MM - Kunstindex
Manager Magazin, Special Issue on Art Markets, May 2016 full text (in German)
MM - Der Steve-McQueen-Effekt
Manager Magazin, Special Issue on classical Ferraris, January 2016 full text (in German)
MM - Füllt den Keller auf, Weinfreunde!
Manager Magazin, Special Issue on Wine as an Investment, September 2015 full text (in German)
MM - Kunstindex
Manager Magazin, Special Issue on Art Markets, May 2015 full text (in German)
MM - Rendite aus leidenschaft
Manager Magazin, Special Issue on the Art Boom, on Wine, Cars and on Watches, February 2015 full text (in German)
Top 50 Artists of 2015
"When it comes to the highest-grossing artists on the auction block over the past several decades, it may seem a bit like a game of musical chairs..."
Art+Auction, Databank, August 2016 full text
Real Rates of Return
"Many factors can influence the price achieved by an artwork on the block. Most
important are its provenance and the timing of the sale, which make it difficult to establish
an expected measure of return on investment (ROI)...."
Art+Auction, Databank, June-July 2016 full text
Contemporary in Crisis
"Growing expectation of an art market correction centers on overheating in the postwar and contemporary category, but this large group—encompassing Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool and Oscar Murillo—should not be expected to perform uniformly. To compare areas of relative strength and weakness, we created three dynamic indices for category segments based on auction sales data from 2000 through 2015...."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2016 full text
Measure of Worth
"The high end of the art market has continued to grow—with more than $8 billion in sales notched in 2015—albeit at a more measured pace since the beginning of 2016...."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2016 full text
The Winner’s Circle
"In examining the top-selling lots at auction each year over the past three decades, several trends have emerged, most notably that, since 2006, the Impressionist and modern artists who regularly took home the lion’s
share on the block began to give way to postwar and contemporary practitioners....."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2016 full text
A Mutable Market
"Like the broader market for postwar and contemporary art, the market for works
by Chinese contemporary artists has been on the rise since the financial crisis of 2008–09. An analysis
of more than 100,000 auction lots sold since the beginning of 2000 shows the same strong growth..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2016 full text
It’s a Man’s World, Part 2
"It is well known that women artists come up short in the marketplace in terms of gallery representation; they are also shortchanged on the auction block in the number of individual sales and the prices realized there. But just how far do women trail their male counterparts?..."
Art+Auction, Databank, January 2016 full text
It’s a Man’s World
"Women may be gaining ground in curatorial circles (...) but it is no secret that the art markets are biased in terms of gender. All of the top 100 works ever sold at auction were created by male artists..."
Art+Auction, Databank, December 2015 full text
Bubble Watch: Part 2
"This month, we continue to explore the possibilities of bubbles developing in the current art markets by means of data analysis..."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2015 full text
Bubble or Not?
"It has been seven years since the financial recovery began following the correction of 2008, and few sectors of the market have rebounded as robustly as art—particularly postwar and contemporary art, which has doubled in value since then..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2015 full text
Reading the Tea Leaves
"Stock volatility in Shanghai and broad-based auction declines have provoked anxiety about a Chinese withdrawal from art markets, but the worries may be exaggerated..."
Art+Auction, Reporter, September 2015 full text
Falling for Bordeaux
"The global auction market for fine wine has seen explosive growth in the past 15 years; the escalation in price that occurred through 2010, demonstrated by repeat sales of the same vintages, may have surprised even the most bullish investors..."
Art+Auction, Databank, September 2015 full text
The More Things Change...
"The fine art auction market, as represented in our database of records collected from houses both large and small, was more than 50 times larger in 2014 than it was in 1974. The increase from around $150 million to $8 billion was built on an expansion into new geographic markets, diversification among buyers, and, most significantly, the growth of the contemporary sector..."
Art+Auction, Databank, Summer 2015 full text
Superstars, or Supernovas?
"The Secondary market for works by artists born after 1980 has been white hot in recent years, as evidenced by numerous sales in the six-figure range. Buyers ranging from serious collectors such as Dakis Joannou to speculator Stefan Simchowitz seized the opportunity to get in early on the careers of those with the potential to become the next Gerhard Richter or Jean-Michel Basquiat..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2015 full text
All-Time All-Stars
"Which artists rule the auction market over the long run? To gauge their relative success, we analyzed more than 5.2 million auction lots over the past 45 years, enabling us to tease out not only who is on top, but also which artists have had the most staying power in terms of market value..."
Art+Auction, Databank, June 2015 full text
A Rising Tide
"The Global art market has been on a roll in recent years, with a record $15.4 billion in sales on the block in 2014 — a 24 percent increase over the prior year. Based on our analysis of more than 1.2 million auction records over the past decade..."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2015 full text
What is the Value of Luxury?
