Since I almost never talk about money on the blog, I thought this might be interesting to some. It’s from the Art Newspaper ABMB edition.
After Sotheby’s sale (the recent auction), financial analysts advised their clients not to buy the auction house’s shares.
SK: The analysts understand the art market less than dealers and collectors. To take the Sotheby’s sale as an indication of how the entire market is doing would be a mistake. Analysts judge shares by looking at the profits of a company. Because of the guarantees they offer, auction houses can hold record sales and still lose money.
I am not saying there is no relation between the financial markets and the art market, I’m saying there is no obvious relation. It makes more sense to relate the results of the sales to the freshness of the work to the market, the quality of the art on offer and so on. There are a lot of factors.
Also, the auctions reflect a part of the market made up of relatively few artists. At Art Basel we show over 2,000 artists and that number only represents a fraction of the artists the galleries exhibit. So, it is better to take auction results only as one indicator, of course a strong psychological indicator about general confidence in the market, but one which only reflects a small part of the overall art market.
From the Art Newspaper www.theartnewspaper.com