“Auctions are currently at the forefront of the international art scene, concentrating all the trends in the Art Market. That’s why the Artprice Databases and our Decision Support Tools have never been so valuable,” concludes thierry Ehrmann, President and Founder of Artmarket.com and of its Artprice department.
“Auctions are even attracting a significant section of the primary market; the latest records for Beeple and Banksy were established by works put on sale directly by the artists themselves.“
Cautious estimates
Deprived of international art fairs, gallery openings and major exhibitions, collectors are paying more attention to works circulating in the auction sphere. This pushes up the prices which in turn encourages the holders of works by these popular artists to resell them. This stimulation of both supply and demand has allowed the emergence of young art market superstars in the space of just a few months.
Artists under the age of 40, who had never before generated auction results, have suddenly reached dizzying price points with extremely recent works (“the paint is still wet” as we used to say a few years ago). These results are all the more disconcerting for having demolished the estimates posted by the major auction houses, proving either that this acceleration has taken contemporary art specialists completely by surprise… or that they wish to remain cautious.
– Amoako Boafo (1984), The Lemon Bathing Suit (2019) Estimated: $40,000 – $65,000 Price with fees: $881,400 13/02/2020Phillips London
– Matthew Wong (1984-2019), The Realm of Appearances (2018) Estimated: $60,000 – $80,000 Price with fees: $1,820,000 29/06/2020 Sotheby’s New York
– Christina Quarles (1985), Tuckt (2016) Estimated: $70,000 – $100,000 Price with fees: $655,200 08/12/2020 Phillips New York
On the need to remain vigilant
A few years, or even just a few months after their creation, these canvases have already been sold at auction. A situation that shocks the artists themselves, as Amoako Boafo explained in an interview with Bloomberg in February 2020, titled Hot New Artist Laments That His Work Is Being Flipped for Profit.
So far, the prices of this young Ghanaian artist are holding firm: his 34 paintings put up for sale since 1 January 2020 all found buyers in London, New York and Hong Kong. Artprice nevertheless remains extremely vigilant regarding the development of Amoako Boafo’s market. His next work to come up for sales, a canvas titled Grace (2018) was acquired directly by the seller from the artist and will be offered at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on 20 April 2021.
Artmarket and its Artprice department was founded in 1997 by its CEO, thierry Ehrmann. Artmarket and its Artprice department is controlled by Groupe Serveur, created in 1987.
Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 770,000 artists.
Artprice Images® allows unlimited access to the largest Art Market image bank in the world: no less than 180 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.
Artmarket with its Artprice department accumulates data on a permanent basis from 6300 Auction Houses and produces key Art Market information for the main press and media agencies (7,200 publications). Its 4.5 million ‘members log in’ users have access to ads posted by other members, a network that today represents the leading Global Standardized Marketplace® to buy and sell artworks at a fixed or bid price (auctions regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3 of France’s Commercial Code).
Artmarket with its Artprice department, has been awarded the State label “Innovative Company” by the Public Investment Bank (BPI) (for the second time in November 2018 for a new period of 3 years) which is supporting the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the market art.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
