2008

Artprice.com has just published Art market trends 2008. Last year, the top-10 artists in terms of turnover at auction were: Picasso, Bacon, Warhol, Hirst, Monet, Giacometti, Richter, Degas, Fontana, and Klein. The list shows how post-war art has become the most important section of the market. (Koons, Basquiat, Freud, Prince, and Rothko can all be found between places 11 and 20.)

Big bucks for Bacon

Ever wondered why Francis Bacon's work has become so exceptionally highly priced? The Art Newspaper explains. The Bacon exhibition at the Tate opened last week.

Fall Forecast

Artinfo.com looks forward to the fall. According to one painter the big trend will be "more of the same, only less money". We'll see.

On my schedule for the fall: Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko.

For sale: Art and optimism

The New York Times reports on the high estimates in the upcoming auctions. "You can’t help but wonder just how many of the smartly dressed people sitting night after night at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury over the next two weeks will be serious bidders and how many will be voyeurs hoping to witness an implosion of the multibillion dollar art market. For years collectors and the news media have been speculating about when prices would finally top out. Spring sales estimates don’t suggest pessimism."

The Francis Bacon triptych pictured here has an estimate of about 70 million USD.

Andy, Pablo and Francis

A couple of weeks ago, Artprice.com published its yearly overview of art market trends. It contains interesting insights in the "suicidal competition" in the art market and the remarkable rise of contemporary Chinese art (for example from Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun). Anyway, 2007 might have been the last year without Asian artists in the top-10 of artists based on the total revenue generated by public sales (2006 ranking between brackets):

1 (2) Andy Warhol [422 million USD]
2 (1) Pablo Picasso [320 million USD]
3 (19) Francis Bacon [245 million USD]

4 (79) Mark Rothko
5 (14) Claude Monet
6 (9) Henri Matisse
7 (37) Jean-Michel Basquiat
8 (26) Fernand Léger
9 (6) Marc Chagall
10 (17) Paul Cézanne

Have fallen out of the top-10 this year: Modigliani, De Kooning, Gauguin, Liechtenstein, Schiele and Klimt.

From the press (2)

The Economist - What crisis? (click here)
IHT - The dangerous game of pushing up prices higher and higher (click here)
Art News Blog - Hirst buys Bacon (click here)

Hot Bacon

Next to the Van Gogh of the story below, Sotheby's New York will also auction two important works by Francis Bacon in November. The one depicted here, 'Study for Bullfight No.1, 2nd version' (1969) is estimated to sell above $35 million. As the press release notes: "The offering of these paintings follows the success of last season’s sale of Bacon’s Study for Innocent X, 1962, which sold at Sotheby’s New York for $52.7 million, a record for the artist at auction, and his Self Portrait, 1978, which sold at Sotheby’s London for $43 million, the second highest price achieved for a work by the artist." In other words, Francis Bacon is extremely hot right now.