Contemporary Market Structure
The late 1980s were a boom period for art auction houses. However, in early 1990, the market collapsed. The USA overtook the EU as the world's largest art market with a global share of 47 per cent by 2001. Ranking second, the UK's world market share hovers around 25 per cent. In continental Europe, France was the market leader while in Asia, Hong Kong continues its dominance. France’s share of the art market has been progressively eroded since the 1950s, when it was the dominant location and sales at Drouot surpassed those of Sotheby’s and Christie’s combined. In 2004, the global fine art market turnover was estimated at almost $3 billion. Art auction sales reached a record $2.4 billion in 2007, fueled by speculative bidding for artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince. Christie's and Sotheby's are the leading auction venues. In 2002, LVMH acquired Swiss art advisory firm de Pury & Luxembourg and merged it with Phillips to form Phillips de Pury & Company, with the aim of breaking the duopoly at the top of the market.
Read more about this topic: Art Auction
Famous quotes containing the words contemporary, market and/or structure:
“Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“... married women work and neglect their children because the duties of the homemaker become so depreciated that women feel compelled to take a job in order to hold the respect of the community. It is one thing if women work, as many of them must, to help support the family. It is quite another thing—it is destructive of woman’s freedom—if society forces her out of the home and into the labor market in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)