Much of this post came to me while listening to the latest episode of the Art Angle, one of my go to art podcasts. You can listen here.
And for anyone with an Artnet pro account, read more on the art market’s current state here (also highly recommend if you want to keep track of the market).
So you may have heard that it hasn’t been a great year for the art market. “Bargain city” “softening prices” “hard landing” “buyers market”— perhaps you’ve seen these terms thrown around to describe it.
One piece of evidence for this market correction is in the price differentials between art being sold at auction and art being sold on the primary market (i.e. in galleries), a subject recently discussed in a recent podcast for artnet news.
One of my go to art world listens
It’s the general wisdom that the price a work receives when it goes to auction is the “real” price— it’s what the market is willing to pay for it, not what a gallerist has been able to convince a collector behind closed doors a work is worth.
These days it’s sometimes the case that works at auction are selling for much less than they were bought for, revealing that buying art is much less of a guaranteed investment than the market likes to say it is.
So if art isn’t an investment, how can we justify buying it at high prices? (A question a lot of galleries are asking themselves.)
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