The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026, written by Dr Clare McAndrew, the founder of Arts Economics, a research firm, has added some detail to what we largely knew already – that the global art market returned to growth in 2025 following two years of falling sales values.

Global sales last year rose 4% year-on-year to an estimated $59.6 billion. However, that was still below the peak in 2022 when the art market rebounded after the pandemic and the number of transactions rose by just 2%.

The gains, which finally came in the second half of 2025, “were driven by renewed confidence… and strength at the high end [of the art market] in particular”, says Noah Horowitz, CEO of Art Basel, which organises art fairs around the world.

Sales at public auctions rose 9% from a year earlier, but much of the activity was confined to works priced above $10 million. Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-1916), for instance, sold for an astonishing $236 million last November with Sotheby's in New York. That's the second-highest-ever price paid for an artwork at auction.

In the dealer sector, sales rose 2% to an estimated $34.8bn, reversing two years of declines. Private sales at auction houses, however, dipped 5%. So, the art market recovery wasn't felt across the board.

Britain is a major art market

The UK has hung on to its position as the second-largest art market in the world, accounting for 18% of global sales by value ($10.5 billion), the same as in 2024. China, in third place, saw its share decline by one percentage point to 14% – a symptom, perhaps, of its struggling economy and property sector. Activity in other Asian and emerging markets also increased.

The US remains the titan of the art world. Its $26 billion in sales in 2025, up 5% year-on-year, translated into a 44% share of the art market – a one percentage-point uptick from 2024. Together, the US, Britain and China accounted for 76% of global sales by value.

“Policy unpredictability”, as the report puts it, from the White House kept the market guessing in 2025. Imports of art and antiques to the US, which fuels some major sales, rose 13% in value to $9.9 billion (and exports fell 1%) as buyers and sellers tried to negotiate their way around US tariffs.

This year has brought yet more uncertainty due to the conflict in the Middle East. “Markets do not move in isolation,” says Horowitz. “They reflect the ambitions, perspectives, pressures and uncertainties of the world around them.” Will the war be enough to reverse last year's uneven recovery? We don't yet know. The art market, McAndrew tells the Financial Times, operates in a “volatile geopolitical environment, particularly regarding cross-border trade, the full implications of which are still unfolding in 2026”.

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Of the major art fairs to visit London every year, Frieze London (14-18 October 2026) is the elite event – serious, monied and glamorous. The London Art Fair, held last week, is a little more relaxed. And welcoming the neophytes to the world of art collecting is the Affordable Art Fair – smiling, approachable and fun.

The first edition of the Affordable Art Fair was held in Battersea Park in October 1999 and it has since spread to 16 cities worldwide, with Houston, Texas, added to the list this year. But there are, in fact, three Affordable Art Fairs held in London – two in Battersea (spring and autumn) down by the River Thames and one in Hampstead in north London. The next Fair is in Battersea from 4-8 March 2026. Last week, I met up with Hugo Barclay, the Affordable Art Fair’s UK fair director, to find out more.

“We’re predominantly gallery-led, which means galleries take a space at the fair to promote their artists,” says Barclay. Artworks from 900-1,000 artists are typically on show across the galleries, so there is “a huge amount of stuff to see”. The Affordable Art Fair also goes out of its way not to make art “intimidating”. First-time buyers can buy a print for as little as £100, while the top end of the price range for artworks is £10,000. “So, the idea is you can afford at least something. However deep your pockets are, there’s going to be something for everybody,” he says.

Galleries have to “rotate 90% of their roster of artists” between the Spring and Autumn editions to keep the offering “fresh”. And galleries must also put prices on artworks, because negotiating a sale with a gallery can be “daunting” for the uninitiated. Can you still haggle, I ask.

That’s a “conversation you have with the galleries”, says Barclay. It “depends on the gallery and their relationship with the artist”, as well as demand for similar pieces.

The Affordable Art Fair is a grand day out in London

However, the Fair isn’t all about art. “It’s a day out,” he says. Visitors can buy “nice food and we do some talks, we do tours and workshops, as well as in the evenings to bring in the late crowd”. Weekends, in particular, are family-orientated. The Fair has activity packs for children, who can follow an “art trail” to learn about art.

Learning about art as a child wasn’t a problem for Barclay. Both of his parents were artists, who moved from Britain to southwest France. “One of my first purchases was a Sayed Raza,” an Indian artist who spent six decades working in France from the 1950s. “It’s such a beautiful, abstract work and I guess it just resonated with me,” he says. But buying art doesn’t have to be “love at first sight”. Sometimes, you see a work and it connects with you and sometimes, it doesn’t.

There has to be a “level of pragmatism” involved when “unpacking stories”, he says. Put another way, sometimes an artwork grows on you. Barclay now lives in Edinburgh with his collection of 60-odd pieces.

The appetite for art is growing

Can the lower end of the art market in London support three Affordable Art Fairs, I ask. “It’s worked so far,” he says. “We had our best-ever Fair in terms of art sales in October [at the autumn edition in Battersea]. We generated £5.5 million-worth of art sales. The media on the whole tends to focus on the top end, but actually, that isn’t a reflection of the whole market.” The Affordable Art Fair has commissioned market researchers ArtTactic to produce a report. “Everything that is going on in the world, it can create anxiety.” Barclay feels the therapeutic nature of buying art is also helping to drive sales at the Fairs. “There’s definitely an appetite,” he says.

And do the Battersea and Hampstead Fairs draw different crowds? “From what I hear from galleries,” the Hampstead crowd is “a little more discerning for whatever reasons,” while Battersea attracts people from the local area as well as Surrey – often “slightly younger families” who may be looking to add a splash of colour to a blank canvas they have bought in the form of a new home. The Fair also runs shuttle buses from Sloane Square, “so we get the Chelsea locals who come over as well”.

The dos and don’ts of collecting art

So, what are the “dos and don’ts” for anyone visiting the Affordable Art Fair for the first time? “Don’t come in a rush” is the first thing. “Come with an open-minded friend. I don’t think art is necessarily about you and the art in isolation,” says Barclay. “It’s about the dialogue with other people [about the art].” And the third thing is “probably about honing your taste”, he says. “Naturally, when you have 900 to 1,000 artists under one roof, there’s going to be a decent portion, possibly 80%, that maybe don’t resonate with you. And that’s okay.” But by filtering out those works, you can discover what you do like.

Can buying a work of art be viewed as an investment? “I’d probably steer away from investment when it comes to starting,” says Barclay. But do go out and explore. One of the pitfalls is assuming you can start collecting “from your sofa” via online auctions. “There’s nothing better than seeing work in person and talking to the gallery. At an art fair, you can do that at scale.” There may also be a visiting gallery from South Korea, for instance. You wouldn’t usually have that kind of opportunity on your doorstep. A quarter of exhibiting galleries “come from abroad”.

Another benefit of the Affordable Art Fair is being able to view works from recent graduates, particularly at the Autumn edition at Battersea in October. “We work with an external curator, who’ll go to lots of art schools and select some artists who she wants to showcase and then we give them their first platform,” he says. That’s a “really great opportunity” for the graduates to establish a name for themselves, because 20,000 people are going to see their work first-hand.

“You’re not going to get that on most high streets.” But “do start local,” says Barclay. “Most people don’t realise how much is available on their doorstep from a cultural perspective.”

Collectors can visit “open studios” to see and chat with the artists as they work and join mailing lists for galleries to find out when their shows are opening. Barclay is a trustee at Edinburgh Printmakers, a 60-year-old organisation.

“This is a good place to see exhibitions, see the artists, maybe do a printmaking course,” he says. “That’s a great way to hone your taste.” But otherwise, the Affordable Art Fair is “a really convenient place to see a lot” at once. If you are “curious and open-minded, definitely come along”.

The Battersea Spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair runs 4-8 March 2026, when artists Christine Relton and Tom Marine – who go by a joint artist name of Relton Marine – will be creating a bespoke installation. The Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead, runs 6-10 May 2026. Adult general admission is £14, visit affordableartfair.com for details.

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The winter of 2024/2025 ran on for an unusually long time in the fine-art market, which really only woke from its hibernation as summer got going. In May, as the flowers were blooming, Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Grande tête mince (1955), which had been valued at $70million, sent chills through the auction market when Sotheby’s found wealthy buyers were still sleeping. Then, the fine-art market woke up.

In July, Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day (1730s) sold for £31.9million with Christie’s in London to set a new high-price record for the artist. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the summer was also when the stock market took off and as the year progressed, wealthy collectors didn’t look back. Nine of the top ten most expensive artworks sold at auction in 2025 were sold last autumn.

In November, Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958) sold for $62.2million with Christie’s, which helped the auction house to its most profitable sales series in New York in three years, with a total of $964.5million. November was also the month rival Sotheby’s brought the hammer down on the most expensive artwork of the year – Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1916 – pictured) by Gustav Klimt, which sold for an eye-watering $236.4 million to set a new high-price auction record for a work of modern art and the second-highest price fetched for any artwork sold at auction ever. It was a standout year for works by the Austrian painter. Paintings by Klimt also fetched the second- and third-highest prices for artworks sold at auction in 2025. It was the perfect way to toast what was the opening night of Sotheby’s new headquarters in New York.

Fine-art market bidders get younger

In the end, what had looked to be another humdrum year at the start turned out to be anything but. Projected global fine art sales at Sotheby’s rose 15% from a year earlier to $4.3billion and across all departments auction sales rose 26% year-on-year to $5.7billion. The corresponding projected figure for Christie’s is $4.7billion, an 8% rise on 2024. And Phillips, the third of the “big three” auction houses, reported $725million in auction sales and global sales (with private sales added in) rose by a tenth from the previous year to $927million.

All three also reported rising demand from younger buyers. A third of buyers at Phillips last year were making their first purchases, while “Millennials and Gen Z” (aged 45 and younger) accounted for 40% of purchases at the auction house’s Dropshop online marketplace. Similarly, at Christie’s 46% of new bidders were “Millennials or younger”, a 5% year-on-year increase, while the auction house’s female client base grew by 10%. New buyers were mainly drawn to the luxury goods sales, including jewellery, handbags and wine, accounting for 38% of purchases – a trend confirmed by Sotheby’s, where 29% of bidders were aged under 40, although, perhaps surprisingly given prices, this cohort also accounted for 17% of buyers of fine art. It’s a trend the auction houses will like to see continue in 2026.

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Summer is over, and the all-important autumn auction sales are upon us. For auction house Sotheby’s, this season is even more important than usual. In July, it reported a pre-tax loss of $248 million for the previous 12 months, double that in 2024. So, every sale counts – or does it?

The trouble that Sotheby’s is facing, like all auction houses, is the triple threat from political uncertainty, relatively high interest rates and shrinking demand from art collectors in Asia. That means consignors have been “loath to part with their most prized artworks – unsure of being able to attract top prices”, says The New York Times.

Fortunately, Sotheby’s has been able to get its hands on the $400 million art collection of Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics tycoon who died in June. It is selling the core of the collection in an evening sale on 18 November in New York and, of the 24 lots, it is the portrait of “a striking young woman with dark hair and pale skin, clad in a flowing, gauzy white dress, and patterned blue robe” that has attracted the most excitement, says Sarah Cascone on Artnet News. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-1916) by Gustav Klimt depicts the daughter of one of the Austrian artist’s most important patrons. If Sotheby’s is able to sell it for more than the $150 million it says the painting is worth, it would “obliterate” the current $108.4 million record price for a painting by Klimt, which was set by the sale of Lady With a Fan in 2023.

A roll of the dice for Sotheby's

The danger for Sotheby’s, as The New York Times notes, is that it has guaranteed the Lauder estate a minimum price for the painting. It is unclear whether Sotheby’s has offset that risk through third-party guarantors, which is standard practice. But still, “the question I would ask is if Sotheby’s is making money from this. Or are they losing money to create an appearance of confidence,” Jacob King, an art adviser, tells the paper. In March, Sotheby’s failed to sell Alberto Giacometti’s 1955 sculpture Grande tête mince, the “$70 million star” of the spring season. Art-market watchers will be watching to see if the confidence Sotheby’s has sought to convey with the guarantee is more than an illusion.

