Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust.
This is what happens when art is treated as an investment. Or a trend/fad.
The irony for me is that, even with the market value drop for these artists, they're still raking in a hell of a lot more money than I can even dream of getting for my art. I'm exceedingly lucky if I can sell a painting for 350 bucks, but lucky enough to sell something for roughly 100, but usually LESS.
"The art market has been experiencing a downturn for the last few years, but the slump has been particularly acute for young artists. During the early pandemic, a speculative boom driven by a misplaced belief in quick returns set in, with collectors spending $712 million at auction in 2021 on works by artists born after 1974 — a giant leap from the $259 million buyers spent just a year earlier. "
But from 2021 to 2023, the prices for these artists — “ultracontemporary” is the industry term for them — plummeted by almost a third, according to the Artnet Price Database.
Experts say the downward trend is continuing; in the first half of 2024, sales of work by young artists fell 39 percent over last year.
Collectors had overestimated the market’s strength; fearing the work might soon become impossible to sell, they wanted to make at least some of their money back — regardless of what public flops might mean for an artist’s future.
Artists rarely benefit from high auction prices, since most works at auction are sold by collectors who have bought their works earlier and are now hoping to sell them for a profit. The artists also rarely speak — as they do here — about how art market speculation affects them personally and professionally. In retrospect, Ismail, 34, said he regretted selling up to five works at a time to art advisers and collectors — who swiftly resold them.
“Everyone wants a piece of the cake,” he said, recalling how buyers made offers over email or on Instagram. It was hard to tell genuine collectors from speculators, he said.
Then, around 2021, record high prices caused a stampede of sellers, which flooded the fragile market. Gallerists raised artists’ prices but in some cases they overshot the target, discouraging potential buyers.
But speculating on artists is different from speculating on stocks and cryptocurrencies. Artists say it feels intensely personal.
“You are buying a piece of my life — a little history of me and my people,” said Lewis, who gives the subject of every portrait a portion of the proceeds from each sale. Such charity is rare in the United States — where living artists, not to mention their subjects, have no legal claim to the proceeds of a sale by a collector or institution.