Art Market Grew 29% in 2021, Says Key Report (Though Some Doubt It)

LONDON — Worldwide artwork gross sales “recovered strongly” after a pandemic-blighted yr, based on the newest annual Artwork Basel & UBS International Artwork Market Report, printed on Tuesday. Gross sales reached an estimated $65.1 billion, up 29 p.c on the earlier yr, the report says — however that headline determine, combining public sale and gallery gross sales, stays wanting the commerce’s estimated $68.2 billion peak in 2014.

“The market confirmed nice resilience beneath persevering with uncertainty in 2021,” wrote Clare McAndrew, a Dublin-based cultural economist, within the sixth version of the report, printed Tuesday by the world’s largest artwork truthful franchise and its major company companion. She added that the market was “buoyed by strong progress, notably within the public sale sector, the place secondary market gross sales of high-end artworks offered a big uplift in worth.”

The Artwork Basel & UBS report is considered essentially the most authoritative annual examine of the worldwide artwork market, and its findings are routinely cited within the information media. It’s the solely complete survey of the worldwide artwork commerce that includes each values for public auctions and estimates for confidential vendor gross sales. The figures for sellers are primarily based on self-reported survey responses from galleries, a lot of whom additionally exhibit at Artwork Basel gala’s.

Based on the 279-page report, combination vendor gross sales rose to an estimated $34.7 billion in 2021, 18 p.c up on a crisis-hit 2020, however nonetheless beneath the extent of 2019. ​​“The very best rise in values year-on-year was within the phase of sellers with gross sales of between $5 million and $10 million,” the report says. “The smallest good points had been skilled by sellers with turnover of lower than $250,000.”

Public sale gross sales additionally superior in 2021, based on the report, reaching $26.3 billion, 47 p.c up on the earlier yr and exceeding gross sales in 2019. Public sale homes’ personal gross sales in 2021 contributed an extra $4.1 billion, the report says.

On-line-only auctions had been key to that restoration: So, too, was the foremost public sale homes’ profitable use of livestreaming for his or her marquee gross sales. Though not new, the hybrid on-line/stay format had “considerably improved when it comes to the standard of manufacturing and technical effectivity,” based on the report.

China (together with Hong Kong) remained the largest marketplace for public auctions, with 33 p.c of the market, barely forward of the USA at 32 p.c, adopted by Britain at 13 p.c (down from 18 p.c in 2019). France made a notable upward transfer: Benefiting from the fallout of Brexit, auctions there elevated by greater than 60 p.c to $2.2 billion, elevating the nation’s international market share to 9 p.c.

On condition that on-line and hybrid public sale gross sales had been surging all through 2021, whereas worldwide artwork gala’s solely returned to in-person codecs in the course of the second half of the yr, some seasoned artwork world observers had been perplexed that Artwork Basel & UBS reported that vendor gross sales exceeded auctions.

“I don’t consider the turnover of the sellers was larger,” stated the Belgian collector Alain Servais, a daily purchaser of up to date artwork at each gala’s and auctions. Servais is a longstanding critic of what he regards because the Artwork Basel & UBS report’s “finger within the wind” methodology for calculating vendor gross sales. This yr it was primarily based on 774 survey responses, principally from Europe. Galleries with turnover of greater than $1 million a yr provided 37 p.c of the responses.

“The sellers’ survey is overweighted to the bigger galleries,” stated Servais in an interview. “They just like the output of the report, as a result of it provides a rosy view of the artwork world,” he added.

In an interview, McAndrew, the report’s writer, conceded that, “Extra could be higher, nevertheless it does seize an essential chunk of the market,” including, “I’m optimistic sooner or later that there shall be higher methods to measure issues.”

McAndrew stated her report was targeted on the “conventional infrastructure” of the artwork commerce, although there was a “enormous universe of transacting” exterior these buildings, with NFT platforms producing “jaw-dropping” figures. Gross sales of art-related NFTs elevated over a hundredfold year-on-year, reaching $2.6 billion. Gross sales of NFT collectibles grew to $8.6 billion, says the report, utilizing knowledge provided by NonFungible.com.

NFTs entered the normal artwork market’s public sale sector in 2021, however at “restricted values so far,” the report says: Christie’s raised $150 million; Sotheby’s gross sales reached $80 million.

Because the report was accomplished earlier than Feb. 24, it doesn’t deal with the warfare in Ukraine and its doable impact on the artwork market in 2022.

“We’re possibly going through a recession that’s very completely different from the corona disaster,” stated, Marta Gnyp, an artwork adviser and author, primarily based in Berlin.

She additionally identified the comparatively small pattern of vendor knowledge on which the Artwork Basel & UBS report bases its findings. “It’s all guesses and estimates,” stated Gnyp in an interview. “However, for the reason that identical restricted knowledge have been used over time, it provides us an thought of the path. It’s good to have it.”