4023 new artists records in 6 months

The high-profile sales in New York during May and in London during June confirmed the overall market mood: over the last six months, the number of new price records at auctions is particularly high. Indeed these records are the icing on the cake of a market showing a 28% increase in the average price of art since the start of the year, and +133% over the last ten years. The Artprice Global Index is currently 16% above its 1990 level

As one might have expected, the most impressive new records during the first six months of 2007 were generated under Sotheby’s and Christie’s hammers with Sotheby’s making the biggest splash: on 15 May, Mark Rothko’s White Center (1950) fetched USD 65 million… USD 45 million higher than Rothko’s previous auction record. White Center is now the most expensive post-war work on the global art market. On an all-periods basis, Rothko now ranks sixth place among the most expensive artists on the planet, behind Pablo Picasso, Gustave Klimt, Vincent Van Gogh, Auguste Renoir and Peter Paul Rubens. The following day (May 16), Christie’s New York generated another massive new record with the star of Pop Art, Andy Warhol, whose Green Car Crash went under the hammer for USD 64 millions de dollars.

While contemporary and post-war art have been the hottest segments in New York, in London, the rush on impressionist and modern works generated a hammer price of GBP 16.5 million (USD 32,7 million) for one of Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1904) – estimated at GBP 10 – 15 million – on 19 June at Sotheby’s. Other new records included, on the same day, GBP 9.8 million (USD 19.4 million) for Henri Matisse’s Danseuse dans le fauteuil, sol en damier and GBP 5.9 million (USD 11.6 million) for a gouache by Joan Miro entitled Le Coq. In June, Damien Hirst became the most expensive living artist when his Lullaby Spring (2002) fetched GBP 8.6 million.

These highly-publicised million-dollar records, numbering 135 over 6 months and driven by an ever-growing community of billionaires, only represented 3.4% of the total records recorded by Artprice over the period. You can find our list of the 1000 latest new auction price records on Artprice list of the 1000 latest new auction price records on Artprice