I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP. The bursting of the art market bubble in mid 2022 coincides exactly with when interest rates started rising following the 'transitory' inflation caused by pandemic relief measures. This was also the same time that we started seeing hiring freezes in tech, the bursting of the luxury watch bubble, etc. It's all tied together, and has the same root cause: It stopped being cheap to borrow money, and it started being lucrative to lend it out for guaranteed returns (e.g. by buying Treasuries) rather than speculating on artworks, or NFTs, or whatever.
non_aligned · 3m ago
> I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP.
I'm not sure this particular phenomenon can be explained this way. For example, antiques auctions are doing quite well, with prices rising quite briskly year after year. There's still plenty of money chasing the kinds of long-term investments you can hold in your hand, put on a shelf, and show to your friends.
Jewelry sales are doing fine too.
There are other reasons why going to a fancy gallery in London to buy some decor for your mansion just isn't as tempting as it used to be a decade or two decades ago.
anonymars · 1h ago
Yes and no - 2022 also drastically changed taxation of software development
Tech firms lobbied this change because they care about EBITA
it makes their numbers look better
jfengel · 1h ago
The US stock market and cryptocurrencies are both going gangbusters. You don't need ZIRP to be awash in cash. Money can print itself when rich people are optimistic.
I don't know what causes bubbles to pop, but I don't think it's directly related to US monetary policy. I suspect that the bubble just moved elsewhere.
echelon · 1h ago
It might be that anyone can generate "art" now.
While canvas, sculpture, and other media are far removed from jpegs, the scarcity of adjacent digital forms going away may have reduced the interest in the market for "shaped aesthetic things".
The attention, and thus money, has moved elsewhere.
EGreg · 1h ago
2022 is also when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza started in earnest
When wars are going on, most people in affected countries are thinking about heavier things than going to an art exhibit and boosting their collections.
2020 and 2021 was when the pandemic happened. Businesses started feeling the crunch all over the world from the lockdowns. Supply chains got bullwhipped. People weren’t exactly interested in going to buy artworks after their one-time UBI checks and PPP funds ran out. And other countries didn’t send those out at all.
Oh yeah, and AI has now sent a supply shock to the whole art industry. But we can’t say that on HN, there will always be someone popping out of the woodwork claiming AI is a non-factor and saying things were always like that.
doctorpangloss · 33m ago
The public is not conscious of how big of a deal the war in Ukraine is.
randmeerkat · 17m ago
> The public is not conscious of how big of a deal the war in Ukraine is.
My sincerest desire is that there’s a peaceful resolution to this conflict before they’re forced to realize it.
YeahThisIsMe · 2m ago
It's not a "conflict" and there will not be a peaceful resolution of it.
monero-xmr · 1h ago
If I was going to buy art as an investment I would only buy the absolute best - old master, Picasso, ancient artifacts with absolutely no question to their authenticity or provenance that would restrict its resale.
Collectibles are very tricky. You want to buy something that isn't a fad. Like a movie prop, you'd want to buy the 100% most legendary movie that is timeless, like something from Casablanca, that has been appreciated decade-after-decade as worthwhile and valuable across many generations and fads. I wouldn't buy an expensive sports or trading card. Something related to Western culture is much safer, like the Magna Carta, or a founding US-related historical document. It's very hard to predict what will remain valuable decades or centuries out, so if something is still valuable now after centuries, it is likely to remain valuable
cortesoft · 1h ago
The problem with your strategy is that the items you listed have very little upside; yes, the prices won't collapse, but they also wont go up a ton. Their prices have reached somewhat of an equilibrium.
A lot of collectors are trying to find something they can buy for cheap and then sell when it goes up in price by a lot. If you want that, you have to pick something that hasn't had its price hit an equilibrium yet. You need to take a risk on something new.
dfxm12 · 52m ago
Collectors are different from speculators or investors. Collectors want something for personal reasons, whatever they are.
Speculators are just trying to buy low and sell high. Investing has overlap with speculating, but it's generally more long term.
I think this is important to understand when considering buying collectables. You have to know the different types of people you're bidding against, whether it's an out of print magic the gathering card or a painting.
No idea the price, but I would much prefer this to a Charizard pokemon card!
randmeerkat · 15m ago
This is such a beautiful piece. How did you learn about it? How does one get further into this world?
QuantumFunnel · 1h ago
Labubu
monero-xmr · 1h ago
Collectibles have a lot of friction, and being physical they have a lot of middlemen and questions. If I want to speculate on an investment, even property would be far more liquid, let alone something disambiguated like company stock. I think investing in physical collectibles for a quick flip is pretty dumb. Why not buy domains related to the same subject? Far easier
cortesoft · 1h ago
Ok, then I guess I don't understand your point in your first comment. You seemed to be explaining what approach you would take to invest in collectible in your first comment, by saying you would only buy something that has established value.
I agree that trying to make money from collectibles is not the best way to make money. But then if you aren't buying collectibles for money, your first comment doesn't follow; you should collect things you want to collect yourself, which means it shouldn't matter their ability to hold value.
monero-xmr · 1h ago
I'm saying as an investor, collectibles are very difficult and highly speculative, and the friction makes them even less attractive. I disagree that buying old, consistent collectibles cannot themselves be speculative - if you wait for the right moment they can make significant returns. But the downside is significantly reduced if you restrict your investments to something that has been consistently valuable across the longterm.
If you are into something, buy all means buy it. I just mean if you are a dispassionate investor looking for a return it is a pretty poor area to invest in. But if you like something - art, pokemon, whatever - just do what you love
mosura · 4h ago
This is really the art as speculation fad coming home to roost. The people actually interested in art as art are now on things like Instagram buying direct from the artists with very little gatekeeping either by art schools or galleries.
It would be tempting to see if there is a correlation in when the “legit” art world price going off a cliff and the NFT bubble, because that suckered in a lot of the idiot end of the speculator crowd.
