sold for just shy of the £7,000 it was expected to fetch at auction.

Henry Scott Tuke Painting

Henry Scott Tuke. Nude Study Of A Young Man (circa 1915). Photo courtesy of Batemans Auctioneers & Valuers

Year Made: circa 1915

Thrifted Price: $0

Sold Price: £24,800 ($31,036)

Percentage Flip: Cannot be calculated

This sale is included on this list because it created a unique situation where the percentage flip cannot be calculated because its starting point was from a $0 value. Basically, the painting was dropped off to a thrift store run by the Oxfam charity by an unknown donor likely unaware of its value. The painting was brought by a volunteer at the charity shop in to Batemans Auctioneers & Valuers in the U.K., where it sold for more than $31,000 after buyers premium. The majority of the proceeds were expected to go back to the charity shop.

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It was the year where, at long last, the art market veered into correction, which was no surprise. Other developments were less anticipated, even downright shocking. A beloved art dealer was sued for fraud and abruptly shuttered her businesses, which are now being liquidated. A controversial trove of jewelry went from an auction house dream to a public relations fiasco. And a slew of other market-moving events piqued our interest.

Here are Artnet News PRO’s six defining moments for the art market from 2023.

The Fineberg Flop

The installation of “A Century of Art: the Gerald Fineberg Collection” at Christie’s. Photo: Katya Kazakina

If ever there was a moment when the art market nosedived in real time, that moment was during the sale of Gerald Fineberg’s art collection at Christie’s on May 17 in New York. Estimated at $163 million to $235 million, the evening auction hammered $124.7 million, or $38.3 million short of the low estimate. Six unsold works included those by typically solid performers Mark Grotjahn, James Rosenquist, and Louise Bourgeois; paintings by Gerhard Richter, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, and Christopher Wool went for firesale prices.

What made the event so striking was the fact that the estate didn’t take the auction-house guarantee and refused to accept third-party backing, all in a vain effort to maximize potential profits. (Our Art Detective column later examined what went wrong). In addition to exposing the depth of the market correction, the Fineberg sale underscored the crucial role of guarantees during times of economic and geopolitical volatility. Its outcome had an immediate effect, recalibrating the market in terms of pricing and strategy. By the time November sales rolled around, very little was left to chance. One high-stakes auction, the Emily Fisher Landau evening sale, was fully guaranteed by Sotheby’s and effectively 100 percent pressed, thanks to irrevocable bids on every single lot.

—Katya Kazakina

The $100 Million Breuer Building Sale 

The Breuer Building. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The landmark 1968 building, which has housed three major New York museums, sold to Sotheby’s for more than $100 million in a deal announced in July. Sotheby’s plans to relocate its galleries and auction room to the Breuer in 2025 as part of strategic transformation of its real estate footprint that also involves leasing out five floors of its longtime headquarters on York Avenue to Weill Cornell Medicine.

The shift is one of many taking place on the Upper East Side. RFR Holdings will lease most of 980 Madison, known as “the art building” since its completion in 1949, to Bloomberg Philanthropies after the current leases end in 2025. The building was the original home of Parke-Bernet Galleries, the famed auction house that merged with Sotheby’s in 1964. (Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet moved to York Avenue in 1980).

The building’s biggest tenant currently is Gagosian gallery, which has been there since 1987 and now occupies 42 percent of the space. Other tenants are Nahmad Contemporary, Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery, and the offices of White Cube, which in October opened a flagship gallery with great fanfare just two blocks north, at 1002 Madison.

—Katya Kazakina

Heidi Horten Jewels Auctions at Christie’s

Heidi Horten wearing the Briollete of India. Copyright The Heidi Horten Foundation. Courtesy: Christie’s.

The record $202 million jewelry auction turned into a major public relations nightmare for Christie’s after the Nazi roots of the fortune used to assemble the dazzling collection were revealed.

Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten inherited the wealth from her late husband, Helmut Horten, a member of the Nazi Party during World War II whose riches were built by snapping up Jewish businesses under duress as part of Hitler’s Aryanization process.

While 98 percent of the lots sold, including a Cartier ring that fetched $15 million, the public outcry followed from Jewish organizations, Holocaust survivors, and Christie’s clients. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art scraped a restitution symposium organized by Christie’s that had been planned before the scandal.