"Over the past several decades, investments in luxury goods such as artworks, premium timepieces, classic cars, and fine wines have come to be viewed not only as sources of pleasure for high-networth individuals but also as an effective hedge against inflation, like gold and Treasury notes..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2015 full text
The Rise and Fall of Damien Hirst
"Easily the most famous of the YBAs, that brash group of British visual artists who stormed the art scene at the close of the 1980s, Damien Hirst saw the market for his works..."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2015 full text
The Company You Keep?
"While the art market has seen sustained growth over the past several years, the same cannot be said for the value of publicly traded companies related to it. Take Sotheby’s, for example..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2015 full text
A Master's Market
"Rembrandt van Rijn was arguably the most prosperous and celebrated painter of his day. Yet in 1656, at age 50, the Dutch master went bankrupt as a result of several years of badly managing his personal assets. In contrast, his paintings have proven to be among the most valuable of art world assets..."
Art+Auction, Databank, December 2014 full text
Is it a Bubble?
"When Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, fetched an astounding $142,405,000 in November 2013, it pushed the tally for the evening sale at Christie’s New York to a record-breaking total of more than $691 million...."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2014 full text
Fair Days for the Art Trade
"The number of art fairs has mushroomed over the past decade. Today, there are more than 250 taking place worldwide, offering the full range of art from antiquities to contemporary works..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2014 full text
Medium Matters
"While the art market has long judged paintings to be the most durable asset, the sums achieved in recent years by postwar and contemporary artists are eyebrow-raising. The market for prints, even those by the same blue-chip names, has remained largely under the radar, although the category is growing..."
Art+Auction, Databank, September 2014 full text
Eye on Photography
"Iconic images by 20th-century masters of photography have been commanding greater prices at auction in recent years, with several of the most expensive works clearing $500,000 since 2010..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2014 full text
Basquiat Case
"Melding street-art sensibility with urgent, virtuosic strokes, works by Jean-Michel Basquiat have found an ardent audience, sending prices skyrocketing. Last year, in fact, Basquiat outperformed nearly all other blue-chip artists..."
Art+Auction, Databank, June 2014 full text
Going up: Postwar and Asia
"For this third and final installment in our series comparing categories of paintings as investment vehicles, we look at two market segments—postwar and contemporary and Asian modern and contemporary—to assess performance over the past decade against other works of art, based on more than 800,000 sales records..."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2014 full text
Art of the Americas
"For this second installment in our series comparing categories of paintings as an investment vehicle, we turn our eyes to the New World to see how the American and Latin American market segments have fared over the past decade..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2014 full text
A Decade in Review
"While art as an asset class has been proving its mettle in recent years, not all categories of paintings—Old Masters, 19th-century European, Impressionist and modern, American, Latin American, Asian contemporary, and postwar and contemporary—have performed alike..."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2014 full text
More Valuable than Gold
"Over the past decade, art—and more specifically, postwar and contemporary art—has come to be viewed as a viable asset class by financial institutions worldwide. But how does it compare to more traditional investments, including..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2014 full text
The Fast Lane
"In Monterey this past August, RM Auctions' sale of classic cars became the highest grossing ever when 87 percent of the 120 vehicles on offer sold for a combined $125 million, with more than a dozen cars setting benchmarks for individual models..."
Art+Auction, Databank, January 2014 full text
Minding the Gender Gap
"Only 6.5 percent of the paintings
sold at auction in 2012 were the work of female artists. This staggeringly
low figure is nonetheless more than twice that of two decades ago, when just
3 percent of works that came on the block were by women..."
Art+Auction, Databank, December 2013 full text
The Documenta Effect
"DOCUMENTA, which takes place
every five years in Kassel, Germany, is one of the world's most important
exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has been responsible for
launching the international careers of many art luminaries since its
inception in 1955..."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2013 full text
Market Snapshot
"Although photography sales
accounted for only 1.9 percent of U.S. dollar turnover in the overall art
market in 2012, the category has been on the rise since the late 1990s, as
evidenced by data we gleaned from more than 150,000 auction sales between
1993 and 2012..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2013 full text
American Exceptionalism
"Until recently American art—a
category comprising Colonial 17th-century through prewar 20th-century modernist
paintings—was much like blue-chip stocks, performing reliably and steadily in
terms of market size and price volatility. Over the past 18 months, however,
we have seen a very different picture..."
Art+Auction, Databank, September 2013 full text
To Have and to Hold?
"It has long been taken for
granted among art market professionals that collectors are prepared to put a premium
on works that are fresh to the market—and, conversely, that the price will
suffer if a work is re-offered at auction after too short a period of time.
