At world's biggest art fair, squeezed mid-market raises concerns
14/06/2018 18:05
By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
BASEL, Switzerland, June 14 (Reuters) - In a year when many
major galleries made record sales, conversations at the world's
biggest art fair this week were not just about the eye-watering
sums paid for top works, but also about how to ensure the
viability of the market's lower end.
There was no shortage of top-ticket works on sale at Art
Basel, which opened to the public in the Swiss city on Thursday:
a pair of paintings by 20th-century American abstract
expressionist Joan Mitchell sold for $14 million apiece during
the fair's opening days, resered for VIPs.
"It's like that magnificent moment," said Dominique Levy of
Gorvy Levy which sold Mitchell's untitled 1959 work.
Marc Glimcher, who heads one of the world's biggest gallery
enterprises, Pace, said: "Art Basel is always good, but it isn't
always this-year good. I think many people had the best first
day of Art Basel they've ever had."
But with galleries feeling the pressure from lighter foot
traffic and the high cost of fairs where much of today's primary
buying happens, the art world is considering how to support the
market's "squeezed middle".
"It's always been the case that the top end of the market
does a little bit better, but the margin between how it's
performing and everybody else is performing has become wider,
and that's obviously a concern," said Clare McAndrew, author of
the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.
Over the last 10 years, works under $1 million have fallen
in value, whereas works selling for over $10 million have
increased nearly 150 percent, the report found. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N1QV2RZ
"It's paralleling what's happening in the world," McAndrew
said. "The gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else has
never been wider."
Facing a top-end boom that is pricing out museums and avid
collectors, the art world must ensure the survival of small
galleries that might be supporting the next Vincent Van Gogh,
said New York gallery owner Sean Kelly.
"It's the smaller galleries that feed the mid-tier galleries
that feed the larger galleries, and we all have to be respectful
of that process because otherwise it's like watching the Great
Barrier Reef die," he said.
"We're all part of a much larger ecosystem."
With most wealthy U.S. collectors buying works priced under
$5,000, according to a survey by UBS UBSG.S , art vendors
should look to new audiences, particularly in emerging markets,
said Patricia Amberg who runs UBS's Art Competence Centre, which
advises clients with more than $50 million with the bank on
collecting.
Online sales, which have grown 72 percent over the last five
years, present a particular opportunity for the lower end of the
market, she added.
Art Basel runs until Sunday.
(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
((brenna.neghaiwi@thomsonreuters.com; +41 58 306 77 35;))