Beeple’s HUMAN ONE, 2021. Kinetic video sculpture with corresponding dynamic NFT. Sold for $25 million (hammer price)  in the 21st Century Evening Sale on 9 November 2021 at Christie’s in New York.

Following the historic March 2021 sale of Everydays: The First 5,000 Days by Mike Winkelmann, commonly recognized as Beeple, NFTs quickly became the hot topic of the art world. It seemed as if everyone in the industry had an opinion on them — some raving about incorporating the crypto world into art, and many skeptical, seeing it as a way of reducing art to a purely financial asset. Established artists spoke out against NFTs, such as David Hockney, who called them “silly little things”, following the historical trend of the traditional art market initially rejecting technological innovation. April 2021 saw a 39% drop in sales compared to the previous month which, for a moment might have indicated NFT skeptics were correct. However, today’s market has proven otherwise. Sales are back up — August 2021 levels peaking at almost 6 times higher than previous highs seen in March 2021.

This recent momentum in the NFT art market has led to a rise in recognition and acceptance. The traditional pillars of the art world — auction houses, galleries, and museums — many of whom originally rejected and wrote off the digital tokens, are making moves to incorporate NFTs into their art businesses. As a result of this momentum, the traditional art world is beginning to play catch up, finding new ways into the NFT market and access to the expanded clientele the crypto world offers. Many established artists are adding NFTs to their oeuvre including Damien Hirst and Urs Fischer. PACE Gallery has established a platform solely dedicated to the showing and selling of NFTs, signifying blue-chip acceptance of the digital medium. Computerized images and crypto collectibles such as Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club are gaining momentum as well, creating communities around themselves while new ways to view and purchase the tokens are being established.

It seems pointless to add my opinion on whether NFTs are “good” or “bad” or try to speculate what I think their future role and place in the market will be. What I can do is investigate their current place in the market, expanded upon in our second NFT Art Market Report, and offer a warning based on a comparison to the current trajectory of this emerging market and that of the traditional art market.

Although NFTs offer a new client base for the art world, this market and its interactions with the traditional market sectors deserves further investigation. Client strategy likely plays a large role in the acceptance of NFTs by artists, auction houses and galleries. Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of Postwar and Contemporary Art in New York tells Fortune Magazine that for the sale of Everydays: the First 5,000 Days the auction house signed up more new clients than ever before, indicating that NFTs offer an “entirely new category of buyers”.  Looking at the press release following this groundbreaking Christie’s sale we can see that 91% of the bidders were new to Christie’s, becoming clients of the auction house for the sale of an NFT. This is important to understand as Art Basel’s 2020 Market Report shows that buyers between the age of 40 and 64 currently represent the biggest segment for dealers and account for 62% of buyers in 2019. The Art Basel report finds that the Contemporary art market has the largest share of young buyers, with only 21% of collectors categorized as Millennials. In comparison, 58% of the participants in the Beeple auction were Millennials, exemplifying the expanded client base that crypto art offers. Tapping into the Millennial pool will be a very important move for the art market as the Art Basel 2021 Report found that “Millennial HNW collectors were the highest spenders in 2020, with 30% having spent over $1 million versus 17% of Boomers”. In May, Sotheby’s became the first auction house to accept cryptocurrency, a move that Stefan Pepe, Sotheby’s Chief Technology Officer said will help the auction house find new “ways to expand our client base” by taking the necessary steps to accommodate their interests.

Auction houses aim to introduce new markets to their clients and cross market categories. This can be seen by Sotheby’s July 2020 cross-category evening sale ‘Rembrandt to Richter’ which included Old Masters, Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art in one auction, introducing lots to buyers who may have never previously sought them out. This tactic of crossing market categories has been incorporated by all the large auction houses, and is being used to tap into the market offered by NFTs. One example is Christie’s inclusion of the NFT crypto collectible “YUGO LABS” which is part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series in their recent evening sale in London. Further, twelve of the ninety-four lots sold at Sotheby’s recent Contemporary Art Day Auction accepted bids in cryptocurrency, offering a physical object to accompany the NFT. This strategy gave new bidders something tangible as to ease their way into the crypto-verse. The NFT market is fueled by a new generation of collectors and investors that the traditional art world is eager to retain.