But just what length of time is considered optimal for holding on to a
particular work?..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2013 full
text
The Death Effect? Not So Fast
"Conventional wisdom dictates that
when a famous artist dies, there is a near-immediate upswing in prices as
collectors scramble to snap up remaining available works. The idea is that
buyers will want to act fast because, in addition to the certainty that no
new work will be created, there is a presumption that..."
Art+Auction, Databank, June 2013 full text
Counting on Contemporary
"Even the most casual observers of
the art market know that contemporary art has been the star of the auction
realm in the past few decades. Though contemporary sales were once considered
the "younger siblings" of the major New York and London auctions each
year..."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2013 full text
An Investment Worth Toasting
"While it is no secret that the
global auction market for fine wine has seen explosive growth in the past 15
years, the escalation in price demonstrated by repeat sales of the same
vintage might surprise even the most bullish investors..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2013 full text
Calibrating the Richter Scale
"In October 2011, when Gerhard
Richter's Kerze, 1982, reached £10.5 million ($16.4 million) at Christie's London, the painter declared, "It's just as absurd as the banking crisis.
It's impossible to understand, and it's daft." The artist's opinion notwithstanding, that price was exceeded 10 times in the following
months..."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2013 full text
The Art of Appreciation
"Here we expand on last month's
analysis of repeat sales of paintings at auction by breaking out results
according to individual auction categories. Once again looking at the period
from 1985 to 2011, we measure the annualized effective rate of return (ERR)
of repeat sales in..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2013 full text
The Second Time Around
"The rise and global expansion of
the art market in recent decades—particularly in the past 10 years—has
surprised even the most bullish observers. However, given that so many
factors can affect the price of a work at auction..."
Art+Auction, Databank, January 2013 full text
Crescent Rising
"Since 2006, when Christie's
inaugurated annual auctions in Dubai, the market for postwar and contemporary
art of the Middle East has grown at a staggering rate. And with the addition
in 2008 of auctions by Sotheby's in Doha and Bonhams in Dubai, the market has
begun to mature and come into focus..."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2012 full text
Eastern Expansion
"Coming off the implosion of the
real estate bubble in Japan in the early 1990s and the resulting years of
stagnation, few could have predicted the explosive economic growth that would
spread across Asia, especially in China and India, over the past dozen
years..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2012 full text
Up, Up, and Away
"The growth in the auction markets
over the past 40 years has been staggering. From less than 6,000 recorded
lots in 1970 the industry has grown more than elevenfold to reach nearly
70,000 sales in 2011. The growth as measured by dollar turnover has been even
more striking..."
Art+Auction, Databank, September 2012 full text
Taking the Long View
"When looking at how a market
segment performs over the long haul, a comparison of similar sectors can
highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each. Here we compare four leading
categories: Impressionist and modern art, contemporary art, American
paintings, and Latin American art..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2012 full text
Mastering Old Masters
"Old Master paintings, drawn from
a fixed list of artists and a body of works that changes only with occasional
discoveries and reattributions, offer an intriguing opportunity to compare
the performance of high- and low-end artworks over a long period of time..."
Art+Auction, Databank, June 2012 full text
Time-Tested Investments
"Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens
are three of the biggest names in art history. But through the centuries many
of their works, and those of other Old Masters, have fallen victim to war and
disaster or been altered and damaged in accord with changes in taste..."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2012 full text
Following the Paper Trail
"As a category, prints can often
go overlooked in the face of flashier and higher-priced paintings. But lower
visibility hasn't kept the market for comparatively affordable multiples from
growing over the past 25 years..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2012 full text
Out of Africa
"This month we look at the market
for African tribal art, a dizzyingly diverse field filled with passionate
collectors who tend to buy in depth..."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2012 full text
Label Consciousness
"The billion-dollar wine market is
largely driven by the fabled names of Bordeaux: Château Lafite Rothschild,
Château Latour, Château Pétrus, and Château d'Yquem, among others. In 2010, prices
for the best Bordeaux first growths reached jawdropping heights..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2012 full text
Betting on Bling
"Over the past 12 years buyers
have been eagerly laying out millions for glittering gems, pushing auction
prices to new heights, particularly those for diamonds, both colored and
white. Top-quality examples can now fetch between $1 million and $2 million a
carat..."
Art+Auction, Databank, January 2012 full text
Mainland Takeover
"The Chinese population has become
wealthier over the past decade, with the number of high-net-worth
individuals—those with liquid assets of $1 million or more—increasing from
211,000 in 2002 to 535,000 in 2010. At the same time, interest in Chinese art
and antiques has grown..."
