Art dealers across the world have been crossing fingers and toes in anticipation of The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) Report 2016 from Dublin-based research and consulting firm Arts Economics, and for good reason. Founded by cultural economist Clare McAndrew, Arts Economics is widely considered to compile the most comprehensive summary of the art market on offer, pulling together data from auction houses, exhibitors, art houses and art and financial databases. Well, it’s now out, timed as always to coincide with the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht, running this year from 11th - 20th March. So, what did the report tell us about the art market?
At first blush, it’s a bit of a buzzkill: the international art market dipped during 2015 after a consecutive string of boom years. Global sales fell in both value and volume, but digging a little deeper, a more optimistic picture emerges (although there are still some concerns about the Chinese art market, which took the most precipitous fall).
Firstly, the fall was confined almost exclusively to the cheaper end of the market (defined as works under a million dollars). Secondly, it was offset by spectacular prices at the higher end, with Pablo Picasso’s Women of Algiers reaching an auction record of £115m and Paul Gauguin’s masterpiece of 1892, When Will You Marry, being sold to a Qatari collector for a stratospheric £200m.
Globally, the art market generated sales of £45bn ($63.8bn) in 2015, a fall of 7 percent on 2014 and the first drop in the market since 2011. The pattern, however, was uneven: huge prices continued to be paid at the top of the market, chiefly at New York auctions (a Modigliani nude, for example, fetched $170m at Christie’s NY auction, the highest price the artist has yet achieved).
The slowing Chinese economy has of course been sending shockwaves across the world, and it’s perhaps little surprise to find that sales in China took a dramatic tumble of 23 percent to hit $11.8bn. This actually had the effect of putting the UK market in second place internationally, even though it fell by 9 percent to $13.5bn.
But Sotheby’s senior specialist in contemporary art, Oliver Barker, had this to say:
“I think the headline story is slightly misleading – this is not a time of all bad news in the market. Some art-market watchers are talking themselves into a frenzy over a situation which may not exist.”
Citing the example of Lucien Freud’s Pregnant Girl, which sold last year at Sotheby’s for £16.1m, way higher than the top estimates, he added “We have seen these seasonal adjustments in the market before, perhaps particularly after a period of record growth, but the market is still there for works of real quality.”
With the US market remaining incredibly robust, achieving its highest-ever sales of £27.3bn in 2015 (43 percent of the world market), art dealers will continue to have their work cut out for them in 2016 – promoting new artists, opening niche markets, purchasing art for collectors, and so on.
Which is why peer-to-peer lender Unbolted will continue to offer independent art dealers our ground-breaking secured asset loan – a form of finance that has until now only been available to the wealthiest of collectors, investors and dealers. For your borrowing requirements in 2016, look no further than Unbolted.