Last week, Christie’s offered a ray of hope that there are still deep-pocketed buyers out there, in Asia. It sold Buste de femme (1944) by Pablo Picasso in Hong Kong for HK$196.75 million (£18.9 million) – well above the HK$106 million (£10.1 million) estimate. Coincidentally, Lucien Paris is selling a second portrait of Picasso’s wartime muse, Dora Maar, on 24 October. It is the first time Buste de femme au chapeau à fleurs (1943), conservatively valued at €8 million, has been seen in public for 80 years.

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The autumn season is an important time for auction houses in the sales calendar. But for Sotheby’s, this autumn is more important than for most. “The art market is grinding through a rough patch… driven in part by China’s economic slowdown, wars and volatile US elections,” says The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

To that list can be added the normalisation of interest rates that makes inherently risky assets, such as collectables, less attractive to investors/collectors when you could earn a decent rate of return by simply sticking your money in the bank. As the WSJ points out, the “sales downturn” could not have come at a worse time for “the auction house’s highly leveraged billionaire owner, Patrick Drahi, who is fighting fires amid restructuring in his broader telecom empire, Altice” (Drahi took Sotheby’s private in 2019, delisting it after three decades of being publicly traded).

Executives at Sotheby’s have even had to settle for IOUs instead of their usual incentive-based pay and questioned whether the auction house would be able to continue to pay its staff, a source told the paper. Sotheby’s denies any such discussion took place, but it did lose $115m in the first half of 2024, compared with a $3m gain a year earlier, according to unaudited financial statements, seen by the paper. It marks a swift change in fortunes.

Until recently, the art market had been in full swing, with Sotheby’s raking in at least $7bn in sales annually. Then in May of this year, Sotheby’s couldn’t even sell a portrait by Francis Bacon – an artist who until recently had been very much in demand – for its lower $30m estimate, as David Sanderson notes in The Times. In 2020, the auction house sold a triptych by the artist for $85m, above its upper estimate. The good times look to be over.

It’s just as well, then, that Sotheby’s has been able to land the estate sale of this season – that of the late US beauty tycoon Sydell Miller. Collectively, the 90-odd works are expected to make around $200m. They are on show in London until 8 October, after which they will continue their world tour via Asia before arriving back in New York in time for Sotheby’s marquee sales week next month. Claude Monet’s waterlily painting Nymphéas (c.1914-1917) leads the auction with a pre-sale estimate of about $60m, according to Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times. Another highlight is La Statuaire (1925), a portrait of a seated female sculptor by Pablo Picasso, bought by Miller in 1999 for $11.8m. This time around, Sotheby’s is hoping to get $30m for it.

Wassily Kandinsky’s “celebration of the relationship between colour and form”, Weisses Oval (1921), is also appearing in the line-up, valued at up to $20m, as is Henry Moore’s sculpture of a reclining mother and child from 1976 (expected to fetch at least $8m) and works by Yves Klein (Relief Éponge bleu sans titre, 1961, for $8m-$12m) and Henri Matisse (Jeune fille en robe rose (1942, $3m-$5m). Sotheby’s will be hoping the sale signals a recovery in the market.

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We collect art for all sorts of reasons – and seemingly for no reason at all. There was no reasonable justification for me spending my entire first month’s modest teaching salary on a painting by an unknown Serbian artist, but I’m glad I did. Not because it’s gone up in value, but because I love it. 

It reminds me who I am, who I was and what I value in life. Art collections evolve over time and can serve as deeply personal and meaningful reflections of a collector’s life. Art can also be an investment. 

Am I sorry I didn’t buy a canvas by an almost unknown “sort of street artist” (called Banksy) when I was advised to while on a skiing trip in 2004? Yes, I am. My love of art and the fact it’s possible and pleasing to see significant gains from it are separate. 

Viewing art solely as an investment is frowned upon in some circles and it is an interesting (and controversial) topic to unpack. Art as a commodity can seem to undermine its intrinsic value and overshadow the artistic, cultural and creative aspects of the work. 

Additionally, focusing on the investment potential can and does lead to speculative (and unsustainable) bubbles and the inflation of prices arguably beyond the artistic merit of the work, which is unhelpful, certainly for the artist in the long term. (Though isn’t this the case in all markets?) 

Perhaps the key difference is that there is an individual here, in the emerging art market at least, who is being valued (or not), commodified, invested in or sold. That particularly stings as art is so intrinsically connected to the very being of the artist who made it – unlike other alternative investments, such as a luxury watch, for example, or a fine wine, which can be objectified without fear of exploitation.

Is it profitable to invest in art collectables?

What if art were immune to these influences? Then there would be no art market and how then would artists survive, outside of charity and philanthropy? And what about the artists starting out? 

Life as an emerging artist is an insecure life choice and this is where my mission with New Blood Art began 20 years ago. It is very difficult for emerging artists to make a viable living from their work, though the market has changed radically over the last two decades. 

It used to be an artist could hardly sell work outside of friends and family without the structure of a gallery set-up, and artists do still face challenges in reaching potential buyers, establishing credibility and showcasing their work to a wider audience without a gallery behind them. That said, there are far more opportunities now, and with the rise of online platforms and particularly social media, artists are increasingly finding alternative ways to market and sell their work directly to collectors. I think these opportunities will only increase over the coming years and big disruptions could be on the horizon. 

The art market could look quite different in a few years. “While the art market contracted over the last year, total online sales in 2023 were almost triple pre-pandemic levels, and more works sold online last year than ever before (including during lockdown),” says Artnet in its latest intelligence report from March. “This suggests that both buyer and seller behaviour around transacting virtually has changed for good.” 

There are benefits to investing in fledgling artists at degree show level. You only play the upside – their work will never be priced lower and if their career takes off, then the value of their early works can increase significantly. There’s an appeal for early works. They can be more emotionally raw and relatable. 

For a collector, there is also a sense of having been “in on the ground floor” with an artist’s early works, which can make pieces feel more special – to have discovered an artist before they became more mainstream.

Prize-winning emerging artists

At New Blood Art, we now work in collaboration with universities and art colleges, inviting art department heads and art tutors to nominate their most talented, committed and innovative artists each year for the Emerging Art Prize. This marks a new evolution in curatorial technique, inviting greater input from tutors, heads of departments and art colleges to nominate emerging artists. 

Tutors and lecturers from art colleges and universities are invited to nominate outstanding graduating artists from their fine art degree programmes. You will find at newbloodart.com a list of 2024 graduating artists who have been nominated by their university art departments for this year’s prize. Many of the artists we first platformed following their degree shows are now 20 years older and in mid-career. 

These artists are making a living from their art, and you will find them situated in our Masters section. We have numerous examples of artists whose work you could have bought in the low hundreds when they first arrived with us after their degree shows and who now would sell for ten or 20 times that amount. 

This year, we showcase some outstanding artists nominated by their tutors, including Christian Sloan, a Northern Irish sculptor graduating from Edinburgh College of Art; Alice Wheeler, a photographer (her work, The Son, is pictured above), also from Edinburgh College of Art; and a wonderful Print Master’s graduate from the Royal College of Art, Sean Pearl.

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One of the most coveted books today, a 163-year old copy of “On the Origin of Species” is now part of Showpiece’s £9m collection of history’s rarest treasures – and it can be yours, at a fraction of the price.

Darwin related collectibles are in high demand. Recent and upcoming auctions have seen a journal sold for over £300,000, his microscope for £600,000, and expect a signed manuscript to fetch up to as much as £700,000. First editions of what was recently voted “the most influential book of all time” by academics have also sold for significant amounts; Bonhams auctioned a copy for US$500,075 in 2019. Showpiece is making it possible for one of these rare copies to now be yours.

After spending 20 rigorous years scripting “On the Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin wanted to ensure its publishing process went smoothly. Dissatisfied with prior publishers, Darwin took his manuscript to the only person he trusted enough. Geologist Charles Lyell, a younger Darwin’s mentor, arranged for him to meet with one John Murray, who had helped him publish best-selling works of his own. Together, the author and publisher settled on releasing 1,250 first editions. Upon seeing his newly printed copies, the naturalist remarked “I am infinitely pleased and proud at the appearance of my child”.

Although these sold out almost immediately, their contents stirred up controversy. Criticism caused Darwin to publish multiple revised editions, each in increased quantities relative to the first. First editions of “On the Origin of Species” gradually became more valuable, being limited in number, and the only kind to carry Darwin’s initial propositions about the origin of all life. Today, few first editions exist in circulation among a handful of private collectors, and renowned educational and scientific institutions, with even fewer being on par with Showpiece’s volume.

Bibliomania – “The gentlest of infirmities”

A passion for collecting extends to rare manuscripts, a category that has been considered valuable for decades. Initially a sign of upper-class opulence, the assembly of private libraries and book collections is today of global interest. Bibliomaniacs source rare books to curate collections representing important history, to rekindle childhood nostalgia, and out of a love for particular subject areas.

An appreciation for printing and binding also drives collectors towards procuring physical volumes. With a departure from more traditional printing techniques, and the recent digitisation of books, certain tangible elements of a book have become more desirable, motivating significant price differences between copies of similar kinds. Rare printing errors increase a book’s value, since these are rectified in reprints. Similarly, hardcovers retain more value, since printing and binding processes used to create these are of superior quality, involving more intricate designs.

According to rare book expert Oliver Bayliss, no one genre or type of book is most desirable. Collecting interests show constant fluctuation, and are often dictated by social trends. However, Bayliss reveals that a first edition of Darwin’s work, heralded as the ‘greatest work of scientific literature’ seemingly transcends these boundaries, and is regarded to possess indisputable value by collectors.

Survival of the finest

Showpiece’s volume of Darwin’s treatise, authenticated by experts, has been deemed exceptional, and in near-perfect condition. Rupert Powell, managing director of Forum Auctions, noted the presence of features missing from others of its kind. This first edition exhibits chocolate-brown endpapers, an intact ‘half title’ page missing in other copies, a folding lithograph of Darwin’s tree of life, an original ‘Edmonds & Remnants’ binder’s ticket, and 32 pages of publisher advertisements, absent in later editions. This beautiful example also boasts original, emerald green wave-grain binding, and gilt spine-lettering. Despite the typically fragile nature of simple, mid to late Victorian era cloth binding, Showpiece’s volume has remained pristine.

Showpiece’s volume also possesses extraordinary provenance, being that it is one of 500 copies that once belonged to Mudie’s Lending Library. Famous for revolutionising the manner in which Victorian literature was published and consumed, the library operated for nearly 100 years, during which several first editions were circulated far and wide, among readers and collectors alike.

Changing the game

With Showpiece, you can own ‘On the Origin of Species’, and join a global community of collectors in collecting some of the world’s most unobtainable items.

• Pieces of Darwin’s first-edition are available from £‎50, with various physical benefits on offer, at Showpiece.com.

Until now, the focus of lunar exploration has been to get to the moon, and then bring stuff back – stuff like a bag full of dust for scientific study, for example (see below). But now, there’s an altogether different kind of space race under way – the race to take stuff to the lunar surface. Stuff like art. It began when Nasa asked robotics companies to come up with pod-like lunar landers to ferry equipment to the moon ahead of its own planned trip to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, says Kelly Crow in The Wall Street Journal. At least two of those companies also plan to be the first to send up art. (In fact, that race may have already have been won. Legend has it that a postage-stamp-sized ceramic tile called Moon Museum, etched with drawings by artists including Andy Warhol, surreptitiously went up with Apollo 12, in 1969. It may still be attached to the lunar module, but somebody needs to go up there to prove it.)

Jeff Koons, the American artist who currently holds the record for the living artist who has sold the most expensive artwork, is intent on winning the race. His cuboid installation called Moon Phases, which is packed with miniature and almost weightless moons in various phases of their lunar cycle, is to hitch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket later this year. Koons is racing against Sacha Jafri, a London-based artist, who last year created the world’s largest painting. His artwork, a thin metal plate engraved with an embracing couple and 88 hearts, called We Rise Together, is to go up on a rocket designed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. This has suffered delays, but also hopes to fly by the end of 2022.

