The Art Market in 2024: A Half-Year Review

Welcome to Eldens’ half-yearly round-up of the art market. Let’s take a look at how it started and how it’s going, stopping off at the biggest art fairs, auctions and news stories along the way.

A Shaky Start to 2024

At the start of the year, a large cloud loomed over the art market. With geopolitical volatility and lingering economic pressures, the mood among gallerists, dealers and collectors was one of anxiety. Conflicts were escalating in Ukraine and the Middle East, interest rates remained high, and the market braced itself for upcoming elections in the UK, the US and India.  

In March, the publication of the annual Art Basel & UBS Market Report confirmed what many figures in the art world had been feeling. After two years of growth, art sales had dropped by 4% in 2023. Auction houses were hit hardest, with sales declining by 7%, while dealers’ sales dipped by 3%.

The good news was that the volume of transactions increased by 4%, but this tended to be online and at lower price levels. It didn’t do much to help the UK, which has historically been a major hub for sales of high-price works. As the top of the market thinned, the UK market value declined by 8%, and it was bumped off its spot as the second-largest art market by China. (The US retained pole position.)

The consensus from commentators was that the market was undergoing a “correction”. There had been an unexpected economic boom after the pandemic, and the art market had ridden on its coattails, so now perhaps it was time to come back down to earth. Was this a positive spin on a bad situation, or a fair assessment? Now we’re past the halfway mark for 2024, it’s time to take stock.  

Art Fairs

The art fair is a microcosm of the art market. For a few frenzied days, all the key players – dealers and galleries, curators and artists, collectors and commentators – are concentrated in one building. What happens during the event helps paint a picture of the state of the market.

Let’s dissect four of the biggest fairs so far this year.

Frieze Los Angeles

In February we saw the fifth edition of Frieze Los Angeles. It had been widely reported that the fair had shrunk from 120 exhibitors last year to 95…was this a sign that it would struggle? We needn’t have worried: the event was the shot in the arm that the market needed. There was a buzz from the VIP day onwards, thanks to a flurry of A-list celebrities and high-profile collectors. A couple of the mega galleries remarked that they’d had their best first day ever. This positivity was reflected in strong overall sales, led by a $2m Richard Serra work, sold by Gladstone Gallery.

Art Basel Hong Kong

A month later it was Art Basel Hong Kong – the first time the fair had been free of all COVID restrictions. There was a big increase in exhibitors, with some returning to the fair after a four-year break and some new faces. This didn’t translate into visitors however: attendance was down and sales were somewhat muted. It seems that the slowdown in the Chinese economy may be impacting art-buying behaviour. As reported in the FT, there had been a sense in Hong Kong that art buying was a “speed sport”, whereas now collectors are becoming more sophisticated and purchases are more considered.

Frieze New York

In May, the art world flocked to New York for a clutch of fairs. At Frieze New York, the fair’s ‘Focus’ section was a particular success. This initiative bucks the art fair model of each stand presenting a range of works; it’s an opportunity for a gallery to showcase just one artist. The galleries who participated in Focus saw it as a strategic move, beyond simply shifting inventory. It gave them the platform to curate a selection of fresh works and to establish an emerging artist within the marketplace.   

Art Basel

The original Art Basel is a bellwether for the art market. And in such turbulent times, all eyes anxiously turned to Switzerland in June to see what would be revealed. It was better than expected, and the atmosphere of caution eased into a palpable sense of relief. Iwan Wirth, one half of Hauser & Wirth, released a punchy statement, slamming the “doom porn” of the art press and affirming his confidence in the resilience of the art market. The fair’s success was capped by the sale of a fittingly optimistic work: Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers was sold by David Zwirner for a dazzling $20m.

Auctions

Auctions are pure theatre – they’re the stages on which the drama of the art world is played out. They also provide one of the few public indicators of the market, and results are pored over to make sense of the art world puzzle.

After a record-breaking year in 2022, sales fell by 7% in 2023. Now the results for the first half of 2024 are in; according to the RawFacts Auction Review released by ArtTactic, the auction market has continued to soften, with the top-end of the market coming off worst. Considering the ongoing downward trend for auction performance, 2024 doesn’t seem like a good time to sell.

Here’s a rundown of the hits and misses from the marquee sales so far this year.

April sales in Hong Kong

Sotheby’s held a combined modern and contemporary evening sale, alongside its ultra-contemporary ‘The Now’ sale. Asian art-market sensation Yoshitomo Nara was the standout from the evening sale, with I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight selling for $12.2m. But there were a few flops, with two of the top lots withdrawn, and flips that had plummeted in value. As several people at the sales commented, perhaps collectors were maxed out after Art Basel Hong Kong, which was just a few weeks before.

May sales in New York

Christie’s had a rollercoaster of a time during the New York sales. First, it had to take its website down after “a technology security incident” (read: “hack”), then it withdrew its most expensive lot, Brice Marden’s Complements, estimated at $30-50m. It turned things around with some excellent results, including Andy Warhol’s Flowers, which went for £35.5m. Overall, it ended the week as the best out of the big three, racking up total sales of $640m.

June sales in London

The London sale season got off to a gloomy start, with the news that both Sotheby’s and Christie’s were making redundancies. There was hope of a triumphant headline for Sotheby’s modern and contemporary evening sale: a Paula Rego painting was expected to set a new record for the artist. Despite Rego’s remarkable career resurgence since her death in 2022, Meadow failed to trouble the record of over £3m set by Christie’s last year. It fell to Basquiat to make the headlines, with his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict triptych achieving £20.2m.

Looking ahead

So what can we expect from the second half of 2024? Here in the UK, art buyers are waiting with bated breath to hear the new Labour government’s plans for taxation. While there was no mention of increasing the main taxes in its manifesto, there are fears that the wealthy will be hit one way or the other. Collectors will likely hold on to their works for now, knowing that a soft market is not the time to sell. Frieze London and Frieze Masters return to Regent’s Park in October. They promise a “bold new design”, but the success of the fairs will be down to whether buyers’ jitters have been allayed or aggravated by Labour’s first few months in power.

Further afield, September will be all about Seoul. The Korean capital has attracted a bunch of big Western galleries since the launch of Frieze three years ago. This September, Meyer Riegger will open a space in Seoul to coincide with the fair, and Gagosian will open its first exhibition in Korea, with a show of new paintings by Derrick Adams.

When it comes to the global art market, it will continue to be impacted by political and economic factors, and the turbulence that shows no sign of slowing. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war remain far from resolution, and the run-up to the US election will only increase volatility in the markets. But so far in 2024, as it has done so many times before, the art market has proved its resilience. And if, as Ivan Wirth says, the market is returning to “a more humane pace”, that’s got to be a good thing for the sector’s sustainability – and everyone’s sanity.

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