Ferret7446 · 2h ago
The "art as speculation" fad is just a consequence of "inflation is good" economic theory, the same as "real estate as an investment".
If you don't let people hold onto cash, they will just find something else to replace it (and of course, it is always the lower classes that have to suffer the secret taxation that is money supply inflation targets).
fluoridation · 2h ago
I don't think so. Speculative markets would arise even in a 0% inflation economy, for the same reason that casinos would. Speculation isn't about storing value, it's about gambling. You have a stronger point with real estate, but real estate isn't as volatile or speculative, usually.
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
There would be very little reason to speculate on art. There's no reason to believe that the average painting would continually go up in value. In a zero inflation environment you'd expect the market to average zero growth. Some random pieces blowing up in value if the artist becomes famous later, but most would go nowhere.
fluoridation · 1h ago
>There's no reason to believe that the average painting would continually go up in value.
If I had to guess, on average works of art go down in value, simply because of how much is produced.
>Some random pieces blowing up in value if the artist becomes famous later, but most would go nowhere.
That's exactly where speculation comes from. It's the same as any form of gambling. On average you're losing money, but every once in a while one lucky guy makes off like a bandit.
mmaunder · 4h ago
I agree - a lot of art is sold via artists having a relationship with a stable of a few hundred people via insta. Completely bypasses the galleries and is far more compelling for the buyer because they can develop an emotional connection with the creator. Galleries can’t do that without having the artist present and even then they’re overwhelmed and buyers can’t make a connection. So this isn’t necessarily an art thing, it’s a gallery thing. Disintermediation strikes again.
relaxing · 3h ago
This has nothing to do with the art world the article is talking about.
worthless-trash · 2h ago
I don't think it has to. The greater art world is abstracted from the value it provides, so much so its obviously seedy.
And money laundering… don’t forget the money laundering
riazrizvi · 3h ago
NFTs were about transparency in provenance, using public, tamper-proof records, that replace jurisdictions/authorities with the type of math that enabled cross-border digital payments. Sure there was a spin-off scam industry but there remains a kernel of legitimacy in the concept.
fluoridation · 3h ago
Nah, man. I work in the space and I was there. NFTs were the second attempt on an earlier idea that had already been discarded as pointless: supply chain management. The problem with NFTs was the same as with supply chains; there's no link between the blockchain and IRL, so the blockchain doesn't really add anything, just makes things more complicated. NFTs were therefore a tool to part fools from their money right from the start, because they couldn't be anything else.
gonzobonzo · 2h ago
I remember IBM making huge claims about using the blockchain for supply chain management. For instance[1]:
> A recent pilot by KPMG, Merck, Walmart and IBM using blockchain injects new trust into the system by reducing the time it takes to trace prescription drugs from 16 weeks to just two seconds.
It was impressive how many people uncritically took these claims as facts.
People have a tendency to uncritically take techies' claims as facts.
[Stares aggressively in the direction of gen AI.]
dreamcompiler · 1h ago
A blockchain is the world's slowest database. The idea that a blockchain could speed up anything is laughable.
fluoridation · 1h ago
Theoretically, if there could be a 1:1 relationship between events in the real world and events on the blockchain, the idea makes sense. If you had two pieces of a machine represented by objects on the blockchain, and when you combined them into a new component that automatically, cryptographically, created a new object on the blockchain, you could track provenance precisely just by having the final assembled product.
The problem is that that relationship doesn't exist and is impossible. If someone wants to tamper with a supply chain, all they need to do is tamper with the real world without letting that reflect on the ledger. And that destroys the entire point of the concept.
UltraSane · 2h ago
NFTs make more sense as digital signatures.
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
They don't even make sense there. Since you can digitally sign things without blockchains or NFTs.
criddell · 3h ago
NFTs? They didn’t really solve a problem other than providing something else to gamble with. Nobody bought a low-res pixelated ape image because it stirred something deep in their soul.
melagonster · 1h ago
People pay money to join fan clubs for K-pop. If there were some electricity sheet will record their name forever, I'm sure someone would pay their money.
kingkawn · 2h ago
Not the image, the spreadsheet cell next to the image has their name in it
chii · 3h ago
> that replace jurisdictions/authorities
without any enforcement with sanctioned violence, this is merely symbolic. It's why so much scam happens with the NFT space.
stevage · 3h ago
More like 99% scam with a tiny kernel of legitimacy lost in the margins.
noman-land · 3h ago
Non-fungible tokens are not about payment, they are about cryptographic ownership of uniqueness.
mikrl · 2h ago
>they are about cryptographic ownership of uniqueness
My web browser has a novel and advanced attack on the cryptosystem built into it I have dubbed the right-click-copy-image attack.
I’ve even managed to replicate it on my phone.
dreamcompiler · 1h ago
Non-fungible tokens are about ownership in the same way those $40 certificates that say a star is named for you are about ownership.
Nobody cares about your precious little certificate, but if it makes you happy, buy it.
jandrewrogers · 2h ago
The art world is just fine. Pretentious art speculation maybe not so much.
In a way, we are actually in a golden age. I lurk on social media accounts of amateur art enthusiasts around the globe with (IMHO) good taste who seek out interesting little known artists and post it on their feeds. I am introduced to so much great art that I probably would have never known about otherwise. If I see something I like, I search for the artist online and see if they have something available in their portfolio for sale that I love.
I’ve bought amazing art from talented artists around the globe that speak no common language with me. We get it done (Google Translate to the rescue). I don’t filter on price but virtually everything I’ve bought is always in a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars range. The fact that you can talk to the artist just adds to the story.
Forget the “tastemakers” in art. I can give my money to excellent artists directly, including many that never attracted the attention of tastemakers or who weren’t deemed worthy by said people. I received a huge piece from Denmark today. The whole experience is lovely and the artists really appreciate that someone loves their work. This is the future.
