Continue reading Cigarette Company Finds Money in Art

Cigarette Company Finds Money in Art originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The art market spent a year and a half circling the drain. Signs of life at the end of 2009, however, have become a reality, with recent auctions at Sotheby's (BID) and Christie's (CRUPF) exceeding expectations and showing triple-digit growth from comparable auctions last year.

Overall, art prices last year were off around 50%, with the contemporary art sector suffering even more severe declines of up to 70%. With prices this low and a recovery taking shape, it's time for investors to get in, and it looks like we'll see an art rally this year.

Continue reading Five Reasons to Watch Art Stocks in 2010

Five Reasons to Watch Art Stocks in 2010 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Christie's and Sotheby's (BID) were only able to pull in a combined $482.3 million on five high-profile art evening auctions in New York and London this year -- down 75% from 2008. Last year, the same collection of flagship auctions was good for $1.97 billion, which was off from the $2.4 billion record set in 2007. This year's performance still lags 2006's $1.1 billion aggregate tally.

From 2003 through 2007, the contemporary art market grew by a factor of eight, according to data from ArtPrice, yet the fun came to an abrupt halt in the fourth quarter of last year, thanks to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG), which Sotheby's losing $50 million and Christie's $40 million, as pieces were unable to reach the prices guaranteed to sellers by the auction houses (a practice which has since been abandoned).

Continue reading Sotheby's and Christie's suffer 75% revenue decline for major art auctions

Sotheby's and Christie's suffer 75% revenue decline for major art auctions originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Hedge fund managers weren't the only ones making buckets of money during the great boom of the early 21st century. So too were the artists whose work the newly rich love to buy. And no one has made more money selling paintings and sculptures to private equity bigwigs and Russian oligarchs than British artist Damien Hirst.

Until recently, Hirst was famous largely for his conceptual sculptures of dead animals floating inside glass-walled boxes. Much of his work displays an obsession with death, including a human skull encrusted with 8,000 diamonds and a box filled with flies feasting on a rotting cow's head. And his art isn't cheap. The asking price for the skull, titled "For the Love of God," was $100 million.

But like all modern visionaries, Hirst saved his greatest innovations for the marketplace itself. In the summer of 2008, Hirst organized his own art auction, neatly bypassing the dealers whose commissions typically claim a good chunk of the sale price of a piece of art. Sotheby's hosted the sale, waiving its usual fee to do so. Over 20,000 people viewed the show in just two days, and when it was over, Hirst had sold $198 million worth of art, a new record for a single-artist auction.

Hirst's profits may be puny compared to the financiers who buy his work, but $200 million in two days is a pretty good haul by most standards. And it sets the bar higher for the next generation of artists who create the shiny trophies that billionaires so love to collect.

Be sure to check out more Money Winners of 2008.

Money winners of 2008: Damien Hirst and his $198 million art auction originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.