One giant pay cheque

Neither artist has overlooked the more terrestrial matter of how to make money from their launches. Both will issue digital works in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). After Koons’ lander touches down, cameras will take photographs of the cube to be “minted” into 100 NFTs. The first 15 will cost $2m each, with later versions possibly priced higher. Buyers will also acquire one of the miniature moons (although not the right to remove it from the casing, assuming they were physically able), and an encased metal-alloy model moon for display on Earth. A gemstone will be added to the spot where Moon Phases eventually ends up on the real lunar surface. Jafri plans on minting 20,000 NFTs to be sold later in aid of charity. He claims one prospective buyer has already pledged $75m. It looks to be one small step for NFTs, one giant pay cheque for these two artists.

The $1.8m bag of dust

A “contingency” sampling of lunar dust that Neil Armstrong collected from the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 was the star lot of the Bonhams “Space History” sale in New York last week. According to Armstrong’s biographer James Hansen, the astronaut was so focused on taking photos on the moon that at first he neglected to collect the sample that was a mission priority. If the mission had had to be cut short, Nasa would at least have this small sample of dust and small rocks to show for its efforts. But Armstrong did fill the Teflon bag with two scoops of surface matter, weighing around a kilo in total. The bag then made its way back to Earth – only for Nasa to lose it.

In 2003, the bag turned up in the garage of Max Ary, a director of the Cosmosphere space museum in Kansas, who, two years later, was jailed for theft, money laundering and fraud, says Liam Kelly in The Sunday Times. US government officials seized and sold his space memorabilia, which included the bag, to cover Ary’s fines. The bag was bought for $995 by Nancy Lee Carlson, who sent it to Nasa to be authenticated. Nasa said it was genuine, but refused to return it, arguing that it never should have been sold. The space agency removed the moon dust using double-sided carbon tape, attached to aluminium discs, and the bag was sold in 2017 with Sotheby’s for $1.8m. Meanwhile, following legal challenges, Nasa was eventually ordered to return five of the six aluminium discs to Carlson. They sold for $504,375, including fees, last week. A full-sized model of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite in space, sold for $2,550, also as part of the sale, and a signed photo of fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, standing in the moon’s Sea of Tranquillity (pictured), fetched $4,845.

Auctions

Going…

A “magnificent and extremely rare” large doucai Chinese vase, dating from the Qianlong period (1736-1795), is the highlight of Christie’s Chinese ceramics sale in Hong Kong on 30 May. Doucai refers to the decorating technique by which fine underglaze cobalt blue lines were painted onto the porous unfired clay. The design, the ruyi motif, is based on the form of a lingzhi, a type of fungus, expressing a wish that the emperor receive everything he desired on his birthday. The body of the vase features four gilt Buddhist symbols of good luck, and the handles are formed as dragons. The vase (pictured) is valued at HK$30m-HK$50m (£2.9m-£4.9m), with the proceeds to go to a fund for the acquisition of artworks.

Gone…

A blue-and-white Chinese vase that was filled with a few dried flowers when it was spotted at a house clearance in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was initially valued at £50 by auctioneer Charles Hanson, believing it to be a reproduction, says The Derby Telegraph. But after it was listed for sale online, “extraordinary” offers were made. The vase had been given to the seller’s father, when he worked as a chauffeur in the 1950s. It was withdrawn from sale, and further research revealed that the vase is a rare piece dating from around 1640, a turbulent period in which the Ming dynasty ended. After being relisted by Derbyshire-based Hansons Auctioneers, with a guide price of up to £3,000, the vase was sold to a bidder in China for £15,000.

SEE ALSO:

The $15m violins up for auctio

The spring auction season has arrived. Last week saw a flurry of high-profile sales, including the debuts of three modern masterpieces. First up was Pablo Picasso’s La fenêtre ouverte at Christie’s in London. The surrealist piece portraying Picasso’s muse and lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was painted on 22 November 1929, “in the midst of a heady moment of creativity”, according to Christie’s.

Picasso had met Walter just two years earlier. Forming part of the Atelier series of works, other examples reside in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, in Paris. In the painting, Walter had yet to take on the appearance displayed in so many of Picasso’s later works. But even so, the young woman’s profile and neat 1920s bob are recognisable. Picasso, who put himself in the painting too, is much less so. The artist takes the form of two large feet crossed with an arrow. La fenêtre ouverte fetched £16.3m on 1 March.

Later that same evening at Christie’s in London, Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-7 was also up for sale for the first time. A meditation on the passing of time and the solitude of the human condition, Bacon’s familiar format of three paintings together draws on events in 20th-century history and the artist’s own life and experiences. The left-hand panel was inspired by a photograph of US president Woodrow Wilson leaving the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919, the right by a photo of Leon Trotsky’s study taken after his assassination in 1940. And in the middle, a figure resembling John Edwards, Bacon’s partner at the time, in a similar pose to one struck by George Dyer, his former lover, who took his own life in 1971, and whom Bacon immortalised in Triptych August 1972, that now hangs in the Tate gallery, in London. Triptych 1986-7 sold for £38.5m, slightly above its low estimate.

Several other big names also passed under the hammer that week. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Il Duce (1982), sold for ¥94.2m (£11.2m), again with Christie’s, but this time in Shanghai, underlining the growing importance of the Asian market. Back in London two days later, Self-Portrait on the Terrace (1984), by David Hockney, fetched £4.9m at Phillips. Singer Robbie Williams unloaded his two Banksy pieces, Girl with Balloon (2006) and Vandalised Oil (Choppers) (2006), for a combined £7m.

The stand-out sale of last week, however, went to yet another auction debutante: L’empire des lumières (1961), by Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The iconic work (pictured), one of 17 that form a series, contrasts day and night over a typical suburban house on a quiet street in Brussels. One possible inspiration for the piece is André Breton’s poem L’Aigrette, which opens: “If only the sun were to come out tonight”. It certainly came out for Sotheby’s in London that evening – the painting sold for £59.4m.

Luxury assets boom

Collectables had a good year in 2021. According to the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2022, released last week, alternative investments in all classes rose as investors sought stability away from the volatility in stocks.

The Knight Frank Luxury Investment index (KFLII), which tracks ten classes of collectables, from classic cars and art to wine and whisky, rose 9% on the previous year in the strongest annual growth since 2018. Watches and fine wine were the best-performing luxury assets, both appreciating by 16%, no doubt helped along by the series of high-profile watch auctions held at Phillips towards the end of last year.

November, for example, saw the sales of an “extremely important” Patek Philippe wristwatch (pictured), reference 2499 from 1952 for CHF3.5m (£2.9m), and a repeating grande and petite sonnerie wristwatch made by Philippe Dufour, which sold for CHF4.7m (£3.9m). As for fine wine, Champagne was the fastest appreciating region, rising 31% from a year earlier, with the 2008 vintage in particular attracting investors. Burgundy also had a good year, rising in value by a quarter.

Art was the third highest riser in Knight Frank’s index. Sales rose 13% year-on-year, driven by artworks by “blue-chip” artists, such as Jackson Pollock, whose Number 17 fetched $61.2m. Of the big auction houses Sotheby’s led the way, racking up sales worth $7.3bn in 2021, followed close behind by Christie’s with $7.1bn. But a shift is underway. Last year also saw the rise of “ultra-contemporary ‘red-chip’” artists, who use social media to build their followings, says Veronika Lukasova of analysts Art Market Research. The craze for all things NFT (non-fungible tokens) is the most visible expression of this trend. Leading auction houses sold “crypto art” worth a total of $227m in 2021, and that trend looks set to continue.

Auctions

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Jewellery belonging to the late Vera Lynn is heading to the auction block with Toovey’s in West Sussex in aid of the singer’s charitable trust on 16 March. Lynn famously “captured the hearts of the nation during World War II with her uplifting musical performances and recordings”, says The Independent. She became known as the Forces’ Sweetheart for playing her part in rallying the troops as far away as Burma with the Entertainments National Service Association. Her family is now selling the rings, bracelets, necklaces, and brooches worn by Lynn to continue her charitable work. Headlining the sale is a large late-Victorian diamond-set heart-shape pendant locket pavé, set with cut diamonds and carrying a pre-sale estimate of between £7,000 and £10,000.

Gone…

The leather flying cap (pictured) worn by pioneering US pilot Amelia Earhart when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by aeroplane sold with Texas-based Heritage Auctions last week, says CNN. In 1928, Earhart had boarded the Fokker F.VIII “Friendship” piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Lou Gordon, as a passenger for the 21-hour journey between Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, and south Wales. Four years later, she would go on to make the journey alone. Then, in 1937, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared somewhere over the Pacific when their ​​Lockheed L10 Electra ran out of fuel. Their whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since. Her legend, however, lives on, says Heritage. Her leather flying cap sold for $825,000, ten times its pre-sale estimate.

When it comes to investing, your options are practically endless, from gold bullion to cutting-edge technology. But for the most part, whatever you invest in tends to end up represented as numbers and graphs on a screen.

Fine art offers a different kind of investment, one that you can carefully select, enjoy and perhaps form a personal and emotional connection with. Whether you choose to buy art as an investment-only commodity to be kept at an art storage facility, or to hang on the walls of your home and admire, you can control it directly, and it offers a unique way to diversify your portfolio.

A key distinction to understand is the different investment categories of artists whose work you can invest in. This breaks down into three main groups: emerging artists, established artists and blue-chip artists.

Emerging artists are the bright young things of the art world, in the early stages of their career or finally gaining attention after years of hard work. Having won an award or caught the attention of a gallery or dealer, their work will be just starting to appreciate and become collectible. These artworks typically represent the lowest price point and the most potential for appreciation – but are also the biggest risk if the artist never moves on to become “established”.

Established artists are those who are a fixture of their local art market, with a body of work that spans several years and recognition on a regional, national or even international level. Blue-chip artists are those few who have gained international recognition beyond the confines of the art world, household names like Damien Hirst, Barbara Hepworth and David Hockney to name but a few.

In both cases, their artworks are less likely to appreciate as much as certain emerging artists’ creations, but are also more likely to maintain their value. In the case of the blue-chips, artworks are likely to sell for six- or seven-figure sums, and their values may rise in the case of the artist’s death.

The boom in affordable works like contemporary prints has made art collecting a possibility for a much broader range of investors than previously. These limited-edition prints – numbered and often signed by the artist – are an accessible way of beginning your collection without breaking the bank.

Fine art is a long-term investment, and as it has a low correlation to the stock market it has the potential to remain stable or increase in value if the market declines, making it a good choice for diversification. However, as the art market is unregulated, a serious investor needs to do due diligence whenever they purchase a piece to ascertain its provenance and that it can be traced back to its primary market. You don’t want to discover that the artwork previously changed hands illegally – nor that it is a forgery with no resale value whatsoever!

Buying directly from artists, auction houses or galleries will generally guarantee provenance, and when it comes to private sales you are advised to work only with reputable dealers and sellers where possible and process the transaction through a gallery or dealer if you are at all uncertain.

As for identifying the best investments, research is your friend. Keep a close eye on the market to discover not just what you like, but emerging trends and the artists who are beginning to make a name for themselves. You can learn a lot through arts publications and the activities of galleries, as well as who is winning local and international awards. If you can discover a future star of the art world before they make it big, you might be able to invest in some affordable works that will appreciate enormously in the long term.

Fine Art Global is an online marketplace that can help you to buy and sell art, as well as accessing the advice and information that you need to make the best investments. While 2020’s lockdowns and Covid-19 restrictions have made it more difficult to attend galleries and art fairs, Fine Art Global offers virtual reality and augmented reality services via its app that allow you to closely inspect artworks remotely, as well as to see what they would look like hanging on your wall.

Fine Art Global offers an expansive range of works from established and emerging artists, including signed and numbered limited edition prints and original works of art, and can help you discover the artwork that’s right for you. Its pieces are all authenticated by reputable auction houses so you can be sure of their provenance.

While investing in art naturally comes with risks attached, with proper research, due diligence and good advice, it can be an excellent option for diversifying your portfolio.

Learn more about Fine Art Global and explore the collection

Sandro Botticelli’s Young Man Holding a Roundel has gone on show at Sotheby’s in London. There the Renaissance masterpiece will remain before being shipped off for auction in New York next month. “Rare, megawatt treasures rarely come up for auction in times of turmoil – and rare, megawatt Old Master treasures rarely come up for auction at all,” says Eileen Kinsella on Artnet News. “But Sotheby’s is bucking both of these trends.”