Bowing down to intense scrutiny, the auction house cancelled the planned November sale of the remaining 300 lots from the Horten trove. The fiasco showcased the shifting conversation about restitution, which has moved from unearthing (and returning) looted objects to the examination of the fortunes behind acquisitions of fine art, antiquities, and jewelry.

—Katya Kazakina

The End of An Auction Era…And A New Star On The Scene

Jussi Pylkkänen selling the top lot of Christie’s 20th Century evening sale, Monet’s, Le bassin aux nymphéas for $74 million.

Christie’s 20th-Century evening sale on November 9 marked the end of an era, as veteran auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen, who has been with Christie’s for 38 years, presided over his final New York sale before he moves on to a new career as a private advisor. Pylkkänen thanked the audience numerous times for what he described as “amazing adventures,” over the years and left the rostrum to a standing ovation after presiding over the sale of the top lot of the night, Claude Monet’s Le basin aux nympheas, for a premium-inclusive $74 million.

Pylkkänen has been one of the longest-serving and most high-profile international auctioneers ever. He handled the sale of billions of dollars worth of art, especially in recent years, when he conducted the sale of Salvator Mundi (circa 1500) that was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and commanded a whopping $450.3 million in November 2017, becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. In addition to numerous nine-figure Giacomettis, Modiglianis, and Picassos, last fall Pylkkänen served as the auctioneer for the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which took in $1.6 billion. Previously, he served auctioneer for the collections of Elizabeth Taylor and David Rockefeller.

Phyllis Kao, from Sotheby’s client strategy team, fields bids in The Now sale, her first evening auction. Image courtesy Sotheby’s

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, Sotheby’s introduced a new evening-sale auctioneer for its ultra-contemporary and contemporary offerings this season. Phyllis Kao, vice president for client strategy in the Americas was stylish and charismatic, as she conducted the event with confidence and tempo, occasionally switching from English to Mandarin. “A star is born,” our senior reporter Katya Kazakina declared after watching her in action that night.

Kao was formerly a specialist handling Chinese artworks at Sotheby’s, but is now a member of the client strategy team focused on the Modern evening sales. She has over 15 years of auction experience.

Kao is a Taiwanese-American Bay Area native, and holds a degree from Columbia University. She can conduct auctions multilingually in English, Mandarin, and French. May the fireworks begin!

—Eileen Kinsella

Going, going, gone: What Do High-Profile Gallery Defections Mean for the Primary Market? 

Peter Doig. Photo by Fergus Carmichael. Image courtesy The Courtauld.

In the past year or so, two of the world’s most expensive living painters flexed their power status by jumping ship from their longtime respective galleries.

Like most avid fans of Scottish-born painter Peter Doig, we were thrilled to hear about a major Courtauld show in London that opened in February. But why, we wondered, had many of these large scale works on view come straight from the artist’s more recently established London studio?

It is extremely unusual that new work would go to a museum straight from the studio. Some sleuthing turned up a major development: Doig had split with Michael Werner, his dealer of nearly 25 years.

Doig, who is one of the most expensive living painters, never made a formal announcement, but a representative for the gallery confirmed at the time that it no longer represented Doig. It appears the relationship had become quite strained over time, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Although Michael Werner gallery declined to comment further, Artnet News’s Annie Armstrong reported that Doig’s relationship with Werner began to deteriorate during the pandemic, and was hastened after the gallery decided to axe a financial arrangement it had with Doig’s wife Parinaz Mogadassi, who runs the London- and New York-based gallery Tramps. But details about what else might have caused their relationship to sour were scant.

We dug deeper. Among the twists and turns of Doig’s phenomenal market rise, was something of a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of the traditional gallery approach when it comes to navigating a runaway market. The Peter Doig Story might even help explain why increasing numbers of in-demand artists are looking for new models of representation today.

Is there a small but pronounced trend happening where powerful and pricey living artists are calling all the shots when it comes to their gallery arrangements? At the end of last year, German superstar painter Gerhard Richter said “Auf Wiedersehen” to New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery, his dealer of 37 years, to join David Zwirner, which has locations in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong.

“I’m happy to be represented by David Zwirner. I have known David since his childhood as I had already in the 1960s worked closely with his father, Rudolf Zwirner,” Richter said in a statement. “I feel this represents a beautiful continuity across generations.”