It may seem like the new market of wealthy young collectors have the potential to diversify the art market and broaden the art buying clientele, but closer examination proves otherwise. The exciting space for growth offered by the crypto-sphere has led the art world to take steps to incorporate non-fungible tokens into their vocabulary but dissecting these sales further shows that these tactics have not led to a merge of markets. While the spaces for buying art may be moving to merge the traditional and NFT markets, the buying groups remain different creating a heterogeneous mix of fine art and crypto art buyers. An investigation by The New York Times dissects the market gap between “speculative buyers” who “flock to crypto art” and the traditional blue-chip collectors who hold back from this market. Surveying more than a dozen collectors, the New York Times finds that the majority of established dealers and their collectors have more reluctance about NFTs and what they can offer, keeping them away from the market. These art world personnel have “concerns about the quality, ownership and authenticity of NFTs”. Meanwhile, those who invest in NFTs traditionally belong to the crypto community and have historically made and/or spent their wealth on cryptocurrencies. For example, Chris Ciobanica, known as SilverSurfer to the community, has collected more than $10 million worth of NFTs. Despite his heavy involvement with the digital art community, Ciobanica says “I’d never collected traditional art” before his involvement with the digital tokens. Out of the top 10 most expensive NFTs sold, the owners who are not anonymous come from the crypto world rather than the art world.

Tina Rivers Ryan, a curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo says to the New York Times that “There is a sense that a parallel art market is emerging that comprises a new set of artists and a new set of collectors”.  The “parallel” market of NFTs which offers new artists and collectors eerily mimics the flaws of the established art market. Although they pull from two different client bases and sources of wealth, their demographics are the same. Without bringing attention to these shortcomings, the potential for this new and innovative space for art risks falling victim to the long tradition of race, gender, and geographic biases that the canon of art history presents.

The NFT art market, generating over $3.5 billion in just the first 9 months of 2021, addresses art world problems such as ownership of work, provenance, authenticity, and artist royalties. This model may be able to overcome some of the key issues found in the traditional art world, yet perpetuates its problematic foundation. Less than 16% of all NFT artists are female, which is less than the 39% of female artists represented by dealers working in the primary market in 2020 (according to Art Basel’s 2021 Market Report). Further, more than 73% of the creators are from England, America, or Canada. The majority of these artists live and create work from North America, mainly the United States which accounts for 91% of artists. Looking at the global distribution of NFT artists on the platform NiftyGateway the discrepancy in demographics is apparent. Of the NFT creators, less than 4% are from Africa and only 2.4% of the artists are from Latin America. Creators from the Near East are even more minimal, making up only 0.03% of the artists and contributing only 0.01% of the total sale value. Breaking up the global distribution by country, the top represented countries are all European or American, with Argentina breaking the trend generating the tenth highest total sales value on NiftyGateway.

The traditional art market has a history of overlooking players who fall out of the narrative of the West. It is rooted in a history that has only validated white males from Europe and America, and builds off of a canon that marginalizes those who challenge this norm, establishing a foundational bias for who could be considered an artist. There was no space or opportunity for those who fell outside of this norm which transitioned into artists today being “othered” and reduced to representations of their difference rather than creators in their own right.

Currently, artists and art institutions struggle to address the colonialist roots that lay the foundation of the art world. As a result, underrepresented groups continue to be neglected and marginalized. The NFT world has existed for seven years, but only became popular in the last two. In its short time the new creative sphere has begun to mirror art history’s exclusionary chronicle, but it has the opportunity to deviate from the foundations laid. We must stop and think if this is a history we really want to continue to follow, address the current state of the market, and ask what steps we can take to break from this trend. The digital world of NFTs offers more accessibility and amenities for art as well as a new place that has the potential to create an equitable ecosystem. To truly capitalize on this potential, we must bring attention to the current failures and avoid continuing along the path set out.

Detail of Dana Schutz, ‘Lumberjacks’, 2020, oil on canvas.

Schutz is ranked as the #1 Top Artist in ArtTactic’s Top 100 NextGen Artists Report 2021. 

