The return of Cool Britannia

An iconic painting by David Hockney is expected to set a new record for a living artist. Chris Carter reports.

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Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures): $80m plus, says Christie's

A couple of weeks ago, we looked briefly at Cambridge-born painter Jenny Saville and how her self-portrait from 1992, Propped, sold for £9.5m at Sotheby's in London earlier this month. This was the highest auction price paid for an artwork by a living female artist. Saville had been one of Charles Saatchi's celebrated Young British Artists (YBAs) of the 1990s, along with names such as Damien Hirst, doing for Britain's reputation in the contemporary art world what indie bands such as Blur and Oasis were doing for Brit pop in the charts. This was, after all, the decade of Cool Britannia. Artworks from the 1990s have retro appeal, as Sotheby's specialist Emma Baker recently told me, which may go some way to explaining what drove Propped to smash its £4m upper estimate. But it's not only art from the 1990s that's commanding high prices at auction earlier pieces are too.

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Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

You can follow Chris on Instagram.