999900000999 · 33m ago
You can also just commission the art you need, a few hundred dollars is damn good money in much of the world( even in the US, if a small painting takes a few hours to make, 400$ can be a fair price).
That said, I feel this article is really about our active recession. Rich people are cutting back too it seems.
jandrewrogers · 22m ago
I’ve never commissioned art but I am sorely tempted with a couple artists I’ve bought from. This may actually be the future for them.
Guestmodinfo · 1h ago
Hi,
Can you plz tell me the places where you lurk around for the beautiful art pieces.
I have a friend who does amazing "slice of Life" photography. I want to showcase it somewhere that can sell their work.
Also please let us see a photo of your art pieces from Denmark.
Thank you
Damn it sucks that instagram is the defacto second internet. My gf finds so much cool stuff on IG. Local bands post their show dates, a brewery in my neighborhood posts their hours (it’s just a husband and wife, and their hours are whenever-I-feel-like-it). I don’t have instagram, so I’m just totally in the dark on all that stuff.
And I get it. Not everybody is going to make a website or blog or whatever. But it totally sucks that everybody and their dog is on instagram and it’s like this walled garden club that you just can’t access if you don’t want to support Facebook. The internet is cool! Why did we make it suck!!
I wonder if the instagram API lets you download enough data to make a public mirror of a user’s posts. It’d be cool to make a service that does something like that. Help people break their instagram dependency. Not that any meaningful amount of people would care to use it lol
jandrewrogers · 24m ago
There are myriad accounts. Who you follow is taste specific, you need to do your own work. Mine are exclusively on Twitter and I mostly found them by randomly clicking through art things on Twitter. My tastes in art cover a very broad spectrum. Gotta both explore and curate the feed.
My favorite piece acquired in the last few months is Olivier Neuray’s “L’Empire des Lumières”. Not everyone is going to appreciate it.
irsagent · 1h ago
Second
MontyCarloHall · 4h ago
How much of this is due to anti-money laundering regulations enacted in the early 2020s [0], which much better vet the identities of the buyers/sellers?
The best evidence that art was going to crash is when Masterworks ads were everywhere. You know the bubble is stretched to its limit when they start hawking it to retail.
"I've got an exciting bag-holding opportunity that you don't want to miss."
mlinhares · 2h ago
Whenever you see a company trying to hawk ownership in itself to the general public you know it's going down the tubes. Unfortunately a lot of people believe in this and lose real money they couldn't afford to lose to these scams.
coldcode · 3h ago
I make an unusual kind of art, but I haven't tried selling it, as you need a stable of interested people, and I can only post it in one place at the moment (a Facebook interest group on tiling, Instagram is overrun with AI, you can't start a new profile without lots of existing supporters). I've considered opening a gallery in my local area just to sell my art (5 million people in the metro, and barely a real commercial art gallery). My overhead would be just me and a location. The idea of selling art for tens or hundreds of thousands seems nuts.
I do see that there are too many galleries in places, selling too many artists, to too many people, with massive overhead (in the story, the gallery had $100k+ a month in expenses). Also, it's hard to make something new that is still saleable, almost every kind of art is basically something people did 50 or even 100 years ago; I look at art people are selling all the time, and most is not anything different. The best stuff is from people that hardly anyone knows, who like me just make something different because they want to.
I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit. I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there. Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries). Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
I have heard, and believe: successful galleries are a location thing. People with deep pockets will pick up a piece by anyone in Aspen, Colorado, and probably not look twice if they (somehow) saw a Koons in a Topeka gallery.
dublinben · 1h ago
What do you think the market is for this kind of digital art? Do you see this style of work attracting an audience elsewhere? How much is it selling for?
I'm far from an expert, but I do occasionally buy original artwork. The sheer multitude of works you are displaying (more than one a day!) devalues what you are doing. It suggests that these can be churned out with relatively little effort.
If you are really posting this for other people, and not just yourself, try posting fewer pieces. If you had to pick the single best work from July, which one would it be? If nothing stands out to you, then how is a potential customer supposed to pick you out from the crowd of similar artists?
I personally like the Persistence of Structure series, but they're each pretty interchangeable.
fluoridation · 1h ago
I didn't want to criticize, but since you've already opened the door: these are interesting to me as sheer sensory stimulation, but the problem that might dissuade a lot of people is that there's no structure to most of the pieces (save for the ones that are based on distorting an existing image). Without structure there's no narrative, and no reason for someone to become interested in any given piece beyond, as I said, sensory stimulation. On that note, most the color palettes are very tasteful; if coldcode is picking them algorithmically, that's pretty impressive.
Let's be honest here: the craft here is not on the images themselves. It's on the algorithms that are producing them. A solution to the problem of quantity would be to make the algorithms available to play with. I could see someone going "okay, I want something sort of like [1], but made my own. I'll toy with the parameters until I get something I like and then order a print." Two or three sample images for each algorithm, instead of six years' worth of images, would work way better.
I have no idea how it works, but if you sold/licensed/created your art to fabric patterns, theres almost certainly a small market there. Clicking through your site (others are right, you could present your work better), I see plenty of “I’d buy a decently priced cool shirt of that pattern”. Sample size of one and all.
DrewADesign · 1h ago
You’re much better off selling shirts. The markup on custom printed fabrics isn’t great, and there are plenty of professional fabric pattern designers out there which companies that commission fabric hire as-needed.
Honestly though, unless you’re pretty much only selling in person or too small to notice, someone is probably just going to rip you off using AI and sell shitty knockoffs on Etsy
zer00eyz · 2h ago
Your site is very much letting the work down.
You dropped me onto a page with no sense of range or scope. Clicking around results in some very "odd" perceptions about what it is your putting out.
Categorize them so they can be filtered (colored, geometric, organic), load randomly by those tags or at least put a breadth of samples out front.
