If one were looking for a common thread that ties the 2023 art market together into a neat package, a market softening, or some variation on that theme, would be a wise bet. As early as May, prognosticators were squawking about the market’s inevitable downturn, citing bullish expectations from consigners and a the increasing cost of money.
But not everything has changed. While an auction of Gerald Fineberg’s collection at Christie’s this past May seems to have marked the end of a brief boom, the sale also proved that blue-chip artists with established markets, like Christopher Wool and Jeff Koons, couldn’t claw their way out of a slump that began at the start of the 2020s.
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Back in November 2021, Artnet News took a deep dive into Wool’s market. The outlook wasn’t good. According to Artnet’s analysis, his sales at auction dipped an astonishing 25 percent since its heyday in 2013, when his painting Apocalypse Now (1988) sold for more than $25 million at Christie’s (all figures include the buyer’s fees unless otherwise noted).
That work featured text referencing a note from a deranged Army captain that appears in a 1979 film by Francis Ford Coppola: SELL THEHOUSE SELL THECAR SELL THEKIDS. But it could have just as well have alluded to how desperate collectors seemed to buy Wool’s work.
That’s no longer the case. A colleague at ARTnews called the Fineberg sale tepid, and specifically noted that Wool’s untitled 1993 painting that features the sentence “FUCK EM IF THEY CANT TAKE A JOKE” splayed across the canvas in bright, popping colors hammered $8.4 million, or $10 million with fees, well under its estimate of $15 million–$20 million.
The market for Koons, easily one of the most famous, and expensive, artists in the world, has borne a similar trajectory. In recent years, Koons has been beset by production delays, with angry collectors clamoring for work they’d paid for years before. His market has also taken a dive in the past few years and has yet to rebound, despite departing longtime galleries Gagosian and Davis Zwirner for Pace, a move which reportedly might streamline his production methods.
Of the seven works of his that sold at one of the three major auction houses in 2023, two sold for just above the low estimate, one was withdrawn, and Kiepenkerl (Humpty Dumpty), from 1987 and offered at the Fineberg sale, sold for $1.9 million when it was estimated to sell for between $3 million and $5 million. While some of the Koons works did sell above their estimate, only one broke the $4 million mark—which is surprising when one considers that the record for the sale at auction of a work by Koons was made just a few years ago, when his 1986 sculpture Rabbit sold for $91 million at Christie’s in May 2019. While Koons hasn’t had a major work like Rabbit, up for auction in a few years, these duds could be related to the lack of interest in his “Gazing Ball” paintings in 2017 and the subsequent downsizing of his studio, all of which could point to a general downturn in his market.
Koons and Wool aren’t alone in market Purgatory. Former market star John Currin’s work has also been in a years long tailspin. Currin’s 1999 picture two naked women jovial chatting on a black background Nice ‘n Easy failed to sell at Christie’s in November despite a relatively low estimate, $7 million – $10 million. In 2016 that same work sold at Christie’s for just over $12 million, a whisper over it’s low estimate. In 2008 at Sotheby’s it went for $5.4 million, comfortably over its high estimate of $4.5 million.
One explanation for the lack of excitement around venerable and once lucrative artists like Koons and Wool is that the art world is in a much different place than it was in 2019. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, museums promised to diversify their offerings, and auction houses began to introduce more women and artists of color to their sales. Though those artists’ markets still lag far behind the Koonses and Wools of the world, it’s telling that, in a 2023 survey of works bought in the past year by collectors in the ARTnews Top 200 list, a majority of the non-historical works purchased were made by younger artists of color, like Rashid Johnson, Alvaro Barrington, and Che Lovelace.
The top-selling works at auction this year were by Picasso, Monet, and Kandinsky, white modernists whose art has long reigned supreme in the market. But it was also notable that Black artists like Julie Mehretu, Simone Leigh, and El Anatsui all made records this year, with Mehretu setting a new benchmark for the most expensive work ever sold at auction by a contemporary African artist. This new attention to artists that for years lacked a significant market may be directly related to a cooling for blue-chippers like Koons. Certainly, it reflects a trend seen in institutions. Koons’s CV, for example, lists no institutional appearances at all in 2023; Leigh’s CV has her work in three 2023 museum group shows, plus a traveling survey that recently headed to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
What does this mean for rich, white artists like Koons and Wool, whose work once commanded the highest prices on the primary and secondary market? That is unclear. Several market sources declined to comment, suggesting that talking about a downturn for these stars is something of a taboo unto itself. But, the nature of the market is cyclical, and what was once popular always falls out of fashion, only to reemerge years later.
According to the art adviser and ArtTactic podcast host Adam Green, the art world has for years overlooked marginalized artists, a phenomenon that has only recently has this changed. He told ARTnews that museum curators may be at the vanguard of this settling of accounts, but they aren’t alone. “Some of my clients, for example, are now prioritizing both emerging and established artists from these underserved groups to ensure they have a comprehensive and culturally relevant collection,” he said.
When asked if he thought the market for artists like Koons and Wool would rebound, he said it’s likely the market would “narrow its focus to a more limited number of artists from underserved communities and possibly reconsider certain established non-marginalized artists.” The most important thing, he said, is that “hopefully, in the long-term, originality and quality are sought after irrespective of the artist’s domain.”
Source: artnews.com