“We are very proud to have represented one of the most remarkable artists of our time for nearly 40 years,” Philipp Kaiser, Goodman’s president and a partner at the gallery, told Artnet News in an email. “We acknowledge his decision at this stage of his life.”

—Eileen Kinsella

The Spectacular Downfall of a Star Art Advisor

Lisa Schiff during at SFA Advisory in New York City in December 2022. Photo by Udo Salters/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images.

Just a few months ago, it was hard to find an art market follower or expert who wasn’t impressed by the knowledge and dynamic energy of advisor Lisa Schiff. She seemed to be everywhere around the art world: at art fairs; on panels; quoted in the media, including by Artnet News; at major auctions and elsewhere.

So there was a collective gasp when a bombshell lawsuit alleging that Schiff had been operating a “ponzi scheme” and had bilked a group of investors out of $1.8 million was filed in May. And that was just the beginning. The plaintiffs continued to uncover a shocking list of blue-chip art deals they had allegedly given Schiff money to buy on their behalf, which were never paid for or only partly paid for.

Schiff almost immediately shuttered her Tribeca gallery and office space storefront, and has moved out of the pricey pad known as the Jenga building where her monthly rent was a lofty $25,000. She filed for a form of voluntary bankruptcy and a creditor is in the process of sorting out and prioritizing claims. Hundreds of works belonging to Schiff could be auctioned by Phillips New York next year. Court documents also unveiled that Schiff is being investigated by U.S. authorities including the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the New York District Attorney.

And as Schiff’s case heats up, another major art world scandal is still working its way through the legal and prison system. Robert Newland, a British national and co-conspirator of disgraced art dealer Inigo Philbrick, was set to return to the U.S. in mid-December in order to report to prison for a one-and-a-half year sentence, the result of his role in the massive fraud, which has been estimated at upwards of $85 million.

Philbrick and Newland deceived investors by selling more than 100 percent of “fractional ownership” shares in dozens of pricey paintings. The scheme imploded when the market for particular artists slowed down. Philbrick who has been in jail since he was captured on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu in June 2020, is set to be released from jail next year. Art owners and investors are still wrangling over who is entitled to what in disputes over blue-chip art by Rudolf Stingel, Yayoi Kusama, and others.

—Eileen Kinsella

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Like the seasons themselves, Jamie Scott’s elegantly shot films spotlighting spring and fall are much more vibrant and full of vitality than his newly released “Winter.” Five years in the making, the latter timelapse documents the icy seizure of plants, leaves, and terrain across New York State and Montréal. Glimmering, white snow quickly overwhelms the frigid, barren scenes, causing pine branches to droop and frost to form on every possible surface from cobwebs to waterfalls.

As entrancing as previous seasons, “Winter” zooms from wide, aerial shots to macro frames highlighting the unique patterns of individual snowflakes. Scott explains that this film was the hardest to create, in part, because of the changing climate. He says:

Twenty years ago when I moved to New York, there were several large snowstorms every year, and snow was practically guaranteed. In the last five years, there has been much less snow, and it’s become less predictable and often only for a few hours, at best. To plan for these shoots, I would look at the long-range forecasts, but it was very unreliable. Originally, I wanted to shoot the whole piece in New York City and focus on Central Park like my previous films, but I had to keep going farther and farther north. As a result, the majority of the film was shot in upstate New York and Montréal.

To ensure he could capitalize on weather events when they did happen, Scott fashioned two weatherproof boxes that housed his equipment for weeks on end. “At times, I was shooting with up to six cameras and four sliders,” he says. “I also lost two drones in the process.”

Watch the full timelapse, which is set to music by Jim Perkins, above, and find more of Scott’s work on Vimeo.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Snow and Ice Seizes Barren Landscapes in an Entrancing Timelapse Filmed Across Five Winters appeared first on Colossal.

Sprouting between windows and tucked around corners, Steeven Salvat’s wheatpastes add a dose of natural history to everyday urban life. The French artist has spent the last few years meticulously rendering gem- and mechanic-encrusted beetles and butterflies, amassing a vast insectarium that draws attention to the intersections of art, science, and history and underscores the preciousness of each creature.

