If one were looking for a common thread that ties the 2023 art market into a neat package, a market softening or some variation on that theme, it would be a good bet. As early as May, forecasters were shouting about the inevitable market slowdown, citing bullish expectations from shippers and the rising cost of money.
But not everything has changed. Although an auction of Gerald Fineberg’s collection at Christie’s last May seemed to mark the end of a brief boom, the sale also showed that top artists with established markets, such as Christopher Wool and Jeff Koons, could not get out. from a decline that began in the early 2020s.
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In November 2021, artnet news dived deep into the Wool market. The outlook was not good. agree with artnetAccording to analysis by , his auction sales have fallen a staggering 25 percent since their peak in 2013, when his painting Apocalypse Now (1988) sold for over $25 million at Christie’s (all figures include buyer’s fees unless otherwise noted).
That work included text referencing a note from a deranged army captain that appears in a 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film: SELL THEHOUSE SELL THE CAR SELL THEKIDS. But he might just as well have alluded to the fact that desperate collectors seemed to buy Wool’s work.
It’s not like that anymore. A colleague in ARTnews called Fineberg’s sale tepid and specifically noted that Wool’s 1993 untitled painting featuring the phrase “FUCK EM IF THEY ANT TAKE A JOKE” splashed across the canvas in bright, bright colors hammered $8.4 million, or 10 million with fees, well below their $15-20 million estimate.
The Koons market, easily one of the most famous and expensive artists in the world, has had a similar trajectory. In recent years, Koons has been dogged by production delays, with angry collectors clamoring for work they had paid for years earlier. Its market has also taken a nosedive in recent years and has yet to recover, despite leaving longtime galleries Gagosian and Davis Zwirner for Pace, a move that could reportedly streamline its production methods.
Of the seven works by him that sold at one of the three major auction houses in 2023, two sold for slightly above the low estimate, one was withdrawn and Kiepenkerl (Humpty Dumpty), from 1987 and offered in the Fineberg sale, sold for $1.9 million when it was estimated to sell for $3 million to $5 million. While some of Koons’ works have sold above their estimate, only one has topped the $4 million mark, which is surprising when you consider that the auction record for a Koons work was set just a few years ago , when his 1986 work sculpture Bunny sold for $91 million at Christie’s in May 2019. Although Koons did not have a major work as Bunny, auctioned within a few years, these failures could be related to the lack of interest in his “Gazing Ball” paintings in 2017 and the subsequent reduction of his studio, all of which could point to a general slowdown in his market.
Koons and Wool are not alone in the Purgatory market. Former marketing star John Currin’s work has also been on the decline for a few years. Currin’s 1999 image of two naked women chatting jovially against a black background Easy and nice it did not sell at Christie’s in November despite a relatively low estimate of $7 million to $10 million. In 2016, that same work sold at Christie’s for just over $12 million, a whisper of its low estimate. In 2008, at Sotheby’s it went for $5.4 million, above its estimate of $4.5 million.
One explanation for the lack of enthusiasm around venerable and once lucrative artists like Koons and Wool is that the art world is in a very different place than it was in 2019. After the killing of George Floyd in 2020, museums vowed to diversify their their bids and auction houses began to introduce more women and artists of color into their sales. Although the markets for these artists still lag far behind the Koonses and Wools of the world, it is telling that, in a 2023 survey of works bought last year by collectors around the world. ARTnews Top 200 list, most of the non-historic works purchased were by younger artists of color, such as Rashid Johnson, Alvaro Barrington, and Che Lovelace.
The best-selling works at this year’s auction were by Picasso, Monet and Kandinsky, white modernists whose art has long reigned supreme on the market. But it was also notable that black artists such as Julie Mehretu, Simone Leigh and El Anatsui set records this year, with Mehretu setting a new benchmark for the most expensive work ever sold at auction by a contemporary African artist. This new attention to artists who for years lacked a significant market can be directly related to a cooling for blue-chippers like Koons. Certainly, it reflects a trend observed in institutions. Koons’ resume, for example, lists no institutional appearances in 2023; Leigh’s resume has her work in three 2023 museum group exhibitions, plus a traveling survey that recently headed to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
What does this mean for rich, white artists like Koons and Wool, whose work commanded the highest prices on the primary and secondary markets? That is not clear. Smany market sources declined to comment, suggesting that talking about a decline in these stars is something of a taboo in itself. But, the nature of the market is cyclical, and what used to be popular always goes out of fashion, only to resurface years later.
According to the art adviser and ArtTactic Podcast host Adam Green, the art world has overlooked marginalized artists for years, a phenomenon that has only recently changed. he said ARTnews that museum curators may be at the forefront of this reckoning, but they are not alone. “Some of my clients, for example, are now prioritizing emerging and established artists from these underserved groups to ensure they have a complete and culturally relevant collection,” he said.
Asked if he thought the market for artists like Koons and Wool would recover, he said the market is likely to “reduce its focus to a more limited number of artists from underserved communities and possibly reconsider certain established non-marginalized artists.” Most importantly, he said, “we hope that, in the long run, originality and quality will be sought regardless of the artist’s domain.”
