Gap in art prices raises concern
IN A YEAR when many major galleries made record sales, conversations at the world’s biggest art fair this week were not just about the eye-watering sums paid for top works, but also about how to ensure the viability of the market’s lower end.
There was no shortage of top-ticket works on sale at Art Basel, which opened to the public in the Swiss city this week, a pair of paintings by 20th-century American abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell sold for $14 million (R188m) apiece during the fair’s opening days, reserved for VIPS.
“It’s like that magnificent moment,” said Dominique Levy of Levy Gorvy which sold Mitchell’s untitled 1959 work.
Marc Glimcher, who heads one of the world’s biggest gallery enterprises, Pace, said: “Art Basel is always good, but it isn’t always this-year good. I think many people had the best first day of Art Basel they’ve ever had.”
But with galleries feeling the pressure from lighter foot traffic and the high cost of fairs where much of today’s primary buying happens, the art world is considering how to support the market’s “squeezed middle”.
“It’s always been the case that the top end of the market does a little bit better, but the margin between how it’s performing and everybody else is performing has become wider, and that’s obviously a concern,” said Clare Mcandrew, author of the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.
Over the past 10 years, works under $1m have fallen in value, whereas works selling for over $10m have increased nearly 150%, the report found.
“It’s paralleling what is happening in the world,” Mcandrew added.
“The gap between the ultrarich and everybody else has never been wider.”
Facing a top-end boom that is pricing out museums and avid collectors, the art world must ensure the survival of small galleries that might be supporting the next Vincent Van Gogh, said New York gallery owner Sean Kelly.
“It’s the smaller galleries that feed the mid-tier galleries that feed the larger galleries, and we all have to be respectful of that process because otherwise it’s like watching the Great Barrier Reef die,” he said.
Online sales, which have grown 72% over the past five years, present a particular opportunity for the lower end of the market, said Patricia Amberg who runs UBS’S Art Competence Centre. – Reuters/ African News Agency (ANA)