During the last two years, though, Salvat has begun to consistently work outdoors and on walls, creating public pieces that capture his painstaking linework on a larger scale. Whether painted in acrylic or slathered with wheatpaste, the realistic renderings are similarly detailed and delicate, conveying the smooth fur of a field mouse or the fluffed plumage of a bird mid-flight. Many of his recent works, part of the ongoing Petite Nature project, pair renditions of oversized dried flowers with tiny creatures “to awaken awareness on the fragility of ecosystems such as grasslands and natural water points, often sacrificed in the name of urbanisation.”

In addition to the wall works, Petite Nature also features smaller drawings on paper, which will be on view in January at Le Cabinet d’Amateur in Paris. Salvat generously shares glimpses into his process on Instagram, and you can find originals, prints, and postcards in his shop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Finely Rendered Birds and Animals Cling to Dried Flowers in Steeven Salvat’s Wheatpastes appeared first on Colossal.

Longtime readers of this column know that when the next year starts peeking over the horizon, it’s time for me to uncap my red pen and grade the art market predictions I made at the start of this one.

With eight prognostications spanning commercial galleries, auction houses, art fairs and more, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover in this edition—and with very little in the trade having gone the way most professionals hoped, it feels like a particularly important time for a pundit like me to be accountable.

So let’s get right into the review, shall we?

1. One or more high-end galleries will build out a department specialising in licensing and branded merchandise.

On review: Half right.

One reason I keep making and reviewing art market predictions is that sometimes I find out the industry is one step ahead of me. Case in point: none of Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and White Cube had a dedicated licensing professional on staff as of my writing, according to spokespeople for each dealer, and an inquiry to David Zwirner went unanswered by publication time.

Pace Gallery, however, does have one—and has had him in the role since January 2020.

Vincent Wilcke, Pace’s senior researcher and permissions manager, “handles all licensing for Pace artists, including commercial”, a gallery spokesperson says. “He primarily deals with TV/ film and commercial books licensing, as that is what the bulk of our artists have requests for.”

So, I was right to think that a major gallery would conclude this area of the business had grown important (and lucrative) enough to hire a specialist to manage, but I was wrong to think that it would take until this year. As a result, the committee has decided to award me one half-point for this prediction. (Full disclosure: The committee is me. No one ever said this process was perfect!)

2. Auction sales of fine art in China and the UK will both plummet at least 5% year over year from 1 January to 1 December.

On review: Correct.

If you needed more proof that 2023 was a bummer for practically everyone in the art trade, consider this: according to data from ArtTactic, fine art sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips in London declined from about $1.41bn in 2022 to $1.14bn this year—a decrease of 18.8% by value.

In China, meanwhile, fine art sales dwindled from $921.7m in 2022 to $847.8m in 2023—a shrinkage of 8%—across the Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai salerooms of Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips, China Guardian and Poly Auction.

3. AGP (the consortium of Acquavella, Gagosian and Pace) will outcompete the auction houses for at least one collection of note.

On review: Dead wrong.

I missed the mark on this prediction, but I can’t fault the process that led me to make it.

A large number of works with estimates of $10m or more hammered at or below their targets at auction in 2022—that is, when they managed to sell at all—and much the same held true at this lofty price level in 2023 (including during offerings of major single-owner collections).

In fact, the fears about the market’s wobbliness proved to be even more severe than I anticipated last December. Christie’s, for instance, estimates that its global auction sales of art and luxury goods will have plummeted nearly 31% by year’s end, from $7.2bn in 2022 to about $5.0bn in 2023. Private sales of the same categories, in contrast, were up about 5% year-on-year, to $1.2bn.

In theory, this scenario went a long way toward levelling the playing field between the auction houses’ private sales departments and the combined might of these three A-list commercial galleries. In practice, however, no collectors or estate executors felt compelled enough by the new topography of the market to follow the path of the Donald Marron collection. C’est la vie. Which leads us to…

4. Fiac will permanently shut down.

On review: All signs say oui.

I should state that I cannot officially confirm Fiac is done and dusted. RX France, the fair’s organiser, did not reply to my email enquiring about Fiac’s status heading into the new year. But the facts as we know them today make it hard to come to any other conclusion.

