Price Fluctuations of Contemporary Art

Forbes takes a quick look at art price fluctuations of emerging contemporary art as well as some more seasoned artists.  Unsurprising, the consensus appears to be some artists grow in popularity and value and others dont, some drop out while others gain exposure.  What I pulled from the article is there is more to the price changes than just market conditions.

Forbes reports

Obviously, if you buy the work of emerging contemporary artists, there’s certainly no guarantee that the financial value of those works will go up. This issue was also raised during a panelist discussion at The Armory Show last month when Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, pointed out that before the last recession, the price of art works by many young new artists shot up before they had received much critical exposure.

“Then the recession hit and there was nothing really to back up those high prices,” she said. “That’s not to say these artists weren’t any good, but the market died before the consensus was there. That’s probably a group of artists to look at again.”

What is often overlooked, though, is that even the work of very established artists can see pretty wild price fluctuations over the course of their careers because of the artist’s circumstances, market fads, economic realities and a whole host of other issues. As art dealer Michael Findlay pointed out in his book The Value of Art, published last year, “Demand for any specific work of art, albeit by a well-known and coveted artist, may change, and its value may decrease over a period as short as two decades, just as within that same period artists fallen from favor can enjoy Lazurus-like resurrections.”

He cites the example of the American artist Lee Bontecou, who was a highly acclaimed young sculptor in the 1960s and sold works to major collectors and museums, but then left New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery in the early 1970s to teach and raise her family. Findlay points out that after that, the highest price paid for one of her works was $46,000 until 2003, when she was rediscovered by a new generation of collectors and one of her smaller works sold for just under $300,000. A year later, one of her sculptures sold for $850,000.

Source:  Forbes