The Art Auction Market Faces Cold Winds... Total Winning Bids Decreased by 28.6% Last Year

Korean Art Appraisal Research Center Report "Worsening This Year"
Last Year's Offline Auction Sales 126.1 Billion KRW, Down 28.6% from Previous Year
Fewer Attractive Works Suggests More Difficult Year Ahead

There is a forecast that the domestic art market, which entered a correction phase last year, could worsen further. On the 27th, the Korea Art Authentication Research Center (representatives Lee Hosuk and Jung Junmo) analyzed in the '2023 Annual Art Market Report' that the current domestic art market remains in a strong correction phase. This is due to global inflation, high interest rates, and consecutive slowdowns in global economic growth forecasts. Additionally, ongoing political and geopolitical conflicts and tensions in the international community, as well as climate issues, were seen as having negative impacts.

This photo is for illustrative purposes only and is unrelated to the article content. [Photo source=Pixabay]

Considering the characteristic of the domestic market demand that perceives auction results as a barometer of the market, the outlook for the domestic market was described as bleak. The narrowing of artist portfolios within the structure of the domestic art market, where transactions were concentrated on a few artists, was identified as the cause.

Last year, the total offline auction sales in the domestic art market amounted to 126.171 billion KRW, a 28.6% decrease compared to the previous year. The number of auctioned works also decreased by 15.4% to 1,973 pieces, and the auction success rate fell by 8.1 percentage points to 70.4%. Looking only at the auctions of the two major domestic auction companies, Seoul Auction and K Auction, the total auction sales last year were 98.63 billion KRW, a 41.0% decrease compared to the same period the previous year. Works sold for over 1 billion KRW included 17 pieces by Lee Ufan, Yayoi Kusama, Yoo Youngkuk, Kim Whanki, Park Seo-bo, and traditional art.

2023 Domestic Art Auction Market Total Sales Amount Increase/Decrease [Photo source excerpted from '2023 Annual Art Market Analysis Report']

The center analyzed, "The structural limitation of the domestic art market, where transactions were concentrated on a few artists, seems to have directed the artist portfolio to narrow further during the correction market. From the difficulty of finding purchasable works in the market, it can be predicted that the art market will worsen beyond the current state."

The report also diagnosed that a cold wind blew through some overseas art auction markets. Last year, the total auction sales at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips amounted to 11.16 billion USD (including buyer's premiums), down 18.8% from the previous year. Compared to 2021, this was about 8.9% lower, but approximately 11.6% higher than before the 2019 pandemic.

However, as sales of low-priced works such as prints and edition artworks (artworks that can be produced in multiples) increased, the number of works sold rose from 108,832 in 2022 to 114,914 last year. The total sales amount of the top 100 works ranked by high auction prices decreased from about 4.1 billion USD in 2022 to about 2.4 billion USD in 2023.

In the case of ultra-high-priced works, in 2023, two works?Pablo Picasso's and Gustav Klimt's ?were sold for over 100 million USD, whereas six works were sold in 2022. In 2023 as well, transactions were concentrated on ultra-high-priced works, with the total amount of the top 25 auctioned works exceeding the combined total of works ranked 100 to 500.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.