I like your stuff, but you need to have a better introduction and better access for it.
mulmen · 2h ago
Many local businesses in my neighborhood (there are very very few chains) post art for sale from community artists and the chamber of commerce for the neighborhood sponsors art walks. In that situation you don’t even need the overhead of the gallery. Local shops, bars, and restaurants are the gallery.
andreareina · 2h ago
Images partially load and then turn into placeholders
h4ny · 41m ago
Take this as a additional point of reference: I don't have formal education in art and not an artist, but I find your work interesting enough that I would stop at a store to look at and probably buy something (printed and fabric) if I can afford to (especially the cover art on the home page).
Reading your comment, it sounds like you are actively sabotaging yourself by convincing yourself that you shouldn't just try (perhaps due to a subconscious fear of rejection). How do you get an audience if you don't actively promote your work and/or try to sell them?
There is no guarantee that you will "succeed" (whatever that looks like to you — success could mean having a lot of people appreciate your work and/or selling your art for lots of money) if you try your hardest but if you don't try you will never succeed at all. I'll break down the second last paragraph as an example below.
> I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit.
Audience don't just suddenly appear because you have created something. You need to put in the effort to create an audience to begin with.
> I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there.
You need an incredible amount of luck for people to just "discover" your work and just suddenly like it (especially with abstract art?), so having need "to drag people there" is just what you should do if you want exposure for your work whether or not you host them on saatchiart.com.
Don't fall into the trap of "if you build it, they will come".
Focus on creating a compelling narrative behind your art and keep iterating to attract a small, loyal audience first (1000 people is already a lot).
> Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries).
This is irrelevant if nobody knows your work and would buy them to begin with. It's just another excuse to not try. By the time this is a problem you can migrate to something more personal. Many people that support independent artists want the artists they like to get more money from them.
> Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
I enjoy engaging with artists at markets because the personal connection with them is actually the most valuable thing for me and the most compelling reason for me to make purchases. I also appreciate the artists who show up consistently at related events particular those who remember me well, which also becomes a reason for me to introduce their work to my friends.
Good luck with your work and I hope you will find success with it! ^^
calebm · 36m ago
I’ve been trying to break into the art market as a complete outsider for the last year and a half (doing mathy lenticular holograms). What I have seen has stunned me - the level of groupthink and copying whatever the popular trends are and making up pretentious language to sound sophisticated is wild. And often the actual art is just ugly.
I have found that the higher priced galleries seem to sell worse art. The emperor has no clothes. And just like the Impressionists revolted against the Academy, us artist shall revolt at the Art market system that says “your work only matters if you have an MFA from a top school”.
non_aligned · 21m ago
Collecting art is a weird hobby in that it's very passive. For most collectibles, you're supposed to go to garage sales, scout eBay, walk around with a metal detector, or even dumpster-dive. And if you find something unfamiliar, you form a hypothesis, do research, share your findings... and maybe get other folks excited about your find. It's all very make-your-own-adventure.
For mainstream "rich person" art, all of this is outsourced. Curators discover the artist, promote the work, and set the price. Glossy trade journals tells you what the artwork means and how to talk about it to others in a way that's more erudite than any thoughts you can form on your own. Your function, really, is just to show up with money and then hang the piece.
I think there are exceptions. "Commoner" art marketed to middle-class buyers is obviously not as uptight. And patronage is still a thing, and the internet is, in some respects, lowering the bar.
jppope · 1h ago
As I understand it, much of the art market is based around the ability to purchase a "valuable" piece of art on the private markets let it appreciate then "donate" it to a museum or non-profit for a lucrative tax write off. At least thats the hustle as I understand it. I could totally see that in jeopardy based on liquidity and the markets.
darth_avocado · 2h ago
> My former Artnet colleague Tim Schneider’s analysis at the time of the deal revealed that the gallery was on the hook for $704,000 in monthly rent, or $8.5 million a year—$220 million over the course of the lease
Seems like it’s not an art problem but an art dealer problem. If you rent a $100k/month restaurant space that seats 20 people, is the food industry dying if you can’t turn a profit and close?
sheepybloke · 44m ago
As mentioned by others, I think the art world has reached a major schism where there are two types of artists: those who target rich collectors and those who are more grassroots. I've been to a lot of the larger art shows in the US and it's always amazing to me how expensive so many of the pieces are. I couldn't even justify buying a cheaper piece I want on a software engineer's salary. Instead, I've found that local art fairs have been where so much of the growth is at. Things like Cherry Creek Art festival or the myriad of smaller markets around, you can find amazing artists selling interesting and beautiful works. Between markets and social media, there's a path to being a sustainable, working artist. And personally, I think being a collector of smaller artist's prints and works is more fun than the expensive ones!
redwood · 4h ago
The vanity of owning rare things is all too much... NFTs are really the culmination of the phenomenon. I'm all for owning beautiful things and paying if it's something handmade. But once it becomes such an extreme out of wack status symbol kept alive by a global elite it's just feeding the monster. The worst is when it's an expensive status symbol and still mass produced I suppose
MontyCarloHall · 4h ago
When you're rich enough to live in what's effectively a post-scarcity world, scarcity itself becomes a valuable commodity. After all, we are the product of natural selection, a process shaped by scarcity. It is therefore such a fundamental part of our lives that its absence drives some to artificially recreate it.
101008 · 3h ago
I collect rare books (and memorabilia related to them), and it is not about vanity at all. I consider them historical objects (in their niche, of course) in the sense they changed the industry, or affected a portion of society somehow. I consider myself a keeper and guardian of them.
giveita · 2h ago
There is going to be an element of affordability. I doubt someone worth $1bn would spend it all on art but maybe they would spend $10m or if you prefer the growth of $1bn invested in SPX for a month. So a month's "work". A bit like $10k to many of us (I bet many of us have $10k of furniture)... which seems rediculous to someone earning $50k/y. It's all relative.
Tiktaalik · 2h ago
> Major collectors have stopped buying art or significantly reduced their spending. The next generation isn’t there to take over from the old guard.
