A Softening Art Market Has Hit Last Year’s Auction Stars
A group of young artists saw their prices spike on the secondary market, but a recent retreat in value signals a new phase.
Illustration: Josephine Ritschel
In late June a sepia-toned painting that resembled a giant tarot card went to auction at Phillips in London. The piece, Raft on Siren Sea, was painted in 2017 by Emily Mae Smith, an artist in Brooklyn, New York, whose work had recently spiked in price on the secondary market.
Her ascent started in 2018, when a painting consigned to a day sale sold for just under its $12,000 high estimate. By 2020 prices had climbed precipitously: One sold at auction for $187,500, three times its high estimate of $60,000. A year later her painting of an anthropomorphic broom sitting on an ice cube, Broom Life (2014), went for almost $1.6 million at Phillips Hong Kong.