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Art Market Eye
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Hello,
Are crypto years like dog years—seven for every one of ours?
While most of us have just about managed to get dressed, the market for NFT art seems to have lived a decade in a month, evolving from novelty to all-pervading force. It's hard to believe the $69.3m Beeple sale was only a few weeks ago.
The art market is adept at morphing into new forms when old avenues are shut off; were we all distracted by the global rat race of fairs, it’s hard to imagine that this virtual world of NFTs—the metaverse and its pseudonymous players—would dominate so much.
Some NFT noise will be drowned out when analogue art events return, and from 12 April those in the UK will finally be able to get back inside a commercial gallery to see art that actually exists—such as Sue Williamson’s show at Goodman Gallery, previewed below.
Also below, Georgina Adam writes how the past month has seen not one, but three interlopers make huge new records at auction, putting prices for Van Gogh and others revered by the cannon in the shade. A huge generational taste shift? Or does it just come down to tax, as everything eventually does?
You know a renegade movement has gone mainstream when Damien Hirst gets in on the act—never one to believe in the concept of flooding his own market, Hirst is dropping 10,000 works on paper with corresponding NFTs on the new “energy efficient” platform Palm.
We may need 10,000 more Hirst works like a hole in the head but this is not an April Fool. Truth is a lot stranger than fiction now, so keep up.
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Anna Brady
Art market editor
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The insight
NFTs? I think it's ICSs! [International Crooks and Swindlers]
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—David Hockney
The British artist tells Waldemar Januszczak what he thinks of NFTs for the latest episode of the Waldy & Bendy's Adventures in Art podcast released this Sunday on all podcast platforms
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Opinion
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Georgina Adam
Editor-at-large
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Ripping up the rule book: Banksy, Beeple and Jafri
In the space of just three weeks, we have seen almost all the accepted norms of the traditional art market shattered.
In March the graphic designer Beeple saw the NFT relating to his compendium of 5,000 cartoonish images Everydays: the First 5,000 Days, go for an eye-watering $69.3m—making it the third-most expensive price ever paid for a living artist. Only Jeff Koons and David Hockney have achieved more. The buyer of the NFT was an Indian programmer, Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto investor and founder of the NFT fund Metapurse.
Then the Dubai-based painter Sacha Jafri achieved a record of sorts by creating the world’s biggest painting (18,000 sq. ft). Offered in a charity auction in Dubai, the Brobdingnagian oeuvre was bought for $62m by another crypto-entrepreneur, Andre Abdoune, propelling Jafri into sudden fame as the world’s fourth most expensive living artist.
Adding to these unsettling events, in a charity auction at Christie’s in the same month, Banksy’s Game Changer (2020), celebrating health workers as superheroes, sold for a record £16.7m ($23.1m), four times its estimate and setting a new record for an artist who has never had museum validation.
So what is happening here? The traditional hierarchies of the art market, where values—both monetary and aesthetic—were established and policed by art historians, curators and museums, are being assaulted by a new breed of wealthy new players, with new tastes and “new” money. Their wallets are stuffed with the currently surging cryptocurrencies. The traditional art world may sniff at some of their choices—but they don’t give a stuff. Beeple and others such as Jafri, Banksy and KAWS, these are the artists they respond to, or think are a good investment.
Ultimately, this seems to be the answer: it is all about money and investment, rather than art. A quick trawl through the website for the Metapurse fund—the name alone is revelatory—has an “investment” tab and the rather baffling statement: “Metapurse takes a scalable approach to maximalism when it comes to token investment. Spotting a robust underlying project and complementary tokenomics.” It does seem to be about selling the B20 token, which at the time of writing was worth $6.29, so making it accessible to anyone.
But while this frenzy lasts, values have gone topsy-turvy. Beeple, Jafri and Banksy have beaten out, in recent auctions, artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse or Munch, names validated by time and a consensus in the established art world.
Are we witnessing a profound shift in taste and values, as the “boomer” generation passes and a new cohort imposes a very different idea of what is significant today?
Personally, I don’t think so. I think this blip in prices is heavily linked to the cryptocurrency world rather than the merits of the art offered, which in most cases is shudderingly awful. When the crypto-frenzy cools, we shall see what is still valued in the art world: as was memorably said in another context, when the tide goes out, we shall see who is wearing swimming trunks.
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A message from our sponsor
Gurr Johns: Perspectives sees our specialists share their views, opinions and insights about the art world. Click here to read the first in the series in which Shea Goli (Contemporary art advisor, London) discusses the contemporary market during Covid-19, including market trends, NFTs, and the artists on her radar.
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Forgotten French Fragonard. A long-ignored painting hanging in a family’s living room in Epernay, France, has turned out to be by the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Discovered during an estate inventory, the small oval-shaped work has not been seen in over two centuries. Depicting a philosopher reading, it will be auctioned on 26 June by Encheres-Champagne auctioneers in Epernay with an estimate of €1.5m to €2m.
Rumbles over royal rights. UK ministers have granted the Queen immunity to a 2017 cultural property protection law, which exempts her private estates from being searched by police looking for stolen or looted artefacts. But a petition has now been launched seeking to overturn this right—it has reached 65,000 signatures.
London dealers beware. The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) has issued an “amber alert” to all London galleries, demanding that they be more proactive in preventing money laundering through sales of art. This comes two months after the NCA asked UK dealers to begin filing “suspicious activity” reports, a request that seems to have fallen on deaf ears, with one NCA chief describing the overall response from the gallery sector as “inadequate”.
Tovey turns to auctions. The actor and TalkArt podcast host Russell Tovey will be collaborating with Sotheby’s to curate the tenth edition of their Contemporary Curated sale, open for bidding from 6-13 April. The self-described “taste-making collector”, “art geek” and “self-taught specialist” has chosen works by Tracey Emin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gavin Turk and Peter Beard, with prices starting at £6,000.
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Surfacing on the market
As is often the case with women artists, global attention has come late for the 80-year-old British South African artist Sue Williamson. But, with her first show in the UK (at Goodman Gallery, until 24 April) and her US debut on the horizon (at a major museum, yet to be announced), that is rapidly changing.
Williamson has spent the past 40 years documenting Apartheid and freedom in South Africa, earning her recognition “as a critical figure of the activist generation that challenged the Apartheid regime”, says Jo Stella-Sawicka the director of Goodman Gallery in London .
Her activism bleeds into her art, as her London show attests. The exhibition covers various aspects of Williamson’s practice, but a focal point is her Truth Games series from 1998, which brings together courtroom photographs of accusers and defenders from several cases brought before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Williamson’s brief stint as a journalist in Durban early in her career informed the cut-and-paste aesthetic of the series (as a woman she was often relegated to compiling scrapbooks of news clippings rather than covering stories). In total, six prints from the series are on show, priced at $45,000 each.
Anny Shaw
Contributing editor (art market)
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About our sponsor
Gurr Johns is a global leader in art advisory and appraisals, acting as a discreet and trusted partner to private collectors, family offices, attorneys and art institutions.
Established in 1914, the company today has a global network, including offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Chicago and New Delhi, with specialist expertise across all categories of fine and decorative art, jewellery and collectibles.
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About us
Art Market Eye is a monthly newsletter delivering commentary, insights and analysis from our market experts. It is written by Georgina Adam, Anna Brady, Anny Shaw and Kabir Jhala. It is edited and devised by Julia Michalska. Please email us with any leads, comments or typos!
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