The Week in Prints 15th - 21st July 2024

The first half of 2024 has seen a notable decline in auction totals across Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips, with sales down by 25% compared to the same period last year. This drop might seem alarming at first glance, and speculation of a worrying market downturn has spooked the market since late 2023. However, fluctuations like this are not uncommon in the art market's history - or any market composed of unessential commodities, for that matter. Periods of economic and political uncertainty have always influenced market dynamics, and led to temporary downturns. 2024 is proving to be a year loaded with change, unrest, and uncertainty: a super-election year, the first Labour government in the UK after 14 years; two major wars; hiked interest rates. These are all factors no market is immune to.

The art market is inherently cyclical. Similar declines have occurred in the past, and the market has bounced back. Post-Brexit jitters in 2016, and standstills wrought by the pandemic in 2019 are testament to that. These periods were followed by recoveries as the art market adjusted to new realities. The current decline should, therefore, be viewed within this broader historical context, suggesting that while the figures are lower across the board, they are part of a recurring patterns rather than a cause for out and out panic.

As we know all too well at MyArtBroker, auction sales represent just one facet of the art market. Many collectors and investors are increasingly turning to private and online sales to buy and sell. Even Christie's reported that an immense 82% of their bids in H1 were placed online. Sotheby's have attempted to meet the demands of private buyers by extending their Sealed auction services to fine art. The reality is that during periods of scepticism such as this, there are simply better deals to be made privately on the secondary market. A general trends to wards private, online sales helps to maintain the overall health of the market, even when public auction totals dip.

An exhibition dedicated to Surrealist Leonora Carrington has opened at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, Sussex. Carrington, heralded in The Art Newspaper as an “art market darling”, captured the attention of bidders at Sotheby's earlier this year with her work Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) fetching $28.5 million at the New York house in May. Rebel Visionary serves to celebrate the life and legacy of this often-overlooked titan of Surrealism. Alongside other women members of the Surrealist cohort - Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Dora Maar among their ranks - Carrington was outspoken when it came to the sexist dismissal of her work. On the centenary of the first Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton, this is a fitting exhibition to platform this under-explored visionary of the movement.

Rebel Visionary runs from 12 July to 26 October 2024, tickets can be purchased here.

Infamously obsessed by the concept of beauty, Andy Warhol's portraiture shows the artist's searching for this ideal of beauty. This is the subject approached by Andy Warhol: Velvet Rage and Beauty at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Lisa Botti as co-curator, the exhibition strives to unpack Warhol's “ideal and quest for beauty.” With over 300 works on show, the exhibition offers “an expansive and inclusive insight into a Warhol, that during his lifetime never had a real “coming-out“.”

Andy Warhol Velvet Rage and Beauty runs from 9 July to 6 October 2024, tickets can be purchased here.

Gagosian Gallery in New York recently showcased Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural (1989) at their 555 West 24th Street location. This marks the second time Gagosian has exhibited a Lichtenstein mural, following the replication of his Greene Street Mural in 2015. Throughout his career, Lichtenstein produced numerous murals, with Bauhaus Stairway Mural paying homage to German artist Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaustreppe (1932).

Commissioned for the Creative Artists Agency’s headquarters in Beverly Hills, Lichtenstein’s mural echoes the Bauhaus school’s mission to merge fine and applied arts. The mural, measuring over 26 feet tall, captures the essence of modernist architecture and the Bauhaus ethos of cross-disciplinary collaboration. It mirrors Schlemmer’s vision, depicting geometric figures and referencing the mechanical movement, embodying the Bauhaus’s spirit of innovation. The showcase at Gagosian coincides with Lichtenstein Remembered, a show celebrating the centenary of the artist’s birth, featuring sculptures and studies curated by Irving Blum.