Art We in a Recession?
May 4, 2008
We’re in a recession, yes?
The art world seems hell-bent on rejecting this idea about as strongly as the Bush administration. Despite a diminishing scope of this season’s high-end art auctions, Reuters reveals that fine art prices are maintaining a characteristically steep price–defying murmurs of recession.
Russia and the Middle East are producing the international art world’s big spenders. With riches piling up in practically every Western nation besides the US, we’re seeing an influx of buyers with enough petty cash to stock up on fine art.
This season, sales are smaller. But the prices of individual works remain an all-time high. Rothko and Francis Bacon are garnering top dollar, and a $40 million Monet is nothing to sneeze at.
The art world is certainly not the bellwether for the status of the US economy, but it does point noticeably to the growing power of the super-wealthy. Their wealth, according to Reuters, has a great deal to do with oil money, and a bit to do with hedge fund affluence. A look at which economies are supporting these big spenders could illuminate even more the status of our economic times.
Just something to think about.