The 15th-century painting of the young Florentine nobleman, possibly a Medici, is billed as “one of the most significant portraits of any period” by Sotheby’s. “High praise or not, the painting is set to shatter the previous auction record for Botticelli, recalibrating the market for him – and perhaps other Old Masters as well,” says Kinsella. It is expected to fetch around $80m.

The current record for a work by the Italian painter was set at Christie’s in New York in 2013, when Madonna and Child with Young Saint John the Baptist, dubbed the “Rockefeller Madonna” because it was once owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr, sold for $10.4m.

“Examples of Botticelli’s work do appear for sale – about 20 so far this century of mainly religious subjects – but, although he made superb portraits, there are only a dozen or so accepted as being by his hand, and most are in museums,” says Colin Gleadell in The Daily Telegraph. “The work should appeal to the swelling ranks of multibillionaire buyers who only want the best, regardless of which era it comes from or the style it is in.”

That said, while undoubtedly an Old Master painting, it feels quite modern. “Set against a clear blue sky, the sitter is placed in front of a simple window frame rendered with stripes of different shades of grey in an almost illusory manner (think Josef Albers mixed with René Magritte).” As such, it might even find a buyer among modern art collectors.

The Solow collection

The seller is widely believed to be billionaire New York property developer Sheldon Solow – or rather his heirs now, as Solow died last month aged 92. When the painting was first consigned, it raised eyebrows: it is 99%-owned by Solow’s private foundation. Solow bought the painting in 1982 for £810,000 (then $1.3m) at Christie’s in London before donating it to his foundation. In 2017, it was valued at $60m.

The foundation is largely tax-exempt, with the result that at least $33m stands to be saved on capital-gains tax. “The rich routinely employ such tax-planning manoeuvres, which are perfectly legal, with assets from stocks to real estate,” as Katya Kazakina pointed out on Bloomberg in October, before Solow’s death. “[But] it may be the first time a major Botticelli has come up.”

The proceeds won’t directly benefit his heirs as the money must go back into the foundation. But Solow’s widow, Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, says she is planning to open a private museum with the rest of Solow’s art collection that will be accessible to the public. “Finally,” says Georgina Adam in The Art Newspaper, the foundation will “be justifying its tax-free status as being in the public interest.”

A close look at the Mona Lisa

The Botticelli auction is the finale of a flurry of Old Master sales at Sotheby’s this week, Christie’s (15-17 December) and Bonhams (17 December). But if A banquet still life, by the Flemish 17th-century painter Jan Davidsz de Heem, offered at Christie’s for between £4m and £6m, is too rich for you, consider an exclusive (albeit time-limited) look at arguably the world’s most famous painting for a fraction of that price.

The Paris branch of Christie’s, together with local auction house Hôtel Drouot, is auctioning off the chance to get up close and personal with the Mona Lisa. Last week, the lower estimate of €10,000 had already been hit. Every year, the painting is taken out of its display case at the Louvre to be examined by restoration experts. The highest bidder at the online auction on Tuesday, along with their guest, will be present to witness that process. It will be “a far cry from a standard museum visit”, says Bryan Hood on the Robb Report.

“Normally, to see the historic painting you would have to work through the throngs of tourists… And even if [you] get to the front of that pack, your view of the painting is still obscured by its thick bulletproof and climate-controlled display case.” Afterwards, the Louvre’s president Jean-Luc Martinez will lead a private tour of the Grande Galerie, replete with da Vincis and Caravaggios. The proceeds from the auction will offset Covid-19-related losses.

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Korean K-Pop music sensation BTS have donated the pastel-coloured costumes they wore for their hit music video Dynamite to raise money for MusiCares, a charity that helps people in the music industry whose careers have been adversely affected by the pandemic. The video, released in August, broke the record for the most online views in 24 hours after it was played 101.1 million times on YouTube. The outfits have been given a “conservative” estimate of $20,000 to $40,000 when they go up for sale with California-based Julien’s Auctions on Friday, 29 January, ahead of the 63rd Grammy Awards the following Sunday.

Gone…

Three guitars that belonged to rock legend Eddie Van Halen, who died in October, fetched a combined $422,000 last week, also with Julien’s Auctions. The guitarist’s iconic red Kramer “Frankenstrat” went for the most of the three, selling for $231,250, well above its $60,000 estimate. Other guitars in the auction included two smashed examples that had belonged to Nirvana’s frontman, Kurt Cobain, which, together, made $281,000. Bob Marley’s acoustic guitar fetched $153,600 and the crystal-covered glove worn by Michael Jackson on his 1984 “Victory Tour” sold for $76,800.

The first stirrings are afoot in the art world as galleries and auction houses tentatively look to reopen their doors as the pandemic subsides, says Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times.

Gagosian, the world’s biggest commercial art gallery, will start the process with a show of German artist Georg Baselitz’s work in Hong Kong on 21 May. Sotheby’s chief executive, Charles Stewart, said the auction house’s staff in Europe and Asia would begin to return to work, noting also that it had made a total of $70m from holding 37 online sales since March. However, Perth-based WhiskyAuctioneer.com experienced the perils of doing so last month. Its online sale of 1,958 bottles of rare whisky had to be delayed due to a malicious cyberattack. The first phase of the auction, held earlier this year, had raised £3.2m.

Bonhams in London has used the quiet time to hold an online auction, raising £405,300 for the NHS. The “Blue Auction” ran for three weeks to 29 April. All 61 lots sold, many of which included items and pledges made by actors, musicians, artists and sports people. A tour of Grayson Perry’s studio fetched £22,000, while Antony Gormley’s artwork Fold I (2018) sold for £17,000. The Connor Brothers’ hand-finished giclée print of Extraordinary People (2020) was used to illustrate the sale. Featuring a glamorous-looking nurse (see picture above), it went for £18,000.

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Paul McCartney’s handwritten lyrics to the song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, which appeared on The Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road, are to be sold next month with California-based Julien’s Auctions. The 20 lines, written on Apple Corps stationery, are expected to fetch $200,000 to $300,000.

The custom-made blue electric Cloud guitar owned by Prince (pictured, above), from 1984, minus the strings, is also appearing as part of the “Music Icons 2020” sale on 19 and 20 June. The guitar was featured in the 1984 film Purple Rain. It features the late singer’s love symbols on the neck and gold hardware, and comes with a Calzone purple guitar road case. It is expected to sell for up to $200,000.

Gone…

Online bidding for Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics for a song on his album Blonde on Blonde ended on Tuesday. The album is “regarded by many as his greatest”, says The Guardian. The typed page was auctioned by Sotheby’s in London and features alternate lyrics for the “breakup song” Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine. It had been given an estimated price of up to £15,000.

Dylan wrote the notes over a page that already had typed lyrics on it. He never recorded those typed lyrics, but they were later adapted for the song Temporary Like Achilles, which also features on the album. In 2014, Sotheby’s sold another page of Dylan’s lyrics, to his song Like A Rolling Stone, for $2m.

David Hockney, creator of Britain’s most expensive artwork by a living artist, is in lockdown. But he isn’t letting it get to him. From Normandy, where he is staying, the resourceful 82-year-old whipped out an iPad and “painted” a picture of bright yellow daffodils. He called it Do remember they can’t cancel the spring. Sadly, Hockney’s latest two exhibitions in London – at the National Portrait Gallery and the Annely Juda Fine Art gallery – have not been able to escape the spread of the coronavirus. Both have been closed, as have galleries, museums and art fairs around the world. Art Basel Hong Kong, the biggest art fair in Asia, had been due to open its doors last week. But it wasn’t cancelled entirely. Like Hockney, it and the galleries have instead embraced a convenient digital format.

A case of “fairtigue”

Of the 242 galleries that were due to appear at Art Basel Hong Kong, 235 have taken up residence in its online viewing room instead. So many visitors piled into it in the first 20 minutes that the platform was temporarily paralysed, Artnet News reports. But there’s no doubt the global disruption is hurting the art market, particularly the smaller players.

That’s partly down to the market having expanded so quickly – from 140 international art fairs at the last financial crisis to 300 as of last year. Exhibiting is also an expensive business. “For the past few years, galleries operating below the stratospheric levels have been struggling to keep pace with the financial pressures of showing at fairs all over the world,” says Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times. Five-figure exhibiting fees, flights, shipping, hotels, dinners with clients and rent have led to what has become known as “fairtigue”. The same is true of collectors. “If there were fewer regional art fairs, but stronger online offerings, it could do everyone – and the environment – a favour,” David Zwirner, a “heavyweight” dealer, tells Gerlis.

Not everybody shares that view. While “the international art fair phenomenon has become a travelling circus”, says Ted Loos in The New York Times, “there are serious collectors everywhere, particularly for contemporary art, and they do not always want to get on a plane to look at a work they may want to buy. The majority of art fairs are for the people who live in the host city”. The Dallas Art Fair and Art Brussels are two that cater to “the local base of collectors”, he points out.

Whether they and others like them survive the shake-out remains to be seen. But the current lockdown could also turn out to have been beneficial to the art market. An awful lot of people are, after all, sitting at home with little to do but log on (see right). “When you work from home, the state of your home takes on new importance,” says Tim Schneider on Artnet News. “Not every member of this demographic will decide to fill the void with fine art, of course. But many others will – or, at least, could – once the world stabilises enough for discretionary spending to seem justified again. If so, that represents a huge opportunity for artists and dealers.” Every spring cloud has its silver lining.

Going for gold

“Collectors are bored,” Gregory Edmund of auction house Spink tells This is Money’s George Nixon. “They are trapped at home, unable to get any mental stimulus other than depressing news stories… so they flocked to our online-only… sale platform and merrily bid away.” That was perhaps one reason for the successful sale of over 500 coins. Another, Edmund points out, is the great “trust in modern technology” as part of “our changing consumer spending habits”. Many of the coins were also gold, which, due to turbulence in the stockmarkets, “suggests investors are once again looking to the commodity”, says Nixon.

A £3 gold coin (ie, 60 shillings, pictured) was the highlight of the sale. Known as a “triple-unite”, depicting King Charles I, it was struck at Oxford in 1643 for royalist forces during the English Civil War. It was the largest hand-made coin produced in England prior to the Restoration in 1660 and it fetched £65,000, before fees. A five-guinea coin from 1713, with the face of Queen Anne, sold for £26,000, three times its upper estimate; and a £5 coin from 1826, depicting George IV, fetched a “whopping” hammer price of £55,000. “One investor appeared to really take the long-term view”, says Nixon, in successfully bidding £7,500 for a Dobunni tribe Celtic coin dated between 25 BC and 5 BC, “an Iron Age coin predating the Roman invasion of Britain”.

Shopping for art online

“The internet has proved not only an efficient research tool [for buying art online], but also often provides an acceptable substitute for the real thing,” says Colin Gleadell in The Daily Telegraph. For art collectors currently unable to leave their homes, “there is an incalculable amount of art out there to sift through on your screens”.

Artfinder is a “friendly and unpretentious” online platform that connects buyers with independent artists and the prices are affordable. “I wouldn’t recommend any of it – just as I could not recommend buying art off the Hyde Park railings,” says Gleadell. You may like what you have bought, “but I would wager you will never get your money back in a discriminating marketplace”. So buyer beware.

Also beware the rapid expansion in the online marketplace, which has reached saturation. Online auction platforms Auctionata and Paddle8 are two recent high-profile casualties of the pull-back. Look for companies with “established reputations in valuing and selling collectables in the traditional way”, such as Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. That said, online dealer Artsy has a “foothold” in representing a wide range of art. The Saleroom, Invaluable.com and Barnebys.com are three big online auction aggregators and sources for information on upcoming sales.

It’s well known that John Maynard Keynes was one of the 20th century’s most important practitioners of the "dismal science" of economics. Less well known is that he was also an avid collector of fine art – and quite a successful one at that. The economist spent £12,847 on building up his art collection between 1917 and 1945. That collection, according to “Art as an Asset: Evidence from Keynes the Collector”, a study from the Cambridge Judge Business School, is today worth £76.2m, representing an inflation-adjusted return of 6.1% a year.

