The Fall Art Market

Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the $1 billion fall art art market encompassing sales in Hong Kong, London and New York.  She looks at five factors which may impact the outcome of the sales:

1. The slowing Chinese economy
2. European economic issues
3. A new hot market
4. Confidence from American collectors
5. What is the best market sector, contemporary, Asian, jewelry, modern/impressionist, or old master.

She also takes a quick look into each of art market sectors.

The WSJ reports 

All of these sales should provide some welcome clarity for an art market that's been sending radically mixed signals lately. A string of strong sales last year pointed to a market largely recovered from recession. But some collectors—particularly in China—have grown circumspect in recent months, throwing art values into flux once again. In May, Sotheby's in New York got nearly $120 million for Edvard Munch's "The Scream"—the most ever paid for a work of art at auction—but the following month, the auction house didn't bring in that much from an entire sale of Impressionist and modern art in London, where nearly a third of the offerings went unsold.

The alchemy of what's selling, or not, can swing wildly in any given season depending on what turns up in the marketplace, but dealers say the overriding dynamic now is one of polarization. Collectors remain eager to splurge on masterpieces, but they're turning their noses up at anything that appears second-tier. That's creating a top-heavy atmosphere that feels heady yet unstable—especially since the majority of artworks trade below the million-dollar mark, dealers say.

Major Miami collector Douglas Cramer thinks the time is ripe to offer up $25 million worth of his contemporary art at Christie's in November, but he still has plenty of burning questions about the overall market's trajectory. "You never know, from one banking crisis to another, what kind of impact it'll have on art prices," Mr. Cramer said. "I just took a deep breath."

Source: The Wall Street Journal