Art+Auction, Databank, December 2011 full text
An Eye on the Times
"A rare convergence of style and
technology, fine timepieces attract a wide range of buyers, from connoisseurs
seduced by sophisticated mechanisms to the fashion-conscious looking to
express their personal tastes or investors seeking something with material as
well as aesthetic value..."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2011 full text
Hot Wheels
"There is no doubt that vintage
automobiles have evolved from luxury hobby to serious investment in 2010. 68
classic cars surpassed $1 million at auction, compared with just 12 in
2000..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2011 full text
Liquid Assets
"Wine, one of the fastest-growing
luxury sectors, has generated hundred of millions of dollars in auction sales
over the past fewl years, with houses notching record totals. Christie's, for
instance, saw its wine sales triple from 2000 to 2010..."
Art+Auction, Databank, September 2011 full text
Following Their Passions
"One of the primary reasons the
market for art and luxury collectibles has been so robust over the past
decade is that more people have large amounts of money to spend on passion
investments—those made out of personal interest rather than for pure
economic gain..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2011 full
text
Taking Stock of the Decade
"Despite the economic woes still
gripping much of the world, yhe spring sales in New York and London gave
cause for cautious optimism about the upward trajectory of the art market. So
we decided to take a macro look at the past decade, analyzing how art
compares with other asset classes..."
Art+Auction, Databank, June 2011 full text
Bric Building
"When the acronym BRIC was coined
a decade ago to denote the rapidly developing nations of Brazil, Russia,
India, and China, few could have predicted the impact their explosive
economic growth would have on the markets for their art. As newly wealthy
consumers emerged in those countries, which account for more than 40 percent
of the world's population, so did demand for works made by their national
artists..."
Art+Auction, Databank, May 2011 full text
Conversation with Roman Kraeussl
"Roman Kraeussl, associate
professor of finance at VU University Amsterdam, specializes in research on
art investment. In 2006 he founded the Web site artfinance.com, where he
publishes studies on art as an asset class..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2011 full
text
National Selection
"Postwar and contemporary art
soared to unheard-of heights in the 21st century until the market stalled in
2008. Today, the sector is again booming, as witness London's February
sales..."
Art+Auction, Databank, April 2011 full text
Style Investing
"How does modern and contemporary
Asian art stack up against other styles when it comes to return on
investment? We decided to find out by comparing an index of the auction sales
of paintings from that category—comprising art from China, Japan, Korea,
India, and Southeast Asia..."
Art+Auction, Databank, March 2011 full text
In Retrospect
"There is no doubt that major
museum exhibitions can affect the art market. A good show can expose an
artist to a broader audience, convince buyers of a creator's value, and coax
them into investing in a particular name..."
Art+Auction, Databank, February 2011 full text
Dripping with Jewels
"One of the few categories that
attract buyers across the entire spectrum of collecting specialties, jewelry
brings in a significant chunk of change for the auction houses. In 2010, just
through October, combined gem-sale totals at Sotheby's and Christie's had
topped $500 million..."
Art+Auction, Databank, January 2011 full text
Betting on Blue Chips: Art Proves a Safe Place to Stash Cash
"How powerful a financial strategy
is collecting art? How does the return on $100,000 dropped on a topnotch
painting 30 years ago measure up to that on the same sum put into real estate
or a hedge fund over the same period?..."
Art+Auction, Databank, December 2010 full text
Slicing up the Auction Market
"The auction business is massive,
with billions of dollars changing hands each year. To determine how the
terrain is shifting, we crunched some numbers, specifically, the dollar and
volume totals for sales of paintings..."
Art+Auction, Power Issue, December 2010 full
text
The 50 Most Golden Postwar and Contemporary Painters
"With Christie's, Phillips de
Pury, and Sotheby's all hosting big-ticket postwar and contemporary sales
this month, we decided to create an index of the top 50 painters in this
category based on their total take at auction..."
Art+Auction, Databank, November 2010 full text
Holding Steady: Prints Emerge as a Safe Investment
"Over the past decade, prints have
accounted for a significant chunk of fine-art auction revenue. Although most
of these works—which range from lithographs and silkscreens to etchings and
drypoints—are relatively affordable, with more than half selling for less
than $5,000 over the past 10 years, many examples have fetched upwards of
$100,000..."
Art+Auction, Databank, October 2010 full text
Where to Invest: Picasso, the Stock Market, or Gold?
"When Pablo Picasso's Nude, Green
Leaves and Bust, 1932, brought $106 million at Christie's New York on May 4,
it became the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. Many professionals
in the field observed that this price and the overall success of the auctions
held during the first six months of 2010 suggest that the art market is
recovering as the global financial crisis recedes. But do Picassos represent
a reasonable investment?..."
Art+Auction, Databank, July-August 2010 full text