PARIS, Jan. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- For the sake of
coherence, clarity and transparency, Artprice's editorial team has
always divided Art History into five main periods with artworks
being classified according to a simple and indisputable
criterion... the birth year of their creators:
- 'Old Masters' … artists born up until 1760
- '19th century' ... artists born from 1760 to 1860
- 'Modern' … artists born from 1860 to 1920
- 'Post-War' … artists born between 1920 and
1945
- 'Contemporary' … artists born after 1945
As time advances, the period we refer to as 'Contemporary Art'
is getting longer. It now covers artists as diverse as Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and
Oscar Murillo (b. 1986),
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) and Kaws (b.
1974), Martin Kippenberger
(1953-1997) and Cory Arcangel (b.
1978). On the other hand, our classification excludes Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), David Hockney (b. 1937) and El Anatsui (b.
1944).
According to thierry Ehrmann, Artprice's founder and CEO of
ArtMarket.com: "An objective 'periodization' of Art History helps
us to study the market, its structure and its evolution, even if it
means distinguishing – far too categorically sometimes – what is
Contemporary from what is not. But the fact that
Maurizio Cattelan generates
thousands more Instagram posts than Marcel
Duchamp and that a work by Kaws is suddenly as expensive as
the best paintings by Pierre
Soulages naturally raises numerous questions about the
trends and contradictions that drive the Art Market, but also about
the very notion of Contemporary art."
In art, 'Contemporary' doesn't mean 'alive today'...
How should we label the œuvres of Yayoi
Kusama (b. 1929) or of Pierre
Soulages (who has just celebrated his 100th birthday)?
Although their careers began shortly after WWII, Kusama and
Soulages produced some of their best works long after the
deaths of Keith Haring and
Jean-Michel Basquiat… And yet, on the Art Market, Kusama's
and Soulages's prices are growing gradually whereas those of
Jean-Michel Basquiat, for example,
are still posting substantial volatility.
Perhaps we should see Contemporary art quite simply as art that
has not yet become perfectly established. That's the fundamental
difference between Marcel Duchamp
and Maurizio Cattelan, between
Duchamp's Fontaine (1919) et Cattelan's Comedian
(2019). Whereas Duchamp's famous urinal remains controversial, few
question its place in Art History, whereas Cattelan's banana taped
to the wall still has a long way to go before it is accepted.
This distinction remains ambiguous for certain artists. Look at
Jeff Koons – there is a good chance today his work will be seen as
having singularly marked the latter decades of the 20th century and
his Rabbit (1986) sculpture is clearly already considered a
kind of 'classic'. However, his creations are still causing serious
controversy and his approach to art has not yet been fully
accepted. The recent Appeal Court ruling that Koons plagiarized the
work of a French photographer in his work Naked (1988) is
just the latest in a series of obstacles the American artist has
faced.
Our birth-year analysis (based on 2019 results) throws up
three exceptional dates... 1955, 1960 and 1974.
Born on the East coast of the United
States exactly 10 years after WWII, Jeff Koons and
Christopher Wool make 1955 the best
'vintage' in our Contemporary Art results ranking filtered by
year-of-birth. Neither have ever represented the USA at the Venice Biennale, but their works
have been acquired by major American museums for decades. Two other
artists also made a significant contribution to the results of the
1955 vintage: Kerry James Marshall
(born in Alabama), who has ranked
among the world's Top 100 artists by annual auction turnover (all
periods combined) over the past two years, and the Chinese artist,
Zhou Chunya.
With an annual auction total of $129
million in 2019, Jean-Michel
Basquiat still dominates the Contemporary Art Market. Almost
alone, he made 1960 one of the best 'vintages' of the second half
of the 20th century. Glenn Ligon,
the second best performing artist born in 1960, contributed only
$1.9 million.
Curiously, the new stars of Street Art, Kaws and Banksy, were
both born in 1974, on either side of the Atlantic… Kaws in
Jersey City in the USA, and Banksy in Bristol, England.
So, despite its lack of flexibility and its limitations, the
historical classification adopted by Artprice remains coherent with
the auction results recorded in 2019 (filtered by birth-year). If a
new start date were to be chosen for the 'Contemporary' category,
it could be argued that the year 1965 would be a logical separation
date. However, the continuing market volatility on works by several
major artists born during the 20 years prior to 1965 – Albert
Oehlen (b. 1954), Rudolf Stingel (b.
1956), Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958) and
Damien Hirst (b. 1965) – suggests
that their positions in Art History are still not yet fully
established.
Copyright 1987-2020 thierry Ehrmann
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