True, if Keynes had sunk his money into British stocks and reinvested the dividends, his beneficiaries would be sitting on around £90.2m. But share certificates don’t look half as good on the wall; not compared with Georges Seurat’s Study for La Grande Jatte (1884), bought by Keynes for £400 in 1919 while he was writing The Economic Consequences of the Peace following World War I. Keynes’ most expensive purchase was Paul Cézanne’s 1867 canvas L’Enlèvement (The Abduction), bought for £3,500 in 1935, while he was working on The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. The ten most expensive paintings in his 135-piece collection accounted for 80% of his total expenditure.

Keynes's art investments performed better than bonds

Part of the reason for his success was that he shunned Old Masters’ paintings in favour of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works that, after a few years, became much more sought after. Not that he received much credit for it at the time. Keynes’s judgment of works of art had been decried as “lamentable” by Clive Bell, the art critic and brother-in-law of Virginia Woolf, as Patrick Hosking points out in The Times. Yet Keynes’s collection made 9.2 times as much profit as a typical artwork portfolio and 20 times as much as it would have had the money been invested in government bonds.

“For the art collection to have performed far better over the period than government bonds, and to have nearly matched the total return on equities, is an extraordinary outcome,” say the authors of the Cambridge Judge Business School study. “The collection performed especially well shortly after purchase, suggesting that Keynes was able to buy art at attractive prices.” Keynes clearly had an eye for a bargain. His search even apparently involved visiting auction houses in disguise.

Ever the public servant (he had been employed by the government), Keynes, with artists Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, at one point convinced the Treasury to put up the funds to buy a bunch of Cezannes going cheap for the nation. But in the end, the director of the National Gallery vetoed the decision, so Keynes bought them for himself. When he died in 1946, the collection went to King’s College, Cambridge, where Keynes had been a bursar. Some of the paintings are today on display at the university’s Fitzwilliam Museum.

Banksy’s post-Brexit art

Britain has left the European Union and the in/out war is over (at least for now). But the question remains of what to do with all those placards left over from the pro- and anti-Brexit protest marches. Anonymous street-artist Banksy (who else?) has come up with his answer – turn it into art and flog it through Sotheby’s. Using a found Vote Leave placard, Banksy has added a balloon to turn “Leave” into “Love”. Vote To Love, as the piece is called, has been given an upper estimate of £600,000 ahead of its sale on Tuesday. Before that, it had hung as part of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2018, having originally been turned down for the show when Banksy submitted the work under the pseudonym Bryan S. Gaakman – a play on the words “Banksy anagram”.

Once it had been accepted, it was given a “sardonic” price tag of £350m in the exhibition catalogue – high, even by Banksy’s standards. The price was, of course, a whimsical nod to Vote Leave’s infamous promise painted on the side of a bus, pledging to return that amount to the NHS every week. The rest of the art world may not be in the mood for laughing, however. The effect of Brexit on trade has placed London’s art market in “limbo”, says Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times. “Most of the art market’s participants were not in favour of leaving the EU, but are holding out for possible tax and fiscal-policy silver linings.”

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Three neo-Impressionist “masterpieces” that were looted from Gaston Lévy, a successful Paris-based businessman and art collector, during World War II, were auctioned in London this week, says Kim Willsher in The Observer. Lévy, who was Jewish, fled to Tunisia with his English-born wife, Liliane, and daughter, where they survived the war. The “jewel of the group”, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu (1888), by Camille Pissarro, was valued at up to £12m. It, and Paul Signac’s La Corne d’Or (1907), were both eventually returned to France and hung in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The third painting, Quai de Clichy (1887), also by Signac, had been found in the collection of German dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. It was returned to the Lévy family last year.

Gone…

A painting by L.S. Lowry of workers in the Lancashire town of Pendlebury enjoying a day off had escaped the notice of art experts for 70 years, says BBC News. The Mill, Pendlebury (pictured), as the 1943 work is called, had been given by Lowry to Leonard D Hamilton, who later contributed to the discovery of the double-helical shape of DNA. The painting’s existence only became known after his death. On 21 January the picture fetched £2.7m with Christie’s in London, far in excess of its £1m upper estimate, but lower than the £5.6m paid for each of Lowry’s later works, The Football Match (1949) and Piccadilly Circus (1960).

There were some big art sales in 2019, but much of the action came within a month. Claude Monet’s Meules (1890) sold for $110.7m in New York with Sotheby’s in May, raising the nominal price bar for an Impressionist painting. That price was far in excess of the estimated $55m – a valuation that was 22 times higher than its previous auction sale price in 1986, but one that was justified in the eyes of Sotheby’s Impressionist department head August Uribe. It was, he said, “the best one” of the 25 paintings in the Haystacks series, still in private hands.

So maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that it made nine figures. After all, pre-sale estimates tend to be conservative and another painting from the series had sold for $81.4m in 2016 with Christie’s. The problem is, it was the only art work to make nine figures in 2019. And it only made nine figures once the fees had been added (the “hammer price” was $97m). Nonetheless, May also saw Jeff Koons’s Rabbit (1986) fetch a record price for a work by a living artist – $91.1m at Christie’s, again in New York. Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II (1964) sold for $88.8m and Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis [Ferus Type] (1963) fetched $53m. That same month, Sotheby’s in New York sold a Pablo Picasso (Femme au chien, 1962), a Francis Bacon (Study for a head, 1952) and a Mark Rothko (Untitled, 1960), each for over $50m. All in all, not bad. “Wealthy Americans showed their backbone,” as Melanie Gerlis put it in the Financial Times.

Thank goodness they did. Trade wars, the threat of recession and uncertainty over Brexit had looked at one point to have scared away the guarantors, as Abby Schultz noted in Barron’s Penta. These are the people who agree to stump up the money to buy a lot if it otherwise fails to sell at auction. Their presence injects confidence into the market. When they’re not there, the market gets rattled, but the auctioneers pulled through in the end. “Amid a challenging global environment, demand for art remains strong and is reflected in our 2019 results, especially for modern and contemporary art,” says Guillaume Cerutti, CEO at Christie’s. Yet at the start of 2020, those uncertainties haven’t gone away. Whether that demand remains strong will be the main question for this year.

Whisky breaks records

Rare whisky, on the other hand, went from strength to strength in 2019. Sotheby’s in London raised £7.6m from the sale of a single-owner collection in October, which also saw a new record set for a single bottle – another 1926 Macallan, this time costing £1.5m (different bottles of the 1926 have broken the record three times over the past two years). From 7-17 February, Whisky Auctioneer (whiskyauctioneer.com) is hosting a sale of 3,900 rare bottles of whisky. “Expect it to far exceed its lowball £7m-£8m estimate,” says whisky expert Fiona Shoop in The Daily Telegraph. It contains yet another 1926 Macallan.

The year art went bananas

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan made headlines (most with puns) last month when he duct-taped a banana to a wall and then sold that “art installation” for $120,000. People queued up at the Perrotin gallery at Art Basel Miami Beach to take their picture with Comedian (as the banana was called). When it came to the turn of New York-based artist David Datuna, he peeled it off the wall and ate it. “Art performance by me. I love Maurizio Cattelan artwork and I really love this installation. It’s very delicious,” Datuna declared on Instagram. Luckily, Datuna “did not destroy the art work”, Lucien Terras, a director at the gallery, told the Miami Herald. “The banana is the idea.”

That’s right, says Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. In the tradition of Marcel Duchamp (the artist who put a urinal in a gallery and called it Fountain), Cattelan is mocking the art world. “Nowadays, art can’t get away from money,” says Jones. “That’s all anyone wants to know about it, and Dada gestures are part of the capitalist miracle.” Still, it’s no laughing matter for performance artist Rod Webber. After Perrotin removed the (restored) Comedian, Webber wrote on the blank wall in red lipstick: “Epstein didn’t kill himself”. He was arrested for vandalism. Artnet News reports he will appear in court next month. Webber has appealed to Datuna for help lest “a jury may be put in a position to legally decide what is and isn’t art”.

Auctions

Going…

Former Australian cricketer Shane Warne (on the left in our picture) put his beloved “baggy green cap” up for auction this week to raise money for those affected by the bushfires in Australia. The proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Red Cross’s disaster relief fund. Interest in the sale was so great that the Pickles auction website crashed soon after Warne announced the sale on Monday via Twitter, says Sky News. Bidders had until Thursday night to make their offer, with former England captain Michael Vaughan offering A$25,000 (£13,200). Warne wore the cap throughout his international test career from 1992 to 2007. The spin bowler hoped it would raise “some significant funds to help all those people that are in desperate need”.

Gone…

The Olympic Manifesto, the transcript of a speech made by Pierre de Coubertin in 1892, has become the most expensive item of sport memorabilia to be sold at auction. It fetched $8.8m at Sotheby’s in New York last month. In the handwritten transcript Coubertin spelled out his vision to see the Olympic Games of ancient Greece revived at the annual meeting of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques. “Let us export rowers, runners and fencers; this is the free trade of the future, and the day that it is introduced into the everyday existence of old Europe, the cause of peace will receive new and powerful support,” he said. The first International Olympic Committee was set up 18 months later.

It's been an incredible decade for art investors the top ten highest prices paid for paintings have all come in the last ten years. In 2011, Paul Cezanne's The Card Players (c.1895) became the most expensive painting in the world when the oil state of Qatar paid around $250m in a private sale.

That record was broken again in 2015 with the sale of Interchange (1955) by Willem de Kooning, which sold for about $300m in another private sale.

And then, as everybody by now knows, Leonardo da Vinci's lost work, Salvator Mundi (c.1500), smashed the record into smithereens when another oil-rich state, Saudi Arabia, bought it for $450.3m before the eyes of the world at Christie's in New York in November 2017 five times the previous record set for an Old Master.

What was truly extraordinary about this sale wasn't so much the money it's that no one could even be sure it was painted by the Florentine master at all.

When Salvator Mundi had sold previously in 2005, it went for just $10,000 because it was thought to have been painted by somebody in da Vinci's studio rather than da Vinci himself and after the 2017 sale, art critics lined up to give their take on why it wasn't a genuine da Vinci. The spending of almost half a billion dollars on a suspect painting was exactly the kind of irrationally exuberant, top-of-the-market, contrarian signal you would expect to see before a downturn.

Yet that isn't quite what we got. The following May, Amedeo Modigliani's 1917 Nu couch (sur le ct gauche) fetched $157.2m at Sotheby's in New York. The impressionists weren't done yet either. Exactly one year after Sotheby's sold Nu Couch, the New York auction house sold Claude Monet's Meules (1890) for $110.7m, a record for the artist.

Then, last June, another "lost Master" that had been found in an attic Judith and Holofernes by Caravaggio was bound for the auction block. Again, like Salvator Mundi, not everyone was convinced it was the genuine article. The Louvre had already turned its nose up at the painting, but that didn't stop a private buyer from snapping it up just two days before it was due to be auctioned in Toulouse. We don't know how much was paid but presumably more than the $170m upper estimate.

So, as of last June, there was still plenty of froth in the market. But for how long can a market keep rising when questionable paintings are being sold for hundreds of millions of dollars? Prior to the start of this record-breaking decade, $140m was the most that had ever been spent on a painting: a Jackson Pollock entitled No. 5, 1948 (it sold in 2006). So, if the art market has peaked, you can't say you weren't warned.

The next big thing

That said, there's always the potential to make money from collecting art. And if you are starting out, you probably won't be in the market for a da Vinci or a Caravaggio (not just yet, anyway). The emerging end of the art market can be an exciting place to get started. Degree shows for graduating art students are fertile hunting grounds. If you get very lucky, you might stumble upon the next David Hockney and if not, at least you won't have paid through the nose.

Art fairs are also valuable for spotting undiscovered or emerging talent. Artnet News picked out Alteronce Gumby, Julien Creuzet and Suki Seokyeong Kang as three up-and-coming artists whose work was on display at Frieze London earlier this month. And don't be afraid to visit the art galleries themselves. Maddox Gallery in London has, for example, Bradley Theodore on its books. Theodore is an emerging talent, born in the Turks and Caicos Islands, whose murals and paintings are attracting an ever-growing following, with the prices to match.

Investing in female artists

It can pay to look at works by artists who falloutside of the traditional, white-male-dominatedart market. Works by female artists particularly post-war have been rising in value more rapidly than any other sector in recent years, according to Sotheby's Mei Moses indices, which track the repeat-sale prices of 60,000 works. From 2012 to 2018, the value of 2,472 repeat sales by 499 women artists rose by 72.9%, and by 87.7% for contemporaryfemale artists alone.