To understand the contemporary art market, it is important to evaluate the emerging stars and forces in the field. The younger generation of artists represent a changing market and provide insight into where the contemporary art market is heading. By evaluating the careers of the younger generation of artists we can understand changing aspects of the market.

The Top 100 NextGen Artists Report 2021 follows up on the inaugural 2018 report written in partnership with JLT (now Marsh) exploring the most successful artists in the world under the age of 45. While our 2018 report explored the top 1,300 young artists chosen by a variety of qualitative and quantitative data, this year’s report narrows our focus and explores the emerging artists of 2021 using auction sales to select the Top 100. Growing from our 2018 report, we evaluated these young artists’ by paying special attention to the cultural factors that contribute to their commercial success.

The Top 100 report reveals a changing market, growth in the economic role of women, and a strengthening market outside of the Western sphere. The report also utilizes cultural data to establish important factors that contribute to the success of a young artists’ career such as the choice to immigrate for school, the choice of attending university (if at all), and the choice of location for practice. The most notable finding of the Top 100 report is the rising prominence of Asia as a center of art, competing with North America and Europe. While the report shows a continued stronghold of male artists from Europe and the US, and the continued prominence of New York and London, we can see a growing and separate center emerging in Asia, specifically Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. In 2018 only 4% of artists in the Top 100 were born in Asia while our report shows major growth with 26% of artists born in Asia or the Pacific. Of the Top 100 NextGen Artists in 2021, those born in Asia and the Pacific now surpass artists born in Europe. This places Asia and the Pacific as having the second highest percentage of birth, ahead of Europe with 15% of births and following North America with 46%.

The data supports a strong correlation between location of education and the final location of an artist’s work. Artists need to work in a location that financially and culturally supports the creation of art, resulting in many artists migrating for their education, and inevitably, their career. While New York remains the most important artistic hub, more artists being born and studying in Asia has resulted in Beijing becoming the third largest hub of artists in 2021. It is important to note that all of the Chinese artists of the Top 100 continued their education in China and 92% of artists from Asia remained in their country of birth; the highest rate of artists remaining out of any location. Compared to 2018, when Beijing saw below 5% of artists, Asia now has 19% of the market, closing in on Europe with 22%.

Looking at the role of auctions, Asia continues to have a growing and prominent role in both value and volume of lots sold. While the main gallery hubs remain in North America and Europe and the majority of artists are represented in New York or London, Hong Kong had a higher total sales value than both New York and London combined, with 52% compared to New York with 36% and London with 12% of sales.

These findings show a large rise in prominence of the Asian market, although it remains very insular. Artists from Asia tend to remain in Asia, and spend money on art produced by Asian artists. Meanwhile half of the artists from Latin America migrate, typically to the US, and the majority of European artists move to a different country from the one they were born in and continue their career in this location. The choice of Asian artists to remain in their country of origin, as opposed to artists from Latin America or Russia moving to the US or UK, is a result of a growing art economy and ecosystem within the continent, creating a virtuous circle of the creation of art, and the support of an art market that can maintain itself economically, institutionally, and culturally.

Art and culture journalist Vivienne Chow states in  Artnet that the biggest boom in China  “has come not from the global marketplace, but rather from the tremendous economic growth right across its border, in mainland China”. The art market in China is directly linked to the economic success of the country, and is separate from the global market, and finding success on its own terms. The growth of wealth in China has allowed for the creation of more centers of cultural importance. There has been a rapid growth of the institution of art within China. The Chinese Art Gallery Industry Report in 2017 found that Shanghai had 770 art galleries, surpassing London’s 478. Shanghai’s artist district, the West Bund, is also growing with the number of galleries and museums booming, and is largely supported by the government.

The Top 100 report also provides data that displays the changing role of women in the Top 100 international artists. While women are playing a larger role overall, our reports show that there is a widening gender gap in the upper echelons of the market despite a growing place for these women economically. While in 2018, 39% of the Top 100 artists were female, this year’s report shows that women now make up 30% of the top artists. Despite this decline in representation, women make up 11 of the Top 25 Auction Artists from 2020-21 and auction sales by younger female artists have increased by 72.8% in the first half of 2021. Auction houses such as Sotheby’s have taken initiatives to increase the visibility of female artists. In May they hosted their first cross category sale, (Women) Artists, devoted solely to work created by female artists.

