Q1 2026 Auction Recap: The Market Didn’t Break. It Just Got Pickier.
Three cities, four evening sales, one message. The lots that deserved to sell, sold. The rest were quietly withdrawn, bought-in, or sent to private.
Seven Artists to Watch Into 2027 — and What Would Invalidate Each Thesis
Not a shopping list. A set of trades with disciplined exits. The names, the catalysts, and the evidence that would tell you to walk away.
The Gerhard Richter Audit: Why the Safest Name in Postwar Is Also the Slowest
Richter still anchors museum collections and auction leaderboards. But liquidity has quietly thinned, and the investor math is no longer automatic.
How to Read an Auction Result (the Way Pros Actually Do It)
Price isn’t a number. It’s a tuple of estimate, guarantee, buyer’s premium, and market context. We unpack what you should see when you look at a sale card.
The NFT Hangover Isn’t Over. It’s Just Quieter.
The crypto-native art market has not died. It has been absorbed into an older conversation about digital scarcity — and its prices reflect that demotion.
The Death of Flipping Has Been Announced Before. This Time Is Actually Different.
Lockups, resale rights, and dealer blacklists have made the short-hold trade structurally uneconomic. The market is finally rewriting the incentives.
The Hockney Trade: Everyone Owns One, Almost Nobody Is Buying
A granular look at Hockney’s secondary market: where the bid is, what’s drying up, and why his mid-1990s works are quietly the category to watch.
The Ten-Year Hold: Why Art Is a Bad Investment on Any Shorter Timeline
If you’re not comfortable owning the work for a decade, you are not investing. You are speculating. Those are different products with different risk profiles.
Asian Collectors Aren’t Coming Back. They Already Rebuilt the Market.
The narrative that ‘Asian demand is returning’ misreads the data. The flows never left — they moved channels, time zones, and artist preferences.
The Koons Paradox: The Most Famous Artist Almost Nobody Wants to Hold
Jeff Koons remains a household name and a collector punchline. We audit the numbers behind a career that looks triumphant and trades like a cautionary tale.