The median compound annual returns for works by Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler resold at auction between 2014 and 2018 were 14.7% and 10.9%, according to Michael Klein, head of Sotheby's Mei Moses. For Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, the figures were 7.8% and 6.5% respectively.

Meanwhile, supply is limited relative to male artists works by female artists make up just 10% of the market by volume, while a handful of artists (including Japan's Yayoi Kusama) account for almost half of the value of sales by female artists. Given that works by women have been overlooked for so long, and interest in this segment is hotting up, there's likely to be as-yet untapped potential for profits.

Not for nothing was the auction last Thursday at Christie's in London called The Exceptional Sale. There were many objects with fascinating histories among the lots. Nevertheless, just one item grabbed all the attention in the lead-up to the sale and not all for the reasons Christie's had wanted, as exquisite as that item was. The lot that was hogging the headlines was a bust from around 1330BC of the ancient Egyptian "boy king", Tutankhamun. With its fine eyes and delicate features, the sculpture is without doubt a work of art. "You're just blown away by the fact that a sculptor, over 3,000 years ago, used all his skills to create the most beautiful representation of the king," says Christie's antiquities specialist Laetitia Delaloye. The Amun Head (pictured), as the piece is known, was expected to sell for £4m. After all, as Christie's says, "so many people have wanted to own this work of art".

That includes Egypt's antiquities ministry. Right up until the day of the auction, the Egyptian ambassador to Britain, Tarek Adel, called for the sale to be delayed so that its provenance could be further investigated. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former minister of antiquities, went further. "It seems that this sculpture was looted from Karnak Temple," he said. "I don't think Christie's have the papers to show it left Egypt legally; it's impossible. Christie's has no evidence at all to prove that, and so it should be returned to Egypt."

Unattractive truths

Christie's refutes that claim. "While ancient objects by their nature cannot be traced over millennia, Christie's has clearly carried out extensive due diligence verifying the provenance and legal title of this object," the auction house said in a statement. "We have established all the required information covering recent ownership and gone beyond what is required to assure legal title." It is "understood to have been in the collection of Prinz Wilhelm von Thurn und Taxis by the 1960s" (before being passed on), says Christie's in its catalogue note. That, however, was called into question when Viktor von Thurn und Taxis, the son of the minor German royal, told website Live Science that he did not recall his father ever owning the bust. He was "not a very art-interested person", Wilhelm's niece, Daria, added.

Either way, the wider row isn't confined to the Amun Head. Last October, Iraq objected to the sale of a 3,000-year-old Assyrian stone relief when it was sold at Christie's in New York for $31m. And in January of this year, an Egyptian cartouche that had been smuggled out of Egypt was rescued from a London auction house, The Daily Telegraph reported. Over the past five years, Egypt has recovered 1,500 illegally trafficked objects from abroad. "Sales of antiquities are increasingly sparking disputes over provenance by authorities in countries of origin, such as Egypt, Greece and Turkey," Heba Saleh and James Pickford point out in the Financial Times. That doesn't surprise author Peter Watson, who says in The Times that auction houses play a cynical game: "Sail as close to the wind as you dare, and when you are found out, do whatever you can to avoid admitting the unattractive truth".

"Wildly unethical"

Even if you can guarantee legal ownership, that may not be enough, says Aditi Natasha Kini in The New York Times. "These tokens of a colonial past were pilfered, pillaged and otherwise procured as gifts' from India [to Britain]," she says, referring to the Christie's sale of Indian and Mughal-era jewels in June. "The auctioning of stolen heritage to the highest bidder is wildly unethical. These objects must be given back." The debate continues. As for the Amun Head, Christie's stuck to its guns that "there is an honourable market for ancient art" and the sale went ahead. It sold for £4.7m.

A masterpiece comes home

Germany has agreed to return Vase of Flowers, a painting by the Dutch master Jan van Huysum, to the Palazzo Pitti gallery in Florence. The artwork, valued at €2m today, had been taken by retreating German soldiers in 1943 from a village where the painting and other artworks had been stored by the gallery for safekeeping during the war. However, Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi, and a German himself, waged a high-profile propaganda war of his own to arrange for the painting's return. In place of where the stolen painting was meant to be hanging, Schmidt arranged in January for a framed photograph of the still-life, emblazoned with the word "Stolen!" in multiple languages, to be hung in its place. Germany cracked.

The painting resurfaced in 1991 in a private collection in Germany. Efforts to have the painting returned faltered when descendents of the German soldier into whose possession the painting went demanded €2m for it. They said the painting hadn't been stolen. The soldier had bought it for his wife at a market. German authorities also applied a 30-year statute of limitations. Schmidt has called for Germany to lift any statutes of limitations where Nazi involvement is suspected. The painting is now on its way back to Florence (how much money, if any, changed hands has not been revealed). "At long last [Vase of Flowers] comes home after 75 years," Schmidt told Reuters. "The battle was tough."

Two fascinating collections have been in the news recently. The first belonged to Marceau Rivire, a French "traveller-collector" and writer of several books. His collection went up for sale at Sotheby's in Paris last week, but it "was never intended to be a collection of masterpieces", says Susan Moore in the Financial Times. Rather, its "integrity and its particular charm lie in being a record of a life spent beguiled by the peoples and material culture of Africa".

Rivire was just eight years old when a missionary arrived in his village in Normandy bearing slides of the Congo. He was "mesmerised", says Moore. Then, aged 11, he kicked off his collection with a Dan/Guere mask, bought from a rag-and-bone man and paid for in instalments from his pocket money. But his collection really got going when he joined the French camel corps in 1957 in Algeria, which was engaged in the collecting of samples for museums in Algiers and Tunis. Later, he worked as an engineer in Chad for an airline. For more than 20 years, he travelled around Africa, forging links with village chiefs and conducting research into indigenous art. In 1981 he opened a small gallery in Paris to house his collection from which 250 items appeared at the Sotheby's sale. Most of the lots had been acquired decades ago and most had never been on the market before.

The stand-out piece was a moon mask made by the Baule people of the Ivory Coast (pictured above). It sold for €4.7m last week, fetching the third-highest price ever for an African mask. In total, the auction raised €11.5m. Rivire, now 82, referred to the sale as a "remarkable adventure".

The second collection making headlines will appear at Bonhams in London on Wednesday. It belongs to Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape. Following the death of his wife, Ramona, last year, Morris decided to downsize and move to Ireland, and no longer has room for his 11,000 books, artworks and artefacts. In the decades spent since publishing his seminal book on human behaviour published in 1967, the same year in which he began collecting Morris has amassed a world-renowned collection of early Cypriot art, along with Canaanite figurines, Persian pottery (see below) and Iranian Amlash female figures displaying what Morris refers to as steatopygia the pronounced hips and buttocks that may now be better known as "Kardashian syndrome", as Morris told David Sanderson says in The Times. The 91-year-old is selling up as he wants to start a new life. "I have new projects I want to undertake. New areas of study."

But he's hanging on to "a few oddities", including the cowrie shell he bought on Christmas Island and a Cypriot terracotta sculpture he acquired in 1967. "I bought it just before The Naked Ape, which took up the little money I had in those days," he tells Sanderson. "I can't let it go."

Two striking lots

A Dan statue of a walking spoon, from the Rivire collection (see above), is "pure joy", says Susan Moore in the Financial Times. It looks like something Walt Disney would have come up with for his 1940 animated film Fantasia, but the concept of a spoon/ladle with legs, known as "megalumia", is far older. Its purpose was ceremonial. Women would compete against one another to be the most generous in distributing food to the community, according to the auction catalogue note. The winner of the contest would be given the spoon and the title of wakede, meaning "queen of the feast" in the Dan language of the Ivory Coast, for her largesse at the table. It fetched €972,500, far surpassing its €600,000 upper estimate.

From the Morris collection, a large Persian pottery bowl (above) from the second to third centuries BC is one of the most striking lots. It is painted on three sides and shows a line of bearded goats and a hunter with a bow and arrow, and what looks like a dog on a leash. "I think this is the earliest depiction of the domestication of the dog," Morris tells Lucinda Bredin in Bonhams magazine. The dog is shown with a lead and collar and he is in competition with a shaggy-coated wolf, which is bristling on the other side of the vase. "It gives us an insight into how these people went hunting with a herding dog and a hunting dog Isn't it astonishing that 6,000 years ago the domestication of the dog was being recorded on this pot?" It is expected to sell for £20,000-£30,000.

Auctions

Going

A signed first-edition copy of The Ascent of Everest is to be sold by Philip Serrell Auctioneers in Malvern, Worcestershire, next month. The book charts the first ascent of the world's highest mountain, which was achieved by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, the year the book was published. The copy for sale bears their signatures, as well as those of Charles Wylie and Wilfred Noyce, who were also on the expedition, which was led by the book's author, John Hunt. "Tenzing Norgay rarely signed books," Serrell, the auctioneer, tells BBC News. "Sometimes you hold things in this business and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up." It has been valued at up to £1,100.

Gone

Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica sold for $1.215m at Christie's in New York earlier this month. The Franciscan friar published the book in Venice in November 1494. It was one of the first on algebra to be published in the West in the vernacular Italian in this case. Summa de Arithmetica also contains a chapter explaining to European merchants the advantages of keeping their books in the new two-column Venetian style, a method that is today known as double-entry book-keeping. The book, one of 2,000 from the first print run, would have cost 119 soldi when hot off the press not cheap, but not beyond the means of a wealthy Italian merchant.

The London Art Fair is a great place for new collectors to start out, says Chris Carter.

The London Art Fair in Islington gets the new year under way for the art market in the capital. More than 131 galleries from around the world will be on show from Wednesday, exhibiting contemporary art from the 20th century onwards. Last year, big-name works by Grayson Perry, Eduardo Paolozzi, Edward Burra and Pablo Picasso changed hands. This time around, pieces by David Hockney, Perry and Banksy will be up for grabs.

Hockney in particular had a stand-out year in 2018, with his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972 fetching $90.3m at Christie's in New York. The sale was, in the opinion of art magazine Apollo's Susan Moore, the "most extreme case of hyperinflation" in a market where "works of art come to auction with estimates that bear no relation to an artist's established market value". Strong words. So, will the contemporary art market meet its reckoning in 2019 or will the good times continue to roll, at least for now?

"It's hard to predict what will happen in any given year, but we hope the fair is able to build on its performance in its 2019 edition," London Art Fair director Sarah Monk told MoneyWeek. But even if the bloated end of the market does flop over (and there's nothing to say that it will see right), there could still be bargains for art collectors willing to take a risk on relatively unknown artists. After all, says Monk, "London Art Fair nurtures collecting at all levels, from prints and editions starting in the hundreds to major works by internationally renowned artists and there is certainly scope to invest across this spectrum".

Art Projects, an initiative that is now in its 15th year, sits alongside the main fair and aims to support "emerging" galleries and new artistic talent. This year, 33 galleries from 11 countries will come together to showcase "the most stimulating and innovative contemporary art practice today", says Monk. London Art Fair has form, having played host to a number of successful artists early on in their careers. British artists Chris Ofili and Jenny Saville are two examples and both were awarded "rising star" awards at the fair in 1996. Those turned out to be good calls when you consider Saville's Propped sold for £9.5m at Sotheby's in London last year proof that young, emerging artists can and do go on to become big names with prices to match. The winner of the 2018 De'Longhi Art Projects Artist Award for emerging talent, in case you were wondering, was Turkish artist Nilbar Gres. This year's winner will be announced on Tuesday.

As with any sort of collecting, it's a good idea to do your research before reaching for your wallet. Art fairs are a great place to start, since they "encourage new collectors into the market while being less intimidating than visiting traditional galleries", says Monk. "I hope that London Art Fair allows visitors to make new connections and explore new territory."

Runs until 20 January, £16 advance, LondonArtFair.co.uk.

New world order

Yet looks can be deceiving, says Brett Sokol in The New York Times. Many of the "dizzying" accompanying celebrity-studded fashion shows and private dinners, that at best had a tenuous connection to the world of art, "looked, well, marvellous". But the real talk among monied collectors was on the effect of a skidding stockmarket coupled with a dramatic cooling of the price of luxury property around south Florida. Wealthy collectors aren't quite sure what to make of it all, as art-collecting website Artsy's Alexander Forbes discovered: "confronted with a partially gilded plate of risotto piled high with white truffle shavings at a dinner to celebrate the Haas Brothers' show a prominent designer and architect turned to me and shrugged, People say that there's a crisis coming, but I look around and I don't see it'".

