With the inauguration of Art Basel, buyers face a “cooling” but still very active market

Basel, Switzerland – Multimillion-dollar works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama and Alberto Giacometti were put on the market this week with the opening of the Art Basel fair in Switzerland.

Thousands of people flooded the exhibition center for VIP previews before the doors opened to the public on Thursday. Arriving guests strolled through a large square filled with wheat stalks that resembled a field, a work by conceptual artist Agnes Denes that was first performed in 1982.

More than 280 international galleries exhibited everything from paintings and sculptures to video installations and performance art.

“Art Basel is like the Super Bowl of the art world,” said art market expert Magnus Resch.

The Art Market Report 2024, published by Art Basel and Swiss investment bank UBS, concluded that sales fell 4% year on year in 2023, to around $65 billion, in a context of high interest rates, inflation and political instability.

Sales were particularly weaker at the upper end of the market.

“We’ve seen a bit of a slowdown,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Once the buzz of the art world, sales of art-related NFTs – or non-fungible tokens – on NFT platforms outside of the art market has declined dramatically, according to the report, from a peak of $2.9 billion in 2021 to $1.2 billion last year.

But there is still enthusiasm. The report found that transaction volume grew 4% in 2023, driven by sales at lower price levels.

“We’re not seeing art sales plummet off the edge of a cliff or anything like that,” Donovan said. “So ‘cool it’ is probably the right way to think about what’s going on.”

Austrian gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac said: “I think people are now reflecting a little more, taking a little time, but they are still very, very active.”

Some rejected any harsh analysis. In an opening day sales report, the president of the international gallery Hauser & Wirth’s Iwan Wirth described it as “doom porn,” while New York’s Sean Kelly said the market had already turned a corner since last year.

“There is always something to worry about. But the market has proven to be extremely resilient,” said Kelly.