By ALEXANDRA PEERS
VIA The Wall Street Journal
So where does it go from here? The art-market bubble has burst. Prices of contemporary, modern and Impressionist artwork tumbled about 30%, and sometimes more, at the huge auctions that finished last Friday in New York. There's no guarantee that further declines aren't yet to come.
The art market's crash -- for that is what it is -- threatens to remake the art world. In the past few weeks, auctioneers, dealers, artists and collectors have changed strategies and policies, and it's likely that future changes will be even more sweeping. With Sotheby's stock hovering at about $9, down from $50 a year ago, it's now cheaper to buy the 164-year old brand than all the art it sold in the past three months.
It's all been a reality check for art collectors. Noted one West Coast art dealer: "Their houses are worth less, their stocks are worth less, but they thought their Rudolph Stingel was still priced the same? No."
In the wake of the auctions, says Tobias Meyer, a vice chairman of Sotheby's: "The price disparity between good and great has widened to humongous." The problem for the trillion-dollar global art industry is that most of the art it has for sale is, by definition, just average.