After Art Basel displaced Fiac from its longtime October slot at the Grand Palais in January 2022, RX France sabre-rattled about suing the Réunion des Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais (RMN-GP), the entity that manages tenancy at the Grand Palais and Grand Palais Éphémère, and vowed its homegrown Parisian fair would continue.

Yet no lawsuit has materialised to date, and RX France never hired a dedicated director for Fiac after the ouster. Instead, the company assigned Florence Bourgeois, the director of its other domestic expo, Paris Photo, the ostensible responsibility of managing both events.

Although Bourgeois stated in an October 2022 interview that the company was “reflecting on different ways to bring [Fiac] back to life”, there has been no sign of movement on the operating table in the succeeding 14 months. In fact, searching for art events in Paris on RX Global’s “events finder” tool as of mid-December 2023 returned only one result: Paris Photo.

Meanwhile, Paris+ par Art Basel has earned rave reviews in its first two years at its temporary venue, with a major scale-up looming when the fair transitions to the freshly renovated Grand Palais for its third edition in 2024. The city’s simultaneous satellite fairs, including Paris Internationale, Asia Now and Offscreen, also leave little breathing room for an insurgent Fiac to return during Paris’s premier art week. Nor do I have any confidence that Fiac would attract a sustainable level of demand from either dealers or collectors at another point in the annual calendar.

In short, after Fiac’s second consecutive year of dormancy, the most generous reading is that it has become a zombie fair: maybe not officially dead, but certainly not genuinely alive, either. Under the circumstances, that seems like enough evidence to put a checkmark on this prediction.

5. From January through June, total auction sales of works by ultra-contemporary artists (born in 1975 or later) will decline year-over-year for the first time since 2019.

On review: Yessir.

Per data from ArtTactic, in the first half of this year, lots by ultra-contemporary artists amassed $151.9m at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips’s salerooms in London, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Milan, Shanghai and Singapore combined. This represents a drop of nearly one-third from the equivalent period in 2022, when works by artists in this age bracket brought $221.2m across the same venues.

One caveat bears mentioning: Although the dollar value of such sales significantly declined year-on-year, the auction houses actually sold 21.4% more ultra-contemporary lots by volume from January through June of this year (1,332) than during the same period a year earlier (1,097). So, the bidding wars didn’t materialise at the same rate, but demand for the youngsters remains healthier than the typical talking points about a “retreat to quality” would suggest.

6. Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips will generate a combined minimum of $1.5m in primary-market sales (excluding NFTs).

On review: Accurate.

Even though I hit the bullseye here, the arrow didn’t travel the path I expected. Christie’s did not respond to my inquiry about primary-market sales. Sotheby’s, whose Artist’s Choice initiative saw the house partner with ascendant living artists and their dealers to auction off fresh-from-the-studio works with a charitable component in 2022, declined to provide data as well.

Phillips, however, delivered more than $4m in primary-market sales this year, according to an auction house spokesperson. The earnings came from a combination of six private selling exhibitions and five entries on its nascent DropShop platform, where Phillips offers one newly commissioned limited-edition print or sculptural multiple by a different artist every month.

So far, Dropshop has featured contributions from reliable draws including Kehinde Wiley, the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the in-demand ultra-contemporary artist Emily Mae Smith. In contrast, the only artists to receive solo selling shows from Phillips this year were LA-based Brett Crawford, whose street art-adjacent style has developed a major following in East Asia, and Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, a French-Iranian abstract painter whose CV largely consists of exhibitions at auction houses.

The remaining private selling exhibitions at Phillips in 2023 were all group affairs. It just goes to show you that the best business is not always done with the most established talent.

(One note for the detail-specific: although Damien Hirst held a show of 102 new paintings at Phillips in London this summer, all transactions were carried out through HENI Primary, meaning they do not factor into the Phillips data.)

7. Climate protesters will damage one or more institutional works badly enough to require multi-day conservation—or worse.

On review: Sadly, correct.

On 6 November 2023, two members of Just Stop Oil, an activist group seeking to pressure the UK government into ending its licensing of new fossil fuel projects, entered London’s National Gallery and smashed hammers into the glass protecting Diego Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus (1647-51). The institution removed the work, widely known as “The Rokeby Venus”, from view for nearly a month following the incident; it returned on 1 December “after conservation treatment to minor damage sustained to the painting surface, and the fitting of new glazing”, according to a press statement from the National Gallery.

