ART MARKET DATA 2019 and 2020 - Winter 2021
1. NEW YORK
Jul 14, 2020 The Online Art Market in 2020: An Overview
Coronavirus has had an unprecedented impact on our lives this year. Within the art world, many hope that this pandemic will act as a catalyst to accelerate the market's integration into the digital realm. However, the degree to which the art market has increasingly moved online in 2020 is debatable. Below, we provide a digest of the latest reports, including the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2020 and the Art Basel Art Market Report 2020.
While there is a general trend across the entire economy to increase internet transactions and cut costs by reducing face to face meetings, a closer look into the nature of ‘digitalisation’ will reveal that the fundamental structure of the art market is unlikely to change. Evidence collected for 2020 reveals that the market will continue to be dominated by a few big fine art galleries, while Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips will continue to rule the world of antiques and collectibles.
COVID-19 forced the art world into an abrupt lockdown resulting in promotions and sales being solely handled online. It’s no surprise, then, that many anticipate that COVID-19 could kick-start the art world’s digital remaking. The online art market is going through some potentially transformational changes, and some of these changes are set to last. Some experts believe that social distancing will change how we buy art. Without the joy and pain of crowded art fairs and gallery openings, dealers will have to find new ways to generate the excitement that helps collectors buy art on impulse.
The trend is changing
In 2019, the online art and collectibles market grew at a mere 4%, but figures for 2020 are expected to be much larger as the art world is forced to complete more transactions online. Since 2015, we have seen market growth rates on a steady decline, with online sales dropping from 24.1% in 2015 to 9.8% in 2018. The decline in growth comes on the back of the slowdown of the global art market sales last year, with a 20% fall in the value of auction sales for Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. Data from the Art Basel Art Market Report 2020 tells a similar story, suggesting global art sales fell 5% over the same period.
Despite a decline in overall auction sales, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s saw increases in sales completed online. In total sales, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips generated $370 million in the first half of 2020, an increase in five-fold over the same period in 2019.
Courtesy of the latest Hiscox Online Art Trade Report
The stubborn reluctance from much of the commercial art world to properly embrace the digital realm is one of the main reasons for the sluggish growth in online sales last year. However, during the lockdown everything from museum exhibitions to art fairs and auctions migrated online, giving rise to a wide and innovative range of online initiatives.
It’s highly unlikely the art world will revert entirely back to the old as we emerge from the crisis. Social distancing has forced a new form of online engagement which might forever alter the way the art market and its stakeholders approach their digital presence.
65% of online sales platforms believe that the current crisis will result in a permanent shift, with the online marketplace becoming a natural part of the art sales business (which includes galleries, dealers, auctions, and advisors). Nevertheless, several platforms are cautioning that just because online sales have benefited from the current crisis, in the long-term, a prolonged economic downturn could hurt online platforms with higher overheads.
Portugal’s Galeria Pedro Cera was one of the 282 international galleries featured in the Online Viewing Rooms. Image courtesy of Art Basel.
Over half of online art platforms believe the online art market will remain focussed on collections, with certain platforms dominating specific segments (such as photography, prints, furniture, or design). Fine Art accounted for the majority of online art sales, and while this segment of the market led the way in 2020, but there is visible growth in other segments, like jewellery and memorabilia.
Big Galleries are likely to emerge as key online players
Some 63% of online platforms expect galleries to emerge as big online players when they finally embrace digital technology. Large galleries, such as David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth, have taken the concept of online gallery platforms to another level by offering smaller galleries and art fairs the opportunity to exhibit and sell via their technology platforms, turning these major galleries into third-party online sales platforms.
The consensus that most sales platforms hold is that the online art market will be dominated by a few global players within the next five years. We could start to see galleries asserting greater control over their digital presence, which means their relationship with third-party platforms might change. This could also mean a shift from providing e-commerce solutions to more traditional advertising platforms to help drive traffic to galleries’ online viewing rooms.
