WSJ: "The entire art market is reeling"

The crisis at Sotheby’s comes at a time when the entire art market is reeling.  Over the past year, collectors who see art as a financial asset have winced as higher interest rates and inflation made it more expensive to trade art.  Contemporary art buyers have also suffered sticker shock after years of paying ever-higher prices for emerging artists—who may never pay off. Some smaller galleries, who rely on collectors to vouch for unknown artists, have shuttered, while dealers have reported lackluster sales at art fairs. 

Those factors have hurt collectors’ overall confidence.  “I don’t feel like there’s a bunch of collectors waiting out there to save the day this time,” said Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky. 

~ The Wall Street Journal, "The Art Market Is Tanking. Sotheby’s Has Even Bigger Problems.," September 25, 2024

Mindy Rhodes on art

Nothing makes me happier than giving an artistic part of myself to someone else - no matter what art it is.  That is what I consider joy to be.

~ Mindy Rhodes, WhisperWind Studios

Leonardo da Vinci on art and science

To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science.  Learn how to see.  Realize that everything connects to everything else.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Jeffrey Tucker on government lockdowns and the arts

Governments declared arts to be nonessential, dispensable, abolishable. It’s the biggest attack on art and beauty possibly since the iconoclasm of the 16th century, when mobs sacked churches, tore out paintings, and melted candlesticks in bonfires. Back then the motivation was to purify the world of sin. Now we think we are purifying the world of disease.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "The Lockdowns Might Be Killing the Arts," AIER.org, July 14, 2020

Hot contemporary art market attracts Middle East buyers

The latest destination for the still-high-flying contemporary art market: the Middle East. Paintings, photographs, and sculptures by Iranian and Arab artists hit records this fall at the big auction houses—bringing a total of $12.6 million in a Christie's International sale in Dubai. The top seller: a painting depicting Koranic texts by Egyptian-born Ahmed Moustafa. It went for $657,000, double the pre-auction estimate. At a recent Sotheby's auction in London, a painting of calligraphic Arabic letters by Iranian artist Mohammad Ehsai fetched $217,000—again, twice what experts predicted. Insiders say prices may soon rival those of contemporary Chinese and Indian art, which ring up nine-figure total sales at the two art houses. What's fueling the Mideast art market? Mostly, interest from the newly rich in the artists' home nations, says Sandy Heller, a New York art adviser whose clients include hedge fund manager Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors. "The contemporary art market rises with the luxury goods market," Heller says.

~ BusinessWeek, "A Pretty Penny for Art from the Middle East," December 10, 2007, by Reena Jana