Just one example, one of the biggest Canadian collectors of contemporary art is condo marketer Bob Rennie, who during the foreign wealth lead boom in Canadian real estate, was making so much money that he opened up an entire personal downtown museum to show off his art works.
After layers of regulation against foreign buying amongst many other shifts in the economy (hi interest rates), condo sales are now in retreat with developers on the ropes and Rennie Marketing laying off staff.
Things change.
(I have no idea if Rennie has stopped buying, but given the sorts of big shifts in his industry, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd eased off!)
d_silin · 3h ago
My sister started an independent artist career from 2022, and overall trends were fairly brutal to her (unemployment due to Russian-Ukrainian war, raise of AIs, tariff war), however the only solution in this circumstances is to climb up, raise the quality of one's art and aim for the higher price range.
doug_durham · 50m ago
How much is crypto currency to blame? Art has traditionally been a means to launder cash and evade taxes. The scarcity is what allows for this. Crypto is manufactured scarcity. Why go through the bother of buying and storing art when you can just buy crypto?
tedggh · 47m ago
Self inflicted. Both artists and the galleries representing them became too greedy. I have acquaintances who rather starve than accept their work is not worth 10K a piece.
p_ing · 4h ago
I've purchased plenty of art over the past couple years, mostly original paintings with a few prints. Very few of those came from galleries and when I walked in the galleries, I already knew what I wanted to buy.
Etsy and reddit are easy ways to find rather good art for what I can tell is a consistent price based on the size of the piece.
The only time I 'browse' art offline is during special events, which have all been wander from house to house or small art studio to studio. I love the experience, it's much more personal as you know the artist will be there and you can discuss the piece with them.
benbojangles · 2h ago
when covid happened gold prices, crypto and art prices went through the roof; now that the covid situation appears under control and markets have returned back to normal, everything is predictable again - it makes sense that art markets are taking a steep decline back to normal levels. Being able to hide assets during a time of //war/plague/market crash/comet strike etc// is a skill which will make a man great wealth if he offers the service to whoever is rich and still alive. It therefore seems logical that art markets and shows can mothball themselves for the time being.
tokioyoyo · 1h ago
> markets have returned back to normal
From my readings and general pulse checks, it’s quite the opposite. Old risk calculations have been thrown out, and there is no new normal. Everyone operates under the assumption that market is god, and it will be bailed out in case if things go sideways, so exposure to equity is high.
jdkee · 1h ago
Gold hit a record high priced in USD today.
neilv · 3h ago
> Now that the bubble has burst, the speculators are out of the picture, off flipping meme coins, where no one makes them feel inadequate or insists that they buy three things they don’t want to get the one thing they do.
> “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” one collector-trader said. “And there’s no juice in the art market. It’s just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Rude, rude, rude.”
From what little I know of the NY art scene, by osmosis (by having an SO who previously was accomplished in it, and could mingle well at gallery openings and cocktail parties, infinitely better than I could ever learn to)...
I wonder whether the "rude, rude, rude" means that the market had come to depend on nouveau riche speculators (who'd typically have neither the intellectual and artistic background, nor old-money social graces/conventions).
If you didn't respect your customers, and didn't make them feel valued, then the ones who only cared about money or status games have other options.
TheOtherHobbes · 3h ago
This is very much a nouveau riche culture - infinite entitlement and self-importance that confuses marketing and narcissism for substance.
The same illness infected the art world, and it was no more sustainable there than anywhere else.
qwertytyyuu · 2h ago
Yeah if an artists needs to pay 50k rent + 50k staffing to show of their works something is wrong
ttoinou · 4h ago
Isn’t the money being invested in crypto instead? Rich people might prefer others better ways to protect their assets than the current art market
woodruffw · 4h ago
I think it’s a decade too late for that to be the dominating factor.
yieldcrv · 4h ago
from the article "Now that the bubble has burst, the speculators are out of the picture, off flipping meme coins, where no one makes them feel inadequate or insists that they buy three things they don’t want to get the one thing they do."
indigodaddy · 3h ago
Just go to the smaller/community art shows and you can usually find a couple or five really excellent artists who put their life into their work and will talk to you one on one vs these high priced pompous ego exhibitions like Art Basel.
Tewboo · 2h ago
The digital revolution is disrupting the art world, both for better and worse. It's fascinating to see how artists adapt.
krackers · 4h ago
Seems like a low interest rate phenomenon
nick49488171 · 4h ago
That Kristina Reischl image looks a lot like stone toss comics for some reason
sandspar · 2h ago
My city has a medium size art gallery. Every couple of years, the curators will hold their nose and run an exhibit by "dead white males": figurative painters like Rembrandt. The gallery becomes packed with people. Afterward the curators go back to their usual fare of "Iranian-American textile artists" or whatever; the gallery sees no visitors for months.
Bleeding money, the gallery recently laid off half their staff.
It's almost as if the curators would rather lose their jobs than exhibit art that the public enjoys.
causality0 · 3h ago
There are people who think the art world isn't 10% fools and 90% money laundering?
kazinator · 1h ago
The art world at large? Or the traditional business environment of pretentious art hucksters?
I just want to know the bottom line: is this good, bad or indifferent for the actual struggling artists. Or upside for some, downside for others? And, which struggling arists; how many out of the multitude associated with what outcome?
like_any_other · 1h ago
> The gallery had made international stars of artists like Harold Ancart, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and, more recently, Marguerite Humeau
I'll be blunt. I've looked at their works, and those in the article itself.
I won't be losing any sleep over this.
Mistletoe · 1h ago
My brother is an up and coming artist in his field and has had many pieces bought by a billionaire that collects art extensively and has an amazing world-renowned collection. The billionaire has stopped buying art this year. Not just from my brother but stopped buying art completely. And there are many others like that that have stopped buying. That’s one canary in the coal mine to add to my collection that something bad is likely coming. The rich always know first. I’m just hoping we can make it until 2026.
ungreased0675 · 4h ago
From the outside, so much of the art world looks like grifting and fraud. (Much like the NFT scene)
appreciatorBus · 3h ago
Good riddance.
