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.)

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.

The recipe for a record price

Auction house hype, media frenzy, and billionaire buyers.

Nobody understands better than an auction house that price appreciation of this magnitude is seldom intrinsic to the work.

Rothko & co

On Tuesday May 15, Sotheby's New York has its Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Although works from Lichtenstein, de Kooning, Pollock and Warhol are all expected to fetch high prices, most attention will go to Mark Rothko's White Center (1950). In this video, Tobias Meyer (worldwide head of Sotheby's contemporary art department) says: "What is so extraordinary about this picture: there is nothing we need to explain about it - it is so beautiful". Exceptionally, Sotheby's does not give a public estimate for the painting.

The auction will be interesting in another respect as well. It will be streamed live via the Sotheby's website.