While the ten biggest platforms globally account for approximately 68% of the total online market, some think disruption from an outsider is a real possibility. It’s likely that an existing company like Amazon or even a startup with superior technology could disrupt the art and collectibles market. The tougher market conditions imposed by COVID-19 could speed potential consolidation up, or even trigger an acquisition spree among the stronger players, including traditional auction houses keen on building a stronger online presence.
Sotheby’s pre-sale exhibition of Irish art that went up for auction in November 2019. Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images for Sotheby’s.
Big-Tech in the Art World
Apart from the innovation offered by traditional players in the art economy, tech giants and public institutions are also pushing for arts’ increased digital presence. Google Arts and Culture, set up in 2016, collaborated with more than 500 museums and galleries across the globe to provide virtual tours and online exhibits, allowing people to visit many major art museums and peruse their collections from the comfort of their own home.
An increasing number of museums are promoting digital archives, videos, and performances via YouTube. The Serpentine Gallery has been using ‘Twitch’, a popular live streaming platform for gamers, to live stream some of its exhibitions and performances. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) for example, has a whole series of videos called The Met 360°, which explores the museum’s various buildings and spaces.
Sotheby’s Asia is staging online sales (Photo: Sotheby’s)
On social media, the museum community is becoming increasingly active on Twitter with several museums sharing facts, videos, and insights about their collections with the hashtag #museumfromhome. Since the advent of social distancing, art fairs were also forced to leverage online alternatives. Art Basel’s second edition of its ‘Online Viewing Rooms’ 19-26 June, a virtual substitute for their flagship fair in Basel, reportedly saw many multi-million transactions taking place during the online VIP preview.
After three months of effectively an entirely digital art market, it is clear that collectors are building their confidence and trust in transacting online. This suggests that the price ceiling in the online art market is increasingly pushed upwards. For the majority of traditional art world operators, the pandemic has exposed an over-dependence on certain traditional sales and promotional channels (physical art fairs, gallery exhibitions, auctions, etc.) and how vulnerable they are with such limited digital strategies in place. An online presence is more likely now than ever before to keep the art world afloat and is providing a fast-track for the lagging digital transformation we have seen within the wider art industry.
https://art.art/blog/the-online-art-market-in-2020-an-overview
2. NEW YORK ARTNET 2020
Back in December, when we first started thinking about what to focus on for this issue of the Intelligence Report, a cover story about a new business dedicated to producing experiential, immersive art for mass consumption seemed like science fiction (or, at the very least, historical fiction). But by the time the issue kicked into gear and the snow on the streets of New York began to melt in late February, the end of the lockdown seemed like an eventuality, and life afterward something we could credibly fantasize about, if not yet practically prepare for. Superblue, the company formed last year by Pace CEO Marc Glimcher with backing from Laurene Powell Jobs, has been preparing for this future since social-distancing measures first went into effect a year ago. Next month, the company plans to open its 50,000-square-foot Miami funhouse complex to a much smaller audience than it originally antici-pated. But Superblue’s borderline-messianic belief in both the artistic and financial potential of ticketed art experiences has attracted new investors even during lockdown, fueling a planned expansion into two more cities. In these pages, you’ll find plenty of signs of an industry preparing for life after what has felt like a March 2020 that went on forever. Eileen Kinsella examines which of the digital innovations developed to help businesses remain afloat during the pandemic are here to stay—and what areas remain ripe for innovation in a hybrid digital-IRL future. Our data-led breakdown of the market also reveals which segments have recovered most quickly (see: China) and which are lagging behind (see: art worth over $10 million). Meanwhile, Nate Freeman delves into the artistic enigma that is Robert Nava, the art market’s new so-bad-it’s-good obsession and critics’ latest object of disdain. Admirers of Nava, whose prices have spiked from $25,000 to $150,000 in just two years, maintain that his work has to be experienced in person to be properly appreciated. (We’ll see.)Finally, we will take you inside the gripping, twist-filled Ruffini affair, a forgery scandal that has rocked the Old Master sector and showed just how slippery multimillion-dollar questions of attribution can be. As it turns out, the man accused of masterminding the scam may be its biggest victim. There’s a lot going on in the art market right now. Imagine what will happen when we can see one another again.In these pages, you’ll findplenty of signs of an industry preparing for life after what has felt like a March 2020 that went on forever.Editors’ Letter
If fine-art auction sales tumbled almost 25 per-cent in any normal year, it would be considered a cataclysm for the art market. But 2020 was not normal. “I thought it was going to be like 2008 all over again, but it hasn’t been,” said Christopher Gaillard, of the art advisory Gurr Johns. It turns out that even when the traveling art-fair circus takes down its tent and private jets are ground-ed, people with means still want to buy art. It doesn’t hurt (the art market) that the pan-demic-induced economic crisis hit the popula-tion far less uniformly than 2008’s financial one, when fine-art auction sales plummeted over 40 percent. While experts predict it will take until at least 2023 for the economy to recover, American billionaires have seen their collective wealth grow by an estimated 40 percent since March 2020. In the absence of art fairs, auction houses emerged as the easiest place to transact, par-ticularly when sales resumed later in the year. “The biggest surprise was how negative the reaction was toward online fairs, but people were happy to watch specialists standing be-hind banks of telephones, wearing jewelry and bidding against each other,” quipped one dealer. In a testament to the strength of demand, sell-through rates reached near-decade highs in every major collecting category. (Our num-bers do not include private sales, which the Big Three houses reported were up around 50 percent year over year.) Nevertheless, many consignors who had flexibility—like the divorcing couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, whose collection is expected to fetch as much as $700 million—chose to hold off until the world stabilizes, restricting the sup-ply of top material. Looking ahead, experts predict a surge of post-lockdown activity, followed by a leveling off. But the innovations developed during the pandemic—from livestreamed sales to a rolling battery of online offerings—are here to stay. MarketplaceBy the NumbersWhen the pandemic struck, many feared the art market would be decimated. Intelligence Report 5©2021 Artnet Worldwide Corporation 10.1 Billion40%53.5 Billion35,69880.1%From 0 to HeroThe decline in total fine-art sales at Christie’s in 2020, the hardest hit of the Big Three auction houses. (Sotheby’s saw a slightly slimmer decline of 28 percent, while Phillips’s total sales fell 19 percent.)The modest decline in total fine-art auction sales in China year over year. The country’s art market experienced a dramatic rebound in the second half of 2020, which helped it overtake the United States (whose sales plummeted 35 percent) to once again become the world’s largest.The total amount of money (in USD) spent on fine art at auction in 2020—23.7 percent less than in 2019.The total amount (in USD) spent on postwar and contemporary art at auction last year, down 27.3 percent. For comparison, Tesla reported $10.7 billion in sales... in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone.The number of works that Revlon owner Ronald Perelman consigned to auction that sold for more than $20 million each. The billionaire—who said he was downsizing in search of a “simpler life”—is responsible for almost 15 percent of the high-ticket works sold publicly for over $20 million in 2020.The number of women among the 100 top-selling artists at auction in 2020—one (just one!) more than in 2019. They are, in order: Joan Mitchell (18th of 100), Yayoi Kusama (22), Tamara de Lempicka (40), Helen Frankenthaler (50), Georgia O’Keeffe (66), Cecily Brown (73), Ruth Asawa (81), and Louise Bourgeois (98).The average price (in USD) of a work of fine art sold at auction in 2020, the lowest figure in eight years. What happened? As auction houses ripped up the traditional sale calendar, as buyers flocked to lower price points online, and as consignors opted to hold on to their best material, the number of trophies on offer plummeted.
https://media.artnet.com/image/upload/v1616498636/2021/03/spring_2021_intelligence_report_rk7nez.pdf