Anything worthy of the concept of art isn't likely to be found in these places.
If you like making shit that looks cool and you want to sell it, have at it. Just please drop the intellectual pretence that anything other than "it looks cool" is going on.
yieldcrv · 4h ago
> The question is how to “get people to understand that art isn’t an asset class,” Schwartzmann added. “That’s not how you should be collecting,”
> Valentine said ... "Asking $20,000 for a work in an artist’s first show is unsustainable"
none of the separate participants in this article are willing to acknowledge that these are related problems.
there is no price discovery in the art world, and it was only just beginning to happen in the pandemic era flush with cash
when you question the price or try to find any rational trend, the gallery director gaslights you into the prior quote "you should just love the piece!" okay but why should I love it at this price "because it will be another price in the future!" but why will it be another price who sets that price "we the gallery do! it moves up over time!" how does that work "you should just love the piece!"
tart-lemonade · 3h ago
I have a painting of a commuter train I used to ride to work every day. It's not a conversation starter (or rather, I'm always the one who starts talking about it) but I love it because it reminds me of when I discovered that I didn't need to be a slave to my car and how freeing that was.
It cost me $50 and I've taken it with me every time I've moved.
I really don't get dropping thousands on a single piece, I've never felt any work speak that loudly to me.
Javantea_ · 1h ago
Yeah art has objective value and subjective value. Every once in a while you'll find something with a lot of subjective value. Finding something with both is also a thing but it's not easy to find them for a low price.
The reason that expensive art exists is because there's a market. The fact that the market is weird and in decline doesn't change the fact that wealthy people find art to be a worthwhile thing to buy.
fredophile · 3h ago
I think it depends on the piece. I have a piece that I love and spent about $5k on. It's relatively large and has a lot of detail. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the equivalent of a month's work full time for the artist so the price seems reasonable to me.
devilbunny · 3h ago
I didn’t end up buying it - it went for a price I could afford but did not want to pay - but I have seen an original Al Bean painting. Twelve men walked on the moon. One painted it. If it had gone for $10k it would have been mine.
wordpad · 3h ago
I'm sure there is some art you'd shell out for. Maybe an original prop from your favorite movie or a collectors item from a time period you're nostalgic for...
relaxing · 3h ago
price discovery happens at auction.
otherwise yes, it’s the gallery’s job to preserve a level of value for the artist, and they work hard to maintain the house cards.
timcobb · 3h ago
> The question is how to “get people to understand that art isn’t an asset class,” he added.
Got to love 'late stage capitalism'
a_bonobo · 3h ago
What isn't an asset class for sale these days, with horrible consequences? Health? Housing? Water? Knowledge?
cubefox · 4h ago
> Another revealing indicator: Soho Art Materials, a popular art-supplies company in New York that works with artists and galleries, traces the sector’s decline to the summer of 2022. The firm’s sales began falling gradually and then in June 2023 dropped 20 percent from the previous month, according to Jonathan Siegel, a co-owner. The company was stretching 700 to 1,000 canvases annually for three years, starting in 2020; it now does about 200 a year, he said.
It might be a stretch, but Dall-E 2 came out in April 2022.
TheOtherHobbes · 3h ago
It's a stretch. Basically the speculators moved into NFTs, which scratched the gambling itch, and NFTs and other forms of crypto made money laundering much more straightforward.
The art part of the market - in the sense of original creativity that means something to someone - had become a footnote. And large parts of it were more about performance than craft.
So resale values collapsed, and now everyone is walking through the rubble and wondering if there's anything left to rebuild.
AI is both completely irrelevant to this and absolutely central, but for non-obvious reasons.
I'm not sure this particular phenomenon can be explained this way. For example, antiques auctions are doing quite well, with prices rising quite briskly year after year. There's still plenty of money chasing the kinds of long-term investments you can hold in your hand, put on a shelf, and show to your friends.
Jewelry sales are doing fine too.
There are other reasons why going to a fancy gallery in London to buy some decor for your mansion just isn't as tempting as it used to be a decade or two decades ago.
https://www.resourcefulfinancepro.com/news/irs-section-174-c...
I don't know what causes bubbles to pop, but I don't think it's directly related to US monetary policy. I suspect that the bubble just moved elsewhere.
While canvas, sculpture, and other media are far removed from jpegs, the scarcity of adjacent digital forms going away may have reduced the interest in the market for "shaped aesthetic things".
The attention, and thus money, has moved elsewhere.
When wars are going on, most people in affected countries are thinking about heavier things than going to an art exhibit and boosting their collections.
2020 and 2021 was when the pandemic happened. Businesses started feeling the crunch all over the world from the lockdowns. Supply chains got bullwhipped. People weren’t exactly interested in going to buy artworks after their one-time UBI checks and PPP funds ran out. And other countries didn’t send those out at all.
Oh yeah, and AI has now sent a supply shock to the whole art industry. But we can’t say that on HN, there will always be someone popping out of the woodwork claiming AI is a non-factor and saying things were always like that.
My sincerest desire is that there’s a peaceful resolution to this conflict before they’re forced to realize it.
Collectibles are very tricky. You want to buy something that isn't a fad. Like a movie prop, you'd want to buy the 100% most legendary movie that is timeless, like something from Casablanca, that has been appreciated decade-after-decade as worthwhile and valuable across many generations and fads. I wouldn't buy an expensive sports or trading card. Something related to Western culture is much safer, like the Magna Carta, or a founding US-related historical document. It's very hard to predict what will remain valuable decades or centuries out, so if something is still valuable now after centuries, it is likely to remain valuable
A lot of collectors are trying to find something they can buy for cheap and then sell when it goes up in price by a lot. If you want that, you have to pick something that hasn't had its price hit an equilibrium yet. You need to take a risk on something new.
