Key figures for 2022
Key figures for auctions of Fine Art and NFT works worldwide (2022)
In a world shaken by significant geopolitical tensions, notably relating to the war in Ukraine, but also to climatic, health, economic and social issues, the art market seems to be showing resistance
Asia… and the rest of the worldGlobal fine art auction turnover amounted to?$16.5 billion, the fourth best annual total in history, after the highs of 2011 ($18.5 billion), 2014 ($18 billion) and 2021 ($17 billion). But 2022 saw an unusual and unprecedented imbalance between Asia, where business contracted sharply, and the West, where it peaked.
The reality of the art market is far from smooth and, in any given context, not all of its major global marketplaces react the same way. In 2022, turnover shrank substantially in some countries while remaining stable or growing generously in others. In?Asia, Japan’s annual total added $18 million while South Korea’s lost $100 million. However the most spectacular drop occurred in?China, the core of the Asian market, which lost two billion dollars, notably due to the postponement of many sales initially planned for 2022. After resisting the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, in 2022 the value of China’s art market contracted by 34% to just $3.9 billion. This was the first time China’s?annual art auction turnover total has been below the four billion dollar threshold for more than a decade.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world posted remarkable growth
Evolution of Fine Art and NFT auction proceeds (2022)
→ The United States, China and the United Kingdom accounted for 81% of the value of the global art auction market, but the three countries posted substantially different developments: the Chinese Art Market contracted sharply, losing two billion dollars, while the American market gained one and a half billion to reach an all-time high of $7.3 billion. The British market returned to its pre-pandemic level, with a total of $2.1 billion.
Artistic mediums and their relative weightsIn a more than ever dynamic market, with over one million works presented at auction last year, most traditional media (paintings, sculptures, prints), as well as photographs and NFTs, posted record levels of transactions, but only paintings and prints posted record turnovers.
Painting, which accounted for 70.9% of global turnover in 2022 (from just 37% of the transactions), remained the leading medium and the economic core of the art market. Around the globe, highly demanding collectors
Drawing, the second largest medium after painting, accounted for 14% of global art auction turnover and 21% of global art auction transactions. In China, this segment has been suffering from a contraction of the very high-end market in favor of painting, a phenomenon that began even before the pandemic. The number of 7-digit transactions (in US dollars) has been shrinking since 2015 and their number (249 in 2022) is roughly half what it was in the years between 2010 and 2017. That said, the Chinese art market for drawings is still dominated by the country’s major artists: Cui Ruzhuo, Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi each generated a result above the $10 million threshold, and a work by?ZHANG Daqian?fetched over $47 million this year. Among Western artists, the year’s best results were hammered for drawings by Miquel-Angelo, George Weatherill, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas, whose best drawings fetched between $8.9 million and $24.3 million.
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Global annual auction turnover from the drawing medium
In 2022, the?sculpture?medium (accounting for 9% of global annual art auction turnover) posted a total more in line with its best years, notably thanks to three impressive results for bronze sculptures by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti.?PICASSO?revised his three-dimensional record with a copy of?Tête de femme (Fernande)?(1909) from the prestigious collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sold for $48.48 million. A monumental work by?Henry MOORE,?Reclining Figure: Festival?(1951), originally commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the 1951 Festival of Britain, fetched $31 million. The third most valuable sculpture of the year was a work by?Alberto GIACOMETTI. An edition of?Femme qui marche [I]?(1932/36), Christie’s sold the statue as part of the Hubert de Givenchy collection in Paris last June. Reaching $28.3 million, this slender silhouette generated France’s sixth best-ever art auction result.
Besides these multi-millionaire results, the sculpture medium is also a segment offering numerous affordable multiples of Contemporary artists (Kaws, Murakami, Koons, Kusama, etc.), whose productions largely contributed to a numerical record of approximately 59,000 transactions during the year. Sales of sculptures, including multiples, have been increasing every year for the past 10 years, posting a hefty increase of +151% since 2012.
Transactions are also progressing in the?prints?medium, a segment where exchanges accelerated during the pandemic while they shrank in other creative mediums. Over the last decade, both the volume of auction transactions and the turnover from sales of prints have doubled, the latter largely exceeding the $500 million threshold for the second consecutive year. The?prints?segment naturally appeals for its affordability (in 2022 more than 90,000 lots sold for prices under $500) and it allows access to all the great signatures of Old Master art (included artists like Rembrandt and Dürer), Modern art (Picasso, Miro, Matisse, Calder, etc), Post-War art (Lichtenstein, Warhol, etc.) and Contemporary art (Banksy, Nara, Hirst, etc.). Major and/or ‘important’ prints are nevertheless expensive, and last year saw a record 21 prints fetch 7-digit prices, mainly screen prints by Andy Warhol, but also prints by Pablo Picasso, whose latest personal auction record in this medium has just been set at $8 million for his famous?Le repas frugal?(1904), the second most expensive print in the world after David Hockney’s?Piscine De Medianoche.
On the other hand, the auction market for?photography?is less successful than ten years ago, although the number of transactions has accelerated. Although there does not appear to be a disaffection for the medium, there has been a repositioning towards the most affordable works
Breakdown of Fine Art and NFT auction turnover by medium (2022)
→ Driven by major works of European Modern art and American Post-War art, the auction turnover on paintings reached its highest-ever level, exceeding the annual ten billion dollar threshold. On the other hand, the high-end drawing market was less well supplied: the scarcity of important works, particularly on the Chinese market, has led to a drop in turnover in recent years. It nevertheless remained an extremely dynamic sector
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