Art Market Update and the NFT Craze

Spring Art Market Update and the NFT Craze

It's been a while since our last newsletter and we wanted to bring our readers up to date on the latest developments in the art market since the start of the Pandemic, as well as address everyone's curiosity regarding NFTs. Enjoy!!

Visit our website

Key Takeaways from 2020 and Q1 2021

Online auctions are here to stay with a booming marketplace.
Blue-chip art has held steady
Fine art sales at auction totaled $10.1 billion in 2020, down 25% from 2019
China emerges as the largest art market.
Online art sales reached a record high in 2020 with $12.4 billion, double the sum of 2019 and exceeding general retail for the first time.
Instagram is emerging as a major destination not just for galleries and auction houses to promote their offerings but for artists themselves to directly sell their work to collectors.

The ultra-contemporary segment of the market (artists born after 1974) saw the most activity in 2020, the only category to make a significant rise.
Millennials were the biggest spenders in 2020, those with high net worth outspent their boomer counterparts for sales of works over $1 million.
High net worth collectors are planning to expand their collections versus selling.
Collectors are using art as collateral to diversify investing by unlocking capital from art.
Despite the rise of galleries promoting their online viewing rooms, only 10% of collectors purchased works online this way.

What is an NFT?

Image via Sotheby's.

NFTs, Redefining Digital Ownership and Scarcity

Read full article

One of the most surprising developments this year is the meteoric rise of NFTs on the market. An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unique digital asset that is stored on a blockchain platform. An NFT can be anything from a photo, video, or audio, a clip from a concert, a tweet, to an original digital artwork, etc.

NFTs represent a new collecting category that is appealing to a young class of collectors who are attracted to the concept of owning a non-physical art form that is rendered unique and thereby scarce. For now, NFT art buyers and traditional art collectors do not overlap.

It appears that NFTs are here to stay as their conceptual nature and mechanism of acquisition are exciting to some collectors. However, a month after Christie’s now famous Beeples sale, average daily NFT sales have fallen 70%, potentially reflecting a correction in the market. A recent report declared that NFT prices averaged around $1,400 in April. The positive impact of NFTs is that artists without gallery representation are finally making (some) money from their art and the NFT phenomenon is attracting more discussion about art than ever before. We will continue to keep an eye on this phenomenon and report to our readers.

Text Link

Photo by Dickson Lee/South China Morning Post via Getty Images

Simon de Pury weighs in on NFTs

Read full article

Read More About NFTs

Know your Meme, via HuffPost

Woman In ‘Disaster Girl’ Meme Sells It As An NFT For More Than $450,000

Read full article

Kurt Cobain’s ‘The Last Session’ Photoshoot Will Be Sold as an NFT

Read full article

Sotheby’s Just Launched a Science and Pop Culture Department, Citing Growing Hunger for Dinosaur Bones and Space Suits

Read full article

New Developments in Collecting

Rise in the market for collectibles due to the increase of the digital world and liquidity in the market.
Boundaries of high art and commercial mass media are blurred as art collaborates with fashion and popular culture as seen in works by Banksy and KAWS.
Collectors are buying across multiple categories as Old Masters collectors are also interested in the Modern and Contemporary artists.

What's Hot in the Market

Works by women and artists of color are among the hottest items in the market; however, they still reflect only a fraction of sale figures compared with their white male counterparts.
There is a renewed interest in the concept of “Identity” and figuration among artists and collectors.

Jenny Saville, Stare III, sold at Sotheby's London for $3.9 million on July 28, 2020

Visiting Yayoi Kusama’s Sprawling New 70-Year Survey Is Like Stepping Inside a Frenzied Tik-Tok Feed…in a Good Way

Read full article

Visit our website