Renowned institutions are also taking it upon themselves to support NextGen female artists. Almost half of the women represented in the Top 100 artists have international endorsements such as a solo or group exhibition and institutional endorsement from global players including the Tate, MoMA, MoCA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney. There is a large discrepancy between gallery representation of men and women, and the Top 100 report unsurprisingly found a bias of blue chip galleries favoring male artists. Meanwhile, of the Top 100 NextGen artists, the majority of women are represented by incubator galleries, which are important locations for young artists to foster their career.

While the Top 100 report shares some not so surprising  findings such as  New York remaining a central market hub and male artists’ markets dominating over female artists’ markets — the nuances of these findings provide important insight into a changing future. These statistics display an emerging artistic market outside of the hegemonic West. An artistic hub in Asia is gaining momentum and can compete, and at times surpass, Europe and the US. While Artists outside the Western sphere typically migrate to New York or London, the Asian market continues to grow on its own and support itself, keeping both its artists and money within. The data also shows opportunity for financial growth for women, as well as larger spaces for representation and commercial success.

Looking broadly, it is obvious that much change still has to come. The ‘global market’ is not so global if artists must move to centers such as New York or London for their education and to find success in their career. Markers of artistic success, such as the establishment of ‘global’ blue-chip galleries, remain located in Europe and North America and the most notable museums and biennials follow suit. Although women far surpass men in taking the preliminary steps for artistic success, with almost one-third of the Top 100 female artists earning a Master’s in art while less than half of men do the same, the number of artists in the Top 100, amount of solo shows, and blue-chip  gallery representation still remain dominated by men. As sociologist Taylor Witten Brown sums up in Artsy, “Only two works by women have ever broken into the top 100 auction sales for paintings, despite women being the subject matter for approximately half of the top 25”. Not only does representation need to grow, the support from the market does as well.

Image: Detail of Ed Ruscha, 20-20-20, 1962.

This summer, ArtTactic celebrates its 20^th anniversary!  To commemorate this milestone, we would like to take a moment to reflect on the success, challenges, and immense growth our company has experienced over the last two decades.  Since ArtTactic’s genesis in 2001, the art world at large has undergone remarkable changes that have both influenced and been influenced by ArtTactic’s quest for market transparency.  Traditionally, the art world has been defined by its opacity and the informational chasm dividing industry insiders and outsiders.  Until the early 2000s, even those considered ‘insiders’ – namely art buyers and sellers – willing to do their due diligence, had a hard time finding the right market intelligence to inform their multi-million-dollar consumer decisions. This is exactly the asymmetrical gap in information Anders Petterson saw that led him to create ArtTactic in 2001 amid the data revolution – a movement that created sweeping and lasting change for the art market, not to mention the global economy.

After several years in the data-driven industry of financial services, Anders decided to apply the economic models, analytical tools and data-collection strategies he had accumulated, to the art market.  Having spoken to many of his former colleagues about their lack of interest in art investment, despite increasing evidence of fine art’s enticing financial returns, he determined that it was largely due to a lack of knowledge and confidence as a result of not knowing how to access data, information, and research on the market.  Thus, ArtTactic was born with the goal of creating more transparency in the art market through education and information.

Around the same time, data-providers such as Artnet and Artprice had launched online databases, which aggregate public auction results, in the pursuit of market transparency.  Consequently, Anders saw an opportunity to build on these services by focusing on in-depth analysis and exhaustive summary of artists and their markets.  While there was immediate curiosity from art world professionals and patrons alike, data-analytics remained an unfamiliar and unwelcome concept to many stakeholders in the industry.  When asked why market data was initially dismissed by so many, Anders reflects, “At the time, decisions were not made on the basis of data and research, but on relationships, networks and trust.”  Thus, an ‘outsider’s’ opinion – as Anders acknowledges – was received with some skepticism.  However, over time, after witnessing the power of analysis and comprehensive market reports, critics began to realize the value ArtTactic could bring to the industry as a benchmarking tool.