I would love to tell you the withering backlash against this latest provocation will compel climate action groups to re-evaluate their misguided campaign of vandalising great works of art. But I doubt it, even though this is clearly a losing issue for the protesters—less because the average person believes art is sacrosanct and more because almost no one understands the conceptual link the protesters are trying to hammer home.

8. AI image generators will become the subject of a class action lawsuit, a formal inquiry by lawmakers or both.

On review: True.

No prediction I’ve ever made has been validated faster than this one.

On 13 January 2023, a trio of US-based artists and illustrators—Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz—filed a class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against three artificial intelligence (AI) companies. The complaint accused Midjourney, DeviantArt and Stability AI (along with its UK affiliate) of copyright infringement via the unauthorised use of the plaintiffs’ works in the gargantuan databases of images used to “train” their algorithmic image generators (Midjourney, DreamUp and Stable Diffusion, respectively). 

The lawsuit has travelled a winding road in the months since. On 30 October, a federal judge dismissed much of the original complaint, primarily on two grounds: first, that only one of the three plaintiffs had previously registered their works with the US Copyright Office, and second, that the lawsuit failed to adequately explain how the AI companies had used the artists’ imagery in their software and violated their rights in the process.

But an amended complaint filed in November added seven plaintiffs, one defendant (Runway AI, which contributed to the development of Stable Diffusion 1.5) and hundreds of pages of exhibits that aim to fill in the blanks cited in the judge’s partial dismissal the month before.

So, the winner of the legal dispute is still in question. The legitimacy of this prediction, however, is not.

Overall, that leaves me with the best score I’ve rung up in nearly a decade of doing this exercise—a fittingly counter-intuitive result for an expectation-upending year.

Final score: 6.5 Correct, 1.5 Incorrect.

• Watch this space—or pick up a copy of our January issue—to see my predictions for the art market in 2024.

A review of Paco Pomet’s paintings from the last few years uncovers an unwavering fascination with the sun and moon. Brilliant glowing orbs appear in the distance and illuminate otherwise gray scenes, while tiny, cratered characters with cartoonish legs and arms wander into homes and hang out on rooftops.

This recurring theme culminates in a new limited-edition monograph featuring 29 paintings created from 2017 to 2022. Aptly titled Celestial, the book evidences Pomet’s enduring satirical and absurdist impulses. In “Encounter,” the moon floats with two businessmen on a makeshift raft, while “On the Road” depicts a vintage car traveling toward a United States-shaped sun on the horizon. The artist has shared previously that he believes human pursuits—and failures—are cyclical, making the sun and moon fitting metaphors for modern struggles, whether in the case of unchecked capitalism and environmental destruction or seemingly endless moral quandaries.

“Celestial bodies and stars have fascinated me since I can remember,” the artist says. “The sun and the moon are an endless source that throw very strong and mysterious statements for us: time, space, duration, darkness, light, beginning, finalisation. Their presence, and the power they have to convey feelings, has no boundaries.”

Celestial is currently available in Pomet’s shop, along with several prints. Find more of his work on Instagram.

“Melancholy Surgery Unit”

“After Hours”

“La Llegada”

“Eclipse”

“On the Road”

“An Ending”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In Paco Pomet’s ‘Celestial,’ the Sun and Moon Cycle Through Satirical and Outlandish Situations appeared first on Colossal.

An ice giant that boasts 27 moons and numerous bright rings, Uranus is one cold, windy, and dramatic cosmic orb. Known as a fluid planet, its mass consists of an “icy,” dense combination of water, methane, and ammonia around a rocky core, with a blue-green color due to large amounts of methane. Its days are much shorter than Earth’s—only 17 hours—making it difficult to capture quality images, as storms and other features rotate so quickly. And while Uranus has the distinction of being the first planet discovered using a telescope, it has taken until now to capture its dynamic character in this much detail.

NASA just released an image captured by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (previously) using its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which reveals an unprecedented glimpse of a seasonal ice cap with bright storms at its base. “Because Uranus spins on its side at a tilt of about 98 degrees, it has the most extreme seasons in the solar system,” NASA says. “For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the sun shines over one pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a dark, 21-year-long winter.”

