Art Market Mechanics

Art Market Mechanics by me, Connor Remes. Coming later this year!

Over the course of this winter, I began a book about the inner workings of art market, how art is bought and sold, and what determines the value of art. There's a lot to know, and I hope to help as many collectors and curious minds as I can. This book will help you start off on the right foot and provide you with all kinds of helpful industry insider advice so that you can pursue collecting for years to come. I wanted to share a preview with you here!

For starters, the entire industry does about $60 billion in sales in a year. Of the $60 billion art Industry, 61% of the sales are from the top 100 artists. About 50% of that $60 billion are auction sales. There are three major art auction houses: Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips. Past the big three, the auction house landscape is highly diverse and fragmented. Many smaller auction houses specialize heavily In the local collector preferences of their country or community, or in a very specific niche, like Minimalist art or Mid-Century furniture. The industry lives in meaningful scale in about 7 cities worldwide: New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Smaller wealthy enclaves like Aspen, Palm Beach, and Gstaad, are home to many top collectors and have good museums and galleries, too. Most major cities In the world with a population over 500,000  have at least one great museum, which one of many reasons why art can be such an enhancement to live and travel. The art market is becoming more and more global, and I expect this trend to continue. In the past fifteen years, countries like China, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have become major forces in the contemporary market, and there has been a spectacular boom in private museums globally and especially throughout greater Asia. This not only fuels more buying for the foundations, but also greater community awareness of the visual arts.

I hope that art will help enrich your life wherever you go, help you find great art and understand why artists get the prices that they do, and help you discover helpful tactics to help build a lasting art collection with knowledge from a 15+ year insider.