For Anders, a pivotal moment occurred in 2004 when he fortuitously met one of the world’s foremost contemporary art collectors in a lift during the ARCO art fair in Madrid.  A brief conversation led to a second meeting in Miami later that same year, which would ultimately bear ArtTactic’s initial Art Market Confidence Report – launched in May 2005.  To this day, Anders remembers the quote given to him by that encouraging collector, “[ArtTactic] is an idea whose time has come, the question is why no one has thought about it before.”  His kind and supportive words spurred on the development of ArtTactic and in Anders’ expression, “kept [him] going for another 15 years.”  Numerous other inaugural reports such as the first Art & Finance Report in 2011 in partnership with Deloitte, the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report in 2013 and the Art & Philanthropy report published in 2017, broke new ground and paved the way for transparency in new areas of the art market.  Since those initial reports, the mechanics of ArtTactic – from the way we present information to the global reach of our network of experts – have changed and improved.  However, the spirit of the initial reports and our guiding question – how can we use data to educate, communicate, translate and present to audiences beyond the traditional art world? – remains the same.  More than ever, ArtTactic has faith in the power of data and visualization to broaden the art market, increase transparency and facilitate accessibility among stakeholders, both old and new.

Over the years, ArtTactic has maintained a small, productive and highly motivated team of art world professionals with diverse backgrounds.  From the outset, Anders sought to foster a work environment that would allow people to develop their own interests and projects under the umbrella of ArtTactic.  For instance, in 2009, Adam Green joined the company with the vision of creating an art industry podcast, which emerged as one of the first podcasts to discuss art market trends and has produced over 600 episodes to date.  The free exchange of ideas has catalyzed some of the most pioneering and innovative features ArtTactic offers.  Anders remarks on his philosophy, “In order to survive in a world of selling art market information, I believe in a small, agile set up;” the kind of set up where success and failure sometimes go hand-in-hand.  “It’s become part of our DNA,” Anders admits when asked about how challenges and failures along the way have shaped the company, “I see failure as an integral part of our organic growth, and the only way to improve and find out what works.”  It is seeing beyond market participants’ current needs and forecasting future needs that drives interesting and relevant research.  By remaining self-funded and self-sustaining without external investors’ judgements for the sake of growth and scale, ArtTactic has always created space to take risks, experiment and innovate.

As we head into a new phase of the art market, defined by momentous change and uncertainty propelled by the global pandemic, data, information and research will become exponentially more valuable with time.  While ArtTactic’s vision endures, our challenge will be adapting to support stakeholders as they transform and modernize their art businesses in the face of significant technological and demographical shifts.

When asked about the next 20 years, Anders hopes to “continue the current momentum and enjoy the discovery of new research domains,” as well as “meet and collaborate with great people, and play our small part in making the art market a better and more exciting place to engage with.”  In this next decade, we also see an opportunity for ArtTactic to focus more on inequalities in the art market and research new models of philanthropy aimed at finding solutions for creatives to develop sustainable practices both inside and outside of the traditional art market.

Finally, we would like to thank you – our loyal followers, contributors, and clients – for your continued support.  Cheers to the next 20 years!

Amoako Boafo, The Lemon Bathing Suit, 2019, Oil on unstretched canvas

Desire is more desperate in this new age. In the shared ocean that is the COVID-19 pandemic – not to mention the accumulated years of far-right extremism, political turmoil and climate crisis – our longings aren’t trivialities but life-crafts. So what are we looking towards to keep ourselves above water? Now riddled with politics both personal, financial and social, there is a new depth to sales figures, and what do we really want? is a harder question than ever.

It is figurative painting that has seen the most unstoppable popularity in auction and private sales. The hottest tickets in contemporary art right now are those painting representationally – Hernan Bas and Salman Toor’s queer characters, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s fantastical black figures, Shara Hughes and Jonas Wood’s decadent interiors. Similarly, of Artnet’s most visited artists in the past 5 months, 7 out of 10 of them are photographers, and mostly of people. There might be something in this need for reality; of course we are skirting around abstraction when our brains are overfull of upended information. Still, these paintings don’t have to be literal. In fact most of them depict dreams – both Yiadom-Boakye and Odutola’s subjects are purposefully fictional, Bas and Toor also paint in a story-tellers dreamscape – so it is perhaps a desire for something recognisable but not too real, that doesn’t too deeply question our beliefs.

