(image via bbc)
It is hard to savor the delicious schadenfreude at the conventional wisdom at present that Contemporary Art prices are about to plummet. From Bloomberg Arts:
"Contemporary-art values may plummet, a report by saleroom database tracker Artprice warned last night, as works mostly priced at less than 100,000 euros ($128,000) were being snapped up at the opening of a fair in Paris.
"France-based Artprice said in its 2007-2008 report, published to coincide with the Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (FIAC), that contemporary art has risen in value at about five times the rate of Old Masters and 19th-century works. Between July 1991 and July 1, 2008, pieces by artists born after 1945 enjoyed a 132 percent increase on Artprice's index.
"'As the global economy moves into a distinctly less favorable rhythm,' says the report, 'fears of a sharp correction in the art market appear increasingly rational.'"
On the other side of this recession we predict that the corrective of the value of Contemporary Art will stick. This whole "irrational exhuberance" regarding contemporary art -- like that fraud Damien Hirst -- is over. And don't say this blog didn't warn you. Only madness and the deplorable taste of Russian oligarchs could explain the idea of contemporary art seeling at five times the rate of Old Masters.
Still, alas, Hirst is going to be regarded by historians of the future as the business genius who made the most money selling off his shit at just the right time to make a goddam fortune. Damn. Cunning like a shark.
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