Urban Art Association

VALUE OF CONTEMPORARY ART RISES BY 50%, by carlito on Oct 1, 2007 10:52:19 GMT 1,

VALUE OF CONTEMPORARY ART RISES BY 50%


By Sherna Noah, PA Arts Correspondent

(ADVISORY: First ran yesterday under embargo)

The value of contemporary art has risen by more than 50% in just one year, according to figures out today.

Modern art, produced from the late 19th century to the 1970s, has jumped in value by 44%.

Contemporary works, created since the 1970s, have leapt up by 55%.

The figures are contained in the annual Hiscox Art Market Research (HAMR) report, based on auction sales around the world.

They show English sporting paintings shot up in value by 26%, while European 19th Century paintings increased by 19%.

The figures follow 12 months of record-breaking sales in the art world.

Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, became the world's most expensive piece of contemporary art when it was bought for £50 million.

Earlier this year year, one of Hirst's trademark medicine cabinets sold at auction for £9.65 million, breaking the European record for a work by a living artist.

In April, a Banksy painting, Space Girl and Bird, sold for £288,000, a record for the "guerilla artist", and in June, Christie's enjoyed its highest ever total for a week of art sales in Europe when the London auction raised £237 million.

Claude Monet's Waterloo Bridge, just one of the items that went under-the-hammer, sold for nearly £18 million alone.

Other key sales have included a new record set for work by Andy Warhol when a painting of a car crash sold for £36.3 million in New York, beating the previous auction record for the artist of £8.8 million.

In May, Francis Bacon's portrait Study from Innocent X fetched £26.5 million at Sotheby's in New York, almost double the previous high for a Bacon work.

The auction record for post-war art was smashed twice on the same night.

But the report found that some areas of the art market were less buoyant.

English watercolours fell by 27% and British 17th to 19th Century portraits fell by 7%.

Charles Dupplin, art expert at the specialist insurers, said:

"It has been a tremendous year for modern and contemporary art. It seems that every few weeks another record-breaking price is being paid for a leading artist. The market for this art has never been so buoyant.

"You don't have to have a Banksy hanging on your wall to see huge returns on art. Even relatively modest pieces are increasing in value."

The HAMR index is designed to track the value of homeowners' belongings including art, books, clocks, furniture, silver and other collectible items which are frequently underinsured.


Hiscox Art Market Research Index 2007

Paintings and the % change over one year from June 2006 to June 2007

:: Old Masters +7.6

:: British 17th-19th century Portraits -7.5

:: European 19th century Art +19.1

:: English Sporting Painting +26.3

:: English Watercolours -27.5

:: English 20th century Painting +6.3

:: English 19th century (Victorian) Painting +8.7

:: Modern Art +44.3

:: Contemporary Art +55.3

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