Speculators are just trying to buy low and sell high. Investing has overlap with speculating, but it's generally more long term.
I think this is important to understand when considering buying collectables. You have to know the different types of people you're bidding against, whether it's an out of print magic the gathering card or a painting.
No idea the price, but I would much prefer this to a Charizard pokemon card!
I agree that trying to make money from collectibles is not the best way to make money. But then if you aren't buying collectibles for money, your first comment doesn't follow; you should collect things you want to collect yourself, which means it shouldn't matter their ability to hold value.
If you are into something, buy all means buy it. I just mean if you are a dispassionate investor looking for a return it is a pretty poor area to invest in. But if you like something - art, pokemon, whatever - just do what you love
It would be tempting to see if there is a correlation in when the “legit” art world price going off a cliff and the NFT bubble, because that suckered in a lot of the idiot end of the speculator crowd.
If you don't let people hold onto cash, they will just find something else to replace it (and of course, it is always the lower classes that have to suffer the secret taxation that is money supply inflation targets).
If I had to guess, on average works of art go down in value, simply because of how much is produced.
>Some random pieces blowing up in value if the artist becomes famous later, but most would go nowhere.
That's exactly where speculation comes from. It's the same as any form of gambling. On average you're losing money, but every once in a while one lucky guy makes off like a bandit.
> A recent pilot by KPMG, Merck, Walmart and IBM using blockchain injects new trust into the system by reducing the time it takes to trace prescription drugs from 16 weeks to just two seconds.
It was impressive how many people uncritically took these claims as facts.
[1] https://www.ibm.com/solutions/blockchain-supply-chain
[Stares aggressively in the direction of gen AI.]
The problem is that that relationship doesn't exist and is impossible. If someone wants to tamper with a supply chain, all they need to do is tamper with the real world without letting that reflect on the ledger. And that destroys the entire point of the concept.
without any enforcement with sanctioned violence, this is merely symbolic. It's why so much scam happens with the NFT space.
My web browser has a novel and advanced attack on the cryptosystem built into it I have dubbed the right-click-copy-image attack.
I’ve even managed to replicate it on my phone.
Nobody cares about your precious little certificate, but if it makes you happy, buy it.
In a way, we are actually in a golden age. I lurk on social media accounts of amateur art enthusiasts around the globe with (IMHO) good taste who seek out interesting little known artists and post it on their feeds. I am introduced to so much great art that I probably would have never known about otherwise. If I see something I like, I search for the artist online and see if they have something available in their portfolio for sale that I love.
I’ve bought amazing art from talented artists around the globe that speak no common language with me. We get it done (Google Translate to the rescue). I don’t filter on price but virtually everything I’ve bought is always in a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars range. The fact that you can talk to the artist just adds to the story.
Forget the “tastemakers” in art. I can give my money to excellent artists directly, including many that never attracted the attention of tastemakers or who weren’t deemed worthy by said people. I received a huge piece from Denmark today. The whole experience is lovely and the artists really appreciate that someone loves their work. This is the future.
That said, I feel this article is really about our active recession. Rich people are cutting back too it seems.
https://www.instagram.com/piperbangs/
https://www.instagram.com/lauren.krasnoff/
https://www.instagram.com/artcarolinegaudreault/
https://www.instagram.com/gretchen_scherer/
https://www.instagram.com/jakeclarkjakeclark/
https://www.instagram.com/hilary_pecis/
And curating:
https://www.instagram.com/carriescottcurates/
https://www.instagram.com/mary_lynn_buchanan/
And I get it. Not everybody is going to make a website or blog or whatever. But it totally sucks that everybody and their dog is on instagram and it’s like this walled garden club that you just can’t access if you don’t want to support Facebook. The internet is cool! Why did we make it suck!!
I wonder if the instagram API lets you download enough data to make a public mirror of a user’s posts. It’d be cool to make a service that does something like that. Help people break their instagram dependency. Not that any meaningful amount of people would care to use it lol
My favorite piece acquired in the last few months is Olivier Neuray’s “L’Empire des Lumières”. Not everyone is going to appreciate it.
[0] https://www.lseg.com/en/risk-intelligence/financial-crime-ri...
"I've got an exciting bag-holding opportunity that you don't want to miss."
I do see that there are too many galleries in places, selling too many artists, to too many people, with massive overhead (in the story, the gallery had $100k+ a month in expenses). Also, it's hard to make something new that is still saleable, almost every kind of art is basically something people did 50 or even 100 years ago; I look at art people are selling all the time, and most is not anything different. The best stuff is from people that hardly anyone knows, who like me just make something different because they want to.
I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit. I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there. Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries). Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
Mentioned it here before, https://andrewwulf.com if interested.
I'm far from an expert, but I do occasionally buy original artwork. The sheer multitude of works you are displaying (more than one a day!) devalues what you are doing. It suggests that these can be churned out with relatively little effort.
If you are really posting this for other people, and not just yourself, try posting fewer pieces. If you had to pick the single best work from July, which one would it be? If nothing stands out to you, then how is a potential customer supposed to pick you out from the crowd of similar artists?
I personally like the Persistence of Structure series, but they're each pretty interchangeable.
Let's be honest here: the craft here is not on the images themselves. It's on the algorithms that are producing them. A solution to the problem of quantity would be to make the algorithms available to play with. I could see someone going "okay, I want something sort of like [1], but made my own. I'll toy with the parameters until I get something I like and then order a print." Two or three sample images for each algorithm, instead of six years' worth of images, would work way better.
[1] https://andrewwulf.com/detail/the-pinecone.html
Honestly though, unless you’re pretty much only selling in person or too small to notice, someone is probably just going to rip you off using AI and sell shitty knockoffs on Etsy
You dropped me onto a page with no sense of range or scope. Clicking around results in some very "odd" perceptions about what it is your putting out.
Categorize them so they can be filtered (colored, geometric, organic), load randomly by those tags or at least put a breadth of samples out front.