As we saw a 511% increase in online-only sales over the past year, it helps that figurative painting translates well onto screens, though it’s dominance in art history might suggest that it has always been the most popular form of visual art. Still, there is something new to the painting that is dominating sales now. It’s no Dejeuner sur l’Herbe. It’s current practitioners are carving a new genre as they bring previously unrepresented bodies front and centre. A large proportion of the painters rising now are black painters depicting historically under-painted black people.

But the rise of these artists is a dangerous ascent. Demand for their work is increasingly frenzied. Odutola saw an increase of 1,390% in sales between 2015 and 2019, with 38% of all auction lots produced 3 years or less before the sale. Amoako Boafo too has had a notoriously high-speed trajectory characterised by repeated ‘flipping’ of his works at auction – the phenomenon of selling work on the secondary market at a significant price jump, often causing a temporary imbalance between an artists economic and cultural value. The story of his Lemon Bathing Suit (2019) is a particularly cautionary tale; bought for $22,500 by Stefan Simchowitz, he then flipped it at auction for a 3,815% return at $880,971. Only the buyers were collaborators of Boafo and were helping him to take control of his market in exchange for new works. Just two months later those same gifted works were back on the auction block.

At these kinds of figures, the popularity of artists is as much financial as aesthetic. As Nate Freeman wrote of the rise of black artists; ‘where some see a movement toward a fuller story of art, others see a financial opportunity’. There is a similarly disconcerting flipping trend when it comes to a contemporary artist’s death, or their proximity to it. Matthew Wong, after his death in 2019 aged 35, has entered the top 10 contemporary artists of 2020 by sales value. The demand for his work has been rabid, with one dealer speaking of a client ‘who’s going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t get one—he will pay, like, any price’, that price being a phenomenal $4.5 million at Christie’s late last year up from a $700,000 high estimate. The 92-year-old painter Alex Katz is also anticipating major market growth as he approaches his final years. ‘He’s painting in the last period of his life and he’s doing it at full speed’ his new gallerist, Gavin Brown has said.

There is something disconcerting about these market movements. The endless cycle of flipping, the voracious appetite for scarcity following an artists death, the perverse speed at which their sales figures can rise when they receive the right attention. There are individuals trying to catch up with the market, particularly when it comes to artists of colour. Young curator Destinee Ross Sutton for example deals work with a meticulous contract; 15% of all resale proceeds should return to the artist, no auction resales will transpire for three to five years, and artists retain first right of refusal for that period in case of a private sale.

The work being made by these artists should stand apart from its prices, and they deserve every attention they are receiving. Only what their popularity highlights is that desire is never simple, but is always marred by tokenisation, fetishisation, economics. The rise in attention to artists of colour post-2020’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ moment doesn’t necessarily feed back into the social good that is supposed to support, but straight back into dealers and collectors pockets. It is worth thinking about; how popularity dictated by social movements can tangibly feed back into those movements and individuals, most especially on the secondary market.

So considering how much of the demand for figurative painting (and especially black figurative painting) is self-determined by increasing sales figures, it is doubtful how much our desires can reveal the collective mood. Over the past thirty years, art has become as much an investment asset as a personal belonging, so our endorsement is less aesthetic than economic. It would be foolish to read into the popularity of dancing portraits, young men in the rain, luxuriant greenhouse interiors, a need for human touch or a collective loneliness. In actuality the demand for a Lemon Bathing Suit doesn’t come from the need for a poolside vacation but the dollar signs floating behind the figure’s sunglasses, the promise of making six-figure profits on your purchase.

What remains to be seen is whether this is the swell, crest or tumble of a trend, since we’re too deep inside it to know. Trends in the art market look like this; fast, frenzied and full of flipping. It is a new time for art history when the most memorable names are associated with high price tags, so our desires mean more now to the shaping of visual arts than they ever did. Artists are no longer going it alone in ramshackle studios, so we must think about how our appetites change history.

Stella Botes is a freelance art critic and writer, find more of her writing via her Instagram @gallerina_ldn.