Auctions

Going

Gone

A dress worn by Princess Diana (pictured) at a banquet hosted by the Emir of Bahrain in 1986 sold last month for £161,200 (including fees) at Kerry Taylor Auctions in south London. The seller had bought the David & Elizabeth Emanuel dress for £200 in 1994 when the housekeeper of Mynde Park estate in Herefordshire, home to Diana's close friend Caroline Twiston-Davies, brought the dress into the second-hand shop the seller was working in at the time. But the seller only realised the significance of her purchase when she saw the Princess of Wales wearing it in a documentary. A doll that belonged to the Queen as a child also sold at the same auction for £221,150.

An estimated value of £500,000 was quickly passed at Sotheby's, says Chris Carter

The town of Iznik in modern-day Turkey sits on the eastern shore of Lake Iznik, surrounded by hills, in western Anatolia. Its origins date back more than two millennia. In its earliest days, it went by the name of Nicea. Antigonos, a commander in Alexander the Great's army, founded the settlement in 316BC, according to the Greek geographer, Strabo. After that came the Romans, followed by the Byzantines, the Seljuks, the Byzantines again, and eventually, the Ottomans in 1331. These last rulers focused their attention on developing Constantinople, a short hop across the Sea of Marmara, and Iznik's light started to fade.

But not for long. From around 1480, a fine form of pottery began to be manufactured in the town. These jugs, plates and tiles came to be highly sought after not least by collectors today. It's the earlier pieces, dating from the 16th century, that are most coveted, an article in Christie's magazine explains: "This early phase in Iznik production saw impressive vessels, usually painted in a bold cobalt-blue and white, and often with patterns reserved in white."

An example went up for auction at Sotheby's in London a couple of weeks ago. It was, said the auction house, one of the most important pieces of Iznik pottery to still be in private (one hopes steady) hands. Dating from the reign of Mehmet II (the great Ottoman sultan, known as "the Conqueror" for worrying the Balkans, and even Italy), the charger is one of the very earliest of pieces that can be called Iznik pottery. It "is characterised by an intense, inky, blue-black colouring, which reflects the embryonic stage of firing control roughly two decades before a brighter cobalt blue was accomplished", says Sotheby's.

The "Debbane Charger", as it is known (named after Max Debanne, the 20th century businessman and collector who previously owned it), is considered a "lost sibling" to four other large dishes, all of which today reside in museums, including the Louvre in Paris. Considering how seldom such pieces come to auction, putting a valuation on the dish was always going to be tricky. Sotheby's went with an estimate of between £300,000 and £500,000 for its "Arts of the Islamic World" sale. On the day, the charger sold for £5,359,950 the fourth-highest price ever paid for a piece of "Islamic art" (see right) at auction.

The artistry of Iznik pottery continued to be refined throughout the 1500s, reaching its peak in the latter half of the century fittingly, about the same time the Ottoman Empire was reaching the zenith of its powers. After that there followed a decline, largely due to a struggling economy, and eventually, the focus of pottery-making in Turkey moved elsewhere most notably to the town of Ktahya to the south. Yet the Debbane Charger remains as a memento of a time when a once-mighty empire was still on the rise.

Islamic art in a new light

That's why the museum last month opened its new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, representing a reorganisation of its collection, including a large display devoted to Iznik pottery (pictured). "What you see is an immensely rich variety of objects, and it is our challenge to show the interconnectedness of these many cultures that all pertain to Islam," says Fischer.

It is like entering an Aladdin's cave, says Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. "Light glitters and winks as it catches burnished metal, the lustre of inlays and the glaze of ceramics, the gleam of enamel and iridescence of silk. It picks out the intricate latticework of carvings, the prismatic colours of manuscript paintings, the filigree descriptions of decorative patterns and the serpentine flow of calligraphic scripts." The two rooms are ordered chronologically, weaving in artworks from other faiths, creating a tapestry of interconnected histories. Just don't expect to take it all in at once. "A thousand and one nights may pass" before that happens.

Auctions

Going

An "extremely rare" imperial Chinese "12-symbol" dragon robe (pictured) was expected to fetch up to £150,000 at Bonhams in London this week. The blue-ground robe has been embroidered with nine "resplendent dragons swirling amidst a profusion of blossoming chrysanthemums", says expert Linda Wrigglesworth in the auction catalogue. Such robes, decorated with the 12 symbols of imperial authority, including the sun, moon and fu fortune symbol, were exclusively worn by rulers on formal occasions this one probably by the 18th-century Qianlong emperor. It had been acquired by British brigadier-general Offley Bohun Stovin Fairless Shore during a visit to Beijing in 1912.

Gone

A 3,000-year-old Assyrian relief that once decorated the walls of the Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II fetched $30,968,750 at Christie's in New York on Wednesday of last week a record for Assyrian art. The seven-foot-tall slab depicts an Apkallu a winged half-man demigod, carrying a bucket and a cone which signified fertility and protection of the king, who ruled Assyria from 883BC to 859BC. Sir Austen Henry Layard, a British archaeologist, took the relief in the mid-19th century, before selling it to an American missionary named Henri Byron Haskell in 1859. Iraq's culture ministry reportedly objected to the sale, citing the looting and destruction of the country's cultural heritage.

Art that fetched $27m in 2003 is now expected to fetch six times that. Can it be worth it?

In a spring season full of excess, here's news that's hard to top," says Abby Schultz in Barron's Penta magazine. Sotheby's in New York is auctioning Amedeo Modigliani's Nu couch (sur le ct gauche) on Monday (the painting is pictured), with a record-breaking estimate of $150m. But while that news may be a great way to drum up some extra publicity for the sale (if any extra were needed), it isn't actually as remarkable as it at first seems.

Once you've come to terms with all the zeros and let's face it, $150m is no small change in anybody's pocket the reality is that headline-grabbing paintings such as this tend to sell for well in excess of their estimates. Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which fetched the highest-ever price for a painting at auction at $450m last November, "only" came with a pre-sale figure of $100m. And Pablo Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger was valued at $140m ahead of its sale in 2015. It ended up going for $179m. So, the $150m for Nu couch will probably also end up looking conservative (a smaller, similar painting by the artist sold for $170m in 2015, after all). But if it doesn't, somebody has already offered to pay at least the estimate. The question now, says Colin Gleadell in The Daily Telegraph, is merely "whether anyone will pay more".

Yet perhaps the real question ought to be: why would anybody pay more? Sure, Modigliani is celebrated as having "reinvented the nude for the modern era". And the painting from 1917, which is the headliner at Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art sale next week, was also the star attraction at the Tate Modern's recent exhibition of the artist's nudes. But even so, it is still one of 22 reclining nudes that Modigliani painted in the three years to 1919 so while it might seem comical to think of it in pure supply and demand terms, the fact is that Modigliani nudes are not as rare as you might think. The painting has also soared in value in a relatively short space of time. When Nu couch last came up for auction in 2003, it fetched just shy of $27m. Is it really worth nearly six times that amount now?

The art market is certainly "giddy after a decade of tumult", says Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz for Quartz. Since the financial crisis in 2008 ("the last big year for art"), top-tier artists have seen their works rise in value by more than 50%, "fuelled by a new generation of ultra-wealthy buyers". That, for New York gallery owner Sean Kelly, is a problem. "For me, collecting is not about whether I'm going to make a lot of money," he tells The New York Times. But now, as far as the wider market goes, "it's only about money". At the start of the month, Kelly launched "Collect Wisely", a campaign featuring billboards splayed with "Connoisseurship is not a dirty word", and phrases such as "Will history remember you as an investor or a collector?" Chances are, whoever ends up buying Nu couch on Monday, will be numbered among the former rather than the latter. Whether it ends up being a good investment, however, remains to be seen.

Expert squabbles boost values

A painting's value is, of course, not just about aesthetics. Getting the provenance right can have a drastic effect on a seller's bottom line. Take, for example, a portrait of Clara Serena (pictured), the first child of Peter Paul Rubens (with his wife, Isabella Brant), which was painted in around 1623. When New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art first sold it five years ago, it believed that it was by a

follower of Rubens rather than Rubens himself. However, it sold for $626,500 far in excess of its $30,000 upper estimate. That alone was "an indication the buyer may have suspected it was a much more valuable work by Rubens himself", notes James Pickford in the Financial Times.

The buyer had the painting cleaned removing the layers of dirt, as well as the green overpaint and then re-evaluated. Experts examined the painting and agreed that it was, in fact, painted by the Flemish master. The subject, Clara, had died at the age of 12 of the plague, and it is now believed the painting had never been intended for public view. And for what it's worth, the Metropolitan stands by its decision to sell the painting, stating that the question of attribution has been debated in the past and will continue to debated. That won't trouble the seller too much when it goes up for auction as part of the Christie's Old Masters sale on 5 July in London. It is expected to fetch between £3m and £5m.

Auctions

Going

George Harrison's first electric guitar (pictured), which he played as a member of The Quarrymen in the late 1950s before they evolved into The Beatles, is expected to fetch between $200,000 and $300,000 at a sale held by Julien's Auctions at New York's Hard Rock Cafe on 19 May.

Harrison reportedly traded his acoustic guitar for the Hoffner Club 40 with Ray Ennis of The Swinging Blue Jeans the band best known for Hippy Hippy Shake. One of his favourite guitars, Harrison gave it away as a prize, which was won by the late Frank Dostal of the German band Faces. His widow, Mary, a member of the 1960s Liverpool group, The Liverbirds, is reportedly the seller.

Gone

The guitar that blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan used in his first studio recording sold for $250,000 at Heritage Auctions in his hometown of Dallas last month. The 1951 Fender a present from his brother, Jimmy, in the late 1960s had been expected to make around $400,000. The name "Jimbo" is carved on the back. The bluesman "learned his craft" on it, says biographer Craig Hopkins, adding that it had "considerable historical significance". Vaughan traded it in 1971, mentioning in an interview in 1989, the year before he died in a helicopter crash, aged 35, how much he'd like to have it back.

The Frieze London art fair, which kicked off on Thursday in Regent's Park, is "a uniquely frantic moment in the art-world calendar", says Scott Reyburn in The New York Times. "At no other time does such a concentration of high-quality fairs, auctions and dealer shows jostle for the attention and spending of the world's art collectors."

However, this year's event has begun under a cloud. Indeed, says Belgian art collector Alain Servais, "there's a general air of worry in the galleries". Britain's vote to leave the European Union has been blamed for making collectors more cautious but the flipside of that argument is that the cheaper pound has made buying art in Britain less costly for overseas collectors. Others say the US presidential election is adding to the uncertainty.

But the real problem is that there are "too many artists, too many galleries, too many auctions, too many fairs", says Servais. Hence, this year, Frieze has drafted in ten outside curators in a bid to keep the market alive and the art fair relevant, notes Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times. "Their presence, a greater number than ever before, underlines how art fairs strive to stand out from the crowd, as well as the influence that commercially focused events now command."

Yet a glut of art at Frieze and other fairs isn't the whole picture, says Reyburn. "Demand has also cooled at contemporary art auctions, creating a predicament for buyers of new art from galleries: the prices dealers are asking for works are often higher than their resale value at auction."

Last month, a canvas by the young Los Angeles artist Math Bass, entitled Newz!, and bought from a gallery in 2014, netted its owner a $5,000 loss at auction. Not everybody is sorry about this. The growth of auctions in the last couple of decades has been a "tremendous machine" that has distorted the art market, Massimo de Carlo, a Milan, London and Hong Kong gallery dealer, tells The New York Times. "The art world would be better without financial expectation."

In most markets, the natural response would be to lower gallery prices. But art dealers don't dare do that, Anders Petterson, founder of London-based analysts ArtTactic, tells The New York Times. "The galleries are tastemakers who support their artists.

If they lower prices, it says something about a gallery's belief in an artist, so they stick with those levels." Faced with this attrition, particularly in the market for artwork from young artists, alternative venues for collectors and investors are the art degree shows held in May and June, as New Blood Art's Sarah Ryan noted in MoneyWeek earlier this year. Even if a young artist doesn't go on to become a big name, "you still get to enjoy the piece knowing that you have spent significantly less than on a comparable piece at a gallery or fair".