I like your stuff, but you need to have a better introduction and better access for it.
Reading your comment, it sounds like you are actively sabotaging yourself by convincing yourself that you shouldn't just try (perhaps due to a subconscious fear of rejection). How do you get an audience if you don't actively promote your work and/or try to sell them?
There is no guarantee that you will "succeed" (whatever that looks like to you — success could mean having a lot of people appreciate your work and/or selling your art for lots of money) if you try your hardest but if you don't try you will never succeed at all. I'll break down the second last paragraph as an example below.
> I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit.
Audience don't just suddenly appear because you have created something. You need to put in the effort to create an audience to begin with.
> I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there.
You need an incredible amount of luck for people to just "discover" your work and just suddenly like it (especially with abstract art?), so having need "to drag people there" is just what you should do if you want exposure for your work whether or not you host them on saatchiart.com.
Don't fall into the trap of "if you build it, they will come".
Focus on creating a compelling narrative behind your art and keep iterating to attract a small, loyal audience first (1000 people is already a lot).
> Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries).
This is irrelevant if nobody knows your work and would buy them to begin with. It's just another excuse to not try. By the time this is a problem you can migrate to something more personal. Many people that support independent artists want the artists they like to get more money from them.
> Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
I enjoy engaging with artists at markets because the personal connection with them is actually the most valuable thing for me and the most compelling reason for me to make purchases. I also appreciate the artists who show up consistently at related events particular those who remember me well, which also becomes a reason for me to introduce their work to my friends.
Good luck with your work and I hope you will find success with it! ^^
I have found that the higher priced galleries seem to sell worse art. The emperor has no clothes. And just like the Impressionists revolted against the Academy, us artist shall revolt at the Art market system that says “your work only matters if you have an MFA from a top school”.
For mainstream "rich person" art, all of this is outsourced. Curators discover the artist, promote the work, and set the price. Glossy trade journals tells you what the artwork means and how to talk about it to others in a way that's more erudite than any thoughts you can form on your own. Your function, really, is just to show up with money and then hang the piece.
I think there are exceptions. "Commoner" art marketed to middle-class buyers is obviously not as uptight. And patronage is still a thing, and the internet is, in some respects, lowering the bar.
Seems like it’s not an art problem but an art dealer problem. If you rent a $100k/month restaurant space that seats 20 people, is the food industry dying if you can’t turn a profit and close?
Just one example, one of the biggest Canadian collectors of contemporary art is condo marketer Bob Rennie, who during the foreign wealth lead boom in Canadian real estate, was making so much money that he opened up an entire personal downtown museum to show off his art works.
After layers of regulation against foreign buying amongst many other shifts in the economy (hi interest rates), condo sales are now in retreat with developers on the ropes and Rennie Marketing laying off staff.
Things change.
(I have no idea if Rennie has stopped buying, but given the sorts of big shifts in his industry, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd eased off!)
Etsy and reddit are easy ways to find rather good art for what I can tell is a consistent price based on the size of the piece.
The only time I 'browse' art offline is during special events, which have all been wander from house to house or small art studio to studio. I love the experience, it's much more personal as you know the artist will be there and you can discuss the piece with them.
From my readings and general pulse checks, it’s quite the opposite. Old risk calculations have been thrown out, and there is no new normal. Everyone operates under the assumption that market is god, and it will be bailed out in case if things go sideways, so exposure to equity is high.
> “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” one collector-trader said. “And there’s no juice in the art market. It’s just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Rude, rude, rude.”
From what little I know of the NY art scene, by osmosis (by having an SO who previously was accomplished in it, and could mingle well at gallery openings and cocktail parties, infinitely better than I could ever learn to)...
I wonder whether the "rude, rude, rude" means that the market had come to depend on nouveau riche speculators (who'd typically have neither the intellectual and artistic background, nor old-money social graces/conventions).
If you didn't respect your customers, and didn't make them feel valued, then the ones who only cared about money or status games have other options.
The same illness infected the art world, and it was no more sustainable there than anywhere else.
Bleeding money, the gallery recently laid off half their staff.
It's almost as if the curators would rather lose their jobs than exhibit art that the public enjoys.
I just want to know the bottom line: is this good, bad or indifferent for the actual struggling artists. Or upside for some, downside for others? And, which struggling arists; how many out of the multitude associated with what outcome?
I'll be blunt. I've looked at their works, and those in the article itself.
I won't be losing any sleep over this.
Anything worthy of the concept of art isn't likely to be found in these places.
If you like making shit that looks cool and you want to sell it, have at it. Just please drop the intellectual pretence that anything other than "it looks cool" is going on.
> Valentine said ... "Asking $20,000 for a work in an artist’s first show is unsustainable"
none of the separate participants in this article are willing to acknowledge that these are related problems.
there is no price discovery in the art world, and it was only just beginning to happen in the pandemic era flush with cash
when you question the price or try to find any rational trend, the gallery director gaslights you into the prior quote "you should just love the piece!" okay but why should I love it at this price "because it will be another price in the future!" but why will it be another price who sets that price "we the gallery do! it moves up over time!" how does that work "you should just love the piece!"
It cost me $50 and I've taken it with me every time I've moved.
I really don't get dropping thousands on a single piece, I've never felt any work speak that loudly to me.
The reason that expensive art exists is because there's a market. The fact that the market is weird and in decline doesn't change the fact that wealthy people find art to be a worthwhile thing to buy.
otherwise yes, it’s the gallery’s job to preserve a level of value for the artist, and they work hard to maintain the house cards.
Got to love 'late stage capitalism'
It might be a stretch, but Dall-E 2 came out in April 2022.
The art part of the market - in the sense of original creativity that means something to someone - had become a footnote. And large parts of it were more about performance than craft.
So resale values collapsed, and now everyone is walking through the rubble and wondering if there's anything left to rebuild.
AI is both completely irrelevant to this and absolutely central, but for non-obvious reasons.