Phillips de Pury & Company’s New York Africa sale on 15 May 2010 confirmed the rising price trend for African art and not just for the internationally recognized headline artists whose works already enjoy “global” demand. However, with total income from the sale at $1.1m and a bought-in rate of 38.4%, the sale was only partially successful, even in the less than $10,000 price bracket.
The first decade of the new millennium saw the emergence on the global art market of contemporary art from Latin-America, China, Korea, Japan, Russia, Turkey and the Middle-East. By comparison, African art has been very slow to emerge… but for how long?