Frieze London 2016 runs until 9 October. For tickets and information, see Frieze.com. The Frieze Sculpture Park is open until 8 January 2017.

Interested in investing in art but not quite ready to splash out on a household name?Sarah Ryan of New Blood Art looks at two rising artists inspired by painter Anselm Kiefer.

Anselm Kiefer's retrospective has just ended at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The show spanned four decades of work, including several seminal pieces from his art college days. I love his work.

His diamond paintings (incorporating precious stones) must be seen in the flesh to be appreciated ever so subtly dancing, like slices of night sky, reflecting the full spectrum of light as you pass them by.

In investment terms, Kiefer's work hit the big time in the late 1980s. According to Artnet (invaluable for researching trends in art prices) there was a significant jump in the value of his work between 1987 and 1988 total annual sales rose from around $60,000 to $1m.

What was the catalyst? In 1987, Kiefer had solo exhibitions across the US, at four museums: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, theLos Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and New York's Museum of Modern Art.

These established global interest in Kiefer's work and significantly expanded his collector base a powerful catalyst for booming prices.

Kiefer responded to his new-found wealth in part by buying diamonds. He threw most of them into a tunnel of earth in Dover, "to become part of the earth once again" he has a fascination with alchemy and the cycles of life.

The remaining stones were incorporated into those paintings I was so mesmerised by. As explained in the gallery's literature, in the work The Starry Heavens Above Us, and the Moral Law Within, Kiefer is "simultaneously exchanging the world above, with the world below, in the true spirit of alchemy".

Kiefer was recently in conversation with art historian Tim Marlow, reflecting on his motivations for making work, which include poetry, theological texts, and reflections on the nature of time and the weight of history.

He was born in Germany, just minutes after VE day, and as with most German artists of his generation, existential concerns were omnipresent. He explores epic themes on an epic scale, and his sense of the absurdity of life is apparent.

"Is [life] quite desperate, no?" he proposes during the interview with Marlow. He also discusses the concept of experiencing time as malleable in nature a material in itself, and of the weight of history and the shock of the past serving as an impetus to make work.

Yet despite these heavyweight preoccupations, there is a lightnessabout the man in person a playfulness.Indeed, he sees these qualities of play flexibility, curiosity and experimentation as essential to the nature of artists, in much the same way as these characteristics are found in great scientists and mathematicians.

To be able to rearrange the way things are to experiment and find new meanings, new realities, to be able to create requires an inherent sense of curiosity and play.

Keifer's work currently sells for around $445,000 on average, with annual sales last year of around $8m. He agreeseffortlessly when questioned by Marlowthat the money is "nice", but emphatically states that in no way does the amount he receives for a piece of work equate to his understanding of its value "not at all".

Rather, he finds creative accreditation from respected peers whose opinions he seeks and most significantly from the relationship he has with his work.

Two similar emerging artists

He creates densely layered imagery by overlaying series of images, cumulating the visual experience of time passing into a sense of time collapsing into single visual moments (see below).

He graduated in 2004 and immediately gained recognition; London gallery owner Victoria Miro now represents him. Looking at his price data, there is a significant jump in his average sale price between 2011 and 2012, when it moves from around $30,000 to $85,000.

During this time Khan had solo showsin the UK, Berlin, Sweden, New Yorkand San Francisco again that correlation between exposure, demand and prices.

Of course, it's not quite as simple a formula as "solo shows = increases in prices". Obviously, before a significant solo show can be put on in the first place, there has to have been the rising demand to justify it. But there is certainly a striking correlation, which makes a decent argument for investing before, or at, a young artist's first solo show.

Petter Kettle is another Kiefer-inspired emerging artist. Kiefer's use of mixed media and unique materiality encouraged Kettle to broaden his own use of media from working exclusively in oils to incorporating the use of plaster in his paintings (see above). These have the surfaces of well-worn exterior walls: buffeted and corroded over time.

The alchemy of light and landscape through mixed media is a quality that shines through his work. By intentionally mixing media he allows a space for fortuitous accidents to occur throughout the process of painting.

Kettle says of Kiefer: "His vast and expansive landscapes draw the eye searching tothe furthest horizon. When seen upclose, new compositions unfold, taking the viewer on multiple journeys.This is a perspective I strive to capture in my own work. I don't ask as bold questions as Kiefer, but celebrate the importance of mark-making, media and surface holding Kiefer's work in the highest regard".

Kettle is at the start of his careerand is just beginning to make waves.He was voted in as a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Arts earlier in the year and held his first, small solo show inBath last year; his paintings start at£450, with statement pieces availablefor around £2,000.

At the centre of Damien Hirst's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever exhibition this week in Mayfair stood a 680kg bull encased in a tank of formaldehyde. With golden hooves, horns and head-dress, the bull has been christened the Golden Calf, and was expected to fetch between £8m and £12m at auction last Monday night.

In the end, it went to an anonymous bidder for £10.3m, a record for a Hirst. A reproduction of his famous pickled shark also sold well, going for £9.6m. Despite it being among the worst weeks for Wall Street since the 1929 crash, all but five of the 223 lots were sold, raising a record £111m. Sotheby's was quick to declare the auction a royal success, while the art world breathed a huge collective sigh of relief maybe there is still puff left in the contemporary art market.

But aren't they missing the joke here? The point of the original golden calf is that it was a false idol. Surely Hirst is having fun at the buyers' expense. So how long can he get away with it? Well, we'll have to wait to see whether it was genuine collectors or Hirst dealers who were on the other end of those phone lines before we get carried away with this bumper sale. There was certainly enough concern before the auction for dealers to ring around to remind Hirst collectors that it was in their interest to make a splash at Sotheby's, says Ben Lewis in the Evening Standard, if only to prop up the value of their collection. And it was also Hirst and a consortium of his peers who bought his For the Love of God, a platinum skull sporting 8,600 diamonds, which was put up for sale at £50m in August 2007. Meanwhile, there are rumoured to be 200 unsold works worth in the region of £100m sitting in the artist's London gallery, the White Cube.

Investors aren't convinced the art boom can last, says Lewis they have helped wipe 39% off Sotheby's share price this year already. Despite this week's fanfare, other sectors of the market are already in the doldrums. Between June 2006 and June 2007, the value of a typical old master rose just 7.6%. And although Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich broke the record for the highest price paid for a work by a living artist, when he bought Lucien Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping for $33.6m in May this year, British 17th- to 19th-century portraits and watercolours actually declined 7.5% and 25% in value respectively last year. So when you read about the boom' in the art market, it's really only in modern and contemporary works that this holds true.

And this can't last either because regardless of who was buying at Sotheby's, the contemporary art market is so nakedly rigged it would make a diamond skull blush.

Art market: The Great Swindle

The trouble, according to veteran New York art dealer Richard Feigen, is that the value of modern art is too much dictated by the "mafia of the art world" the dealers and curators who have cowed credulous rich collectors into paying absurd prices. They've done this by keeping such a tight rein on the art produced and how much art is seen that they've been able to maintain an illusion that these works are scarce, stage-managing a boom in post-war art.

It is very important for private galleries to know that a buyer is someone who is serious about collecting, says Julian Stallabrass in

High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art

. That's because they have to be sure that the buyer will continue to swallow inflated prices. Hirst himself knows the importance of this. Sotheby's auction room would have been teeming with heavily invested Hirst collectors, with an interest in maintaining the value of his holdings. "The price of the art itself is a delicate matter it is highly subject to the vagaries of opinion." And in the private viewings, dealers (who get a 50% cut of the final sale price) have been able to dictate that opinion.

When pieces fail to achieve their reserve price at auction, they are quietly sold afterwards for a discount to private collectors. Last year, Christie's raised $542m and Sotheby's $30m in private deals after auctions. With dealers buying up work of artists they're already heavily invested in, there are murmurings that these activities are propping up a collapsing market. "I salute those who have created the merry-go-round the gallery owners, the critics, the auctioneers, the publicists and the artists," says Luke Johnson in the FT. "It has been a wonderful scheme to make lots of money out of almost nothing."

Of course, there have been plenty of oligarchs and petrokings who have been only too delighted to join that merry-go-ground in recent years. In 2006, there were 9.5 million people globally with assets of more than $1m, according to the Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report. Those with $30m or more who were surveyed said they were willing to invest 10%-20% of their combined wealth of $32.7trn in alternative assets half of which are allocated to art. And so the number of wealthy collectors has multiplied 20 times over the past 25 years. The number of museums picking up art has also exploded in that time. Over the past 25 years, more than 100 major new museums have been built around the world, each with the intention of acquiring 2,000 pieces a year, notes Don Thomson in The $12m Stuffed Shark. But with few Old Masters or Impressionist paintings coming to market, the museums have had to focus their energies on getting hold of dramatic contemporary pieces to make their mark. China's nascent modern art market is a case in point between 2005 and 2006, the value of contemporary sales in China increased by 983%.

Why the art market will crumble

But this can't continue. For a start, if Hirst's show does anything at all, it demonstrates that the scarcity propping up the market is an illusion. A full 223 pieces of work were produced by Hirst and his assistants over the last two years. As David Fuller of Fullermoney puts it, there's "not much supply inelasticity in that". Dealers might be able to cajole buyers into bidding up an auction, but their power is slipping away. As Richard Lacayo points out in Time magazine, it's hard to see how the mass-produced items, such as the spin drawings and "middling merchandise", can continue to maintain the prices they command.

But it's the sinking of the global economy that is the real death knell for contemporary art. Modern and contemporary art has been bought mainly by those who have made their money in the bull market. After the events of the past week, the hedge-fund managers and investment bankers won't be as keen to splash around what little cash they have left. And what about the idea that the new 21st-century rich the Russians and Middle Eastern monarchs are immune to a downturn and will continue to snap up art? It's a nice thought, but then the same argument was made by estate agents about high-end London properties, yet even the top end of the housing market is suffering these days. These people are not stupid or not more so than the rest of us anyway. If they see the price of art falling, then the auctions rooms will rapidly empty.

Other art market fads

It's not as if we haven't seen boom and bust in the art world before. The same process was at work in the late 1980s, when Japanese collectors, their wallets swollen with the profits from property speculation, started snapping up Impressionist paintings. Buyers were notoriously undiscriminating. When asked why he had spent more than $300m on late-19th-century French paintings, Yasumichi Morishita (a moneylender known as "the pit viper") replied that "Impressionist paintings go better with modern decor".

AMR's index of French Impressionists rose sixfold in the second half of the 1980s, but gave up all those gains after Japanese property prices collapsed at the end of the decade. In 1994 Morishita's collection of paintings, once valued at 30bn, was taken by creditors. Between 1987 and 1991, Japan imported around $9bn worth of art from around the world. Just as now, the speculation was fuelled by the flow of easy money as buyers were able to borrow huge amounts to invest in art. But as Robert Hughes pointed out at the time in an article for Time magazine, which pinpointed the top of the market, when you can't borrow, you can't buy.

The closest parallel to the boom that has swept through the contemporary market in recent years came in the last half of the 19th century, according to Ian Jack in The Guardian. Exhibitions at the time were so frenzied that fences had to be built around the pictures to hold back the crowds. But what happened next will be a sobering thought for buyers of contemporary art. Take Alma-Tadema's The Finding of Moses. The picture sold for £5,240 in 1904, then went for a miserly £252 in 1960 more than 50 years later. And Burne-Jones' Chant d'amour sold for £3,307 in 1886 and £620 in 1930.

Art market: A decaying bull

It takes usually about 18 months after a market downturn before the art market follows, says Jack. For all the support dealers seem prepared to give the artists they patronise, the ruse that has sustained modern art could be close to failing. And the fallout could send a tremor right through the market. According to ArtTactic, a research group, the $500,000-$1m market is already softening. After the 1990 art market crash, even paintings by 20th-century masters, such as Picasso, halved in value over five years and arguably they have lasting value.

As Luke Johnson, chairman of Channel 4, put it in the FT: "No part of the market is more vulnerable than contemporary art", much of which "will end up in skips, worthless emblems of a period with too much liquidity and not enough cultural judgement."