The image also captures 14 of Uranus’s 27 moons, some of which orbit within the rings. Using Webb’s sensitive imaging and a number of filters to glean more precise attributes, we’re even able to see a dim ring named Zeta that often eludes other telescopes.

Learn more about the mission on NASA’s website, and you might also enjoy Webb’s depiction of a dramatic dying star, released a few months ago.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A New Image from NASA’s James Webb Telescope Captures Icy Uranus’s Elusive Rings and Extreme Conditions appeared first on Colossal.

In her early 20s, artist Kirstie Macleod became intimately aware of the ways working with a shared purpose has the potential to form immediate bonds.

Macleod spent her childhood living around the world, moving from Venezuela to countries like Nigeria, Japan, and Canada, to name a few. At 21, she traveled to India, where she immersed herself in the country’s textile industry and craft traditions. She didn’t speak the language but found a connection, in part, through making. “I’d often be with people with whom I couldn’t communicate with words, but I could sit with them and stitch a jacket,” she told Crafts Council.

She clung to the idea that embroidery could serve as both a physical and symbolic link between people from different backgrounds, ideologies, and religions, and in 2009, she launched “The Red Dress,” a collaborative project featuring embroideries by hundreds of artisans around the world.

Embroideries by FanSina artisans, Egypt (2015) and Zenaida Aguilar, Mexico (2018)

In Egypt, about 50 Bedouin Jabaliya women who are part of the FanSina collective created herbal motifs with curved flourishes inspired by their Mt. Sinai surroundings. During an exhibition in Warsaw, a group of Ukrainian refugees melded long stitches with tight French knots to render a bright yellow sunflower with one petal in pale blue. And in Chiapas, artist Zenaida Aguilar sewed a pointillistic patch of native flora and fauna, a symbol of her ability to thrive and support herself after leaving an abusive marriage.

Aguilar’s story isn’t unique among those involved in “The Red Dress,” many of whom are women in vulnerable positions in their communities and living on little means. Part of the project is to ensure that artists are compensated and have the opportunity to sell more of their work in the future. In total, Macleod commissioned 141 embroiderers to contribute, and these artists will continue to receive a portion of exhibition fees, profits, and sales through the project’s Etsy shop.

Additional contributions came from enthusiastic audiences along the way. A total of 380 embroiderers from 51 countries have since laid millions of stitches on the panels of burgundy silk dupion.

An embroidery group in Aguacatenango, Mexico, stitches on the dress worn by Vanessa Aguilar Juarez (2021). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

The form of the dress is also emblematic. A garment historically associated with feminity, the gown is regal and elegant, if not conservative, with full-length sleeves, a corsetted bodice, and a wide, billowing skirt. Literally covering the wearer’s body with the contributions of artists around the world, the 6.8-kilogram dress “is weighted as much by the individual stories and collective voices waiting to be heard as by the threads and beads that adorn it.”

Macleod wrapped up the project in June, 14 years and 3 months after it began. The dress is currently touring and on view at The Frick Pittsburgh, with a stop at Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts in February 2024. Additional shows are scheduled around the world through 2026. “I intend to bring the garment back to all the commissioned artisans who shared their voices in the cloth, so they can exhibit their own work alongside ‘The Red Dress’ in their chosen venue, in their own country,” she says. “I am about halfway so far!”

As “The Red Dress” makes its way around the world once again, Macleod is also in the process of culling 150 hours of footage into a documentary and creating a book to share the project with a broader audience. Ultimately, she says, the dress is about peace and unity, “remind(ing) us what is possible when we come together in community and collaboration, supporting and uplifting one another rather than trying to walk this life alone.”

Photo by Dave Watts

Farhana Gabaly, Egypt (2015). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

Refugee women from Ukraine embroider at the ‘Traces of Sisterhood’ exhibition, Galeria Salon Akademii, Warsaw (2022). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

Ukrainian refugees Nadia Vaipan and Natalia Volovyh, Galeria Salon Akademii (2022). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

Gisèle, Esther, and Espérance, Congo (2018). Photo by Nicole Esselen

Allthreads Collective, Australia (2018). Photo by Sophia Schorr Kon

Kirstie Macleod and the FanSina embroiderers, Sinai. Photo by Georgina Sleap

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article 380 Artists, 51 Countries, 14 Years: A Community Embroidery Project Connects Women Around the Globe appeared first on Colossal.