At Sotheby’s, Mark Rothko\u2019s 1957 abstract Brown and Blacks in Reds, from the estate of the late New York dealer Robert Mnuchin<\/a>, made $85.7m, again backed by a third party. At least 20 lots by big 20th-century names like Picasso, Mondrian, Twombly, De Kooning, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Basquiat and Richter were estimated at $30m or more at this latest season of New York auctions.<\/p>\n It would appear that the much-discussed multi-trillion Great Wealth Transfer of assets from one generation to another is in full swing. The grim reaper is freeing up blue-chip 20th-century trophies to reinvigorate the top end of the auction market. But what about the supply of younger, so-called \u201cred-chip\u201d 21st-century works that generated so much of the speculative energy in the market in the early 2020s?<\/p>\n Sotheby\u2019s 45-lot The Now & Contemporary evening auction contained just two works by artists aged under 40. Christie\u2019s equivalent 31-lot evening sale featured just one lot by an artist in that age group. <\/p>\n Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i\u2019s Dana\u00efde was one of the key pieces in Christie\u2019s New York auction in May \u00a9\u00a0Succession Brancusi; courtesy of Christie\u2019s Images<\/p>\n Even Phillips\u2019s New York evening sale<\/a>\u2014which, in recent years, had become a favourite platform for speculators to profitably resell, or \u201cflip\u201d, works by fashionable young artists\u2014had little to offer in terms of red-chips. Dinner, a 2019 painting by the market darling Anna Weyant, which sold for $980,400, <\/strong>was the lone entry from an under-40-year-old among Phillips\u2019s 42 lots.<\/p>\n \u201cCutting-edge works suffer in a volatile economy,\u201d says Matthew Stephenson, a London-based art adviser specialising in 20th-century and contemporary works. \u201cThere isn\u2019t much on the market at the moment. The auction houses know they\u2019re going to struggle with it.\u201d He adds, \u201cThe market has gone back to blue-chip Modern and classic contemporary. The challenge is to find truly great examples. There\u2019s such a dividend for the best of the 20th century. But there\u2019s just a handful of buyers, and that generation is ageing.\u201d<\/p>\n The most recent quarterly Contemporary Art Market Confidence Report for the US and Europe conducted by the London-based analysts ArtTactic<\/a>, published in April, indicated yawning divergences in confidence levels not only between the secondary market for art (60 points out of 100) and general confidence in the economy (15), but also the secondary and primary market (45) for contemporary art. Based on survey responses from a relatively small sample of business insiders, the first divergence reflects the ever-widening gap in wealth between the asset-rich, art-owning (and art-selling) class and \u201cordinary\u201d wage-earners. The latter reflects a surge in auction resales of contemporary art\u2014mainly classic contemporary works made between 1950 and 2000\u2014contrasting with a drop in demand for new works offered by galleries. Back in February 2022, the primary market confidence indicator was 91 points, slightly above that for the secondary market.<\/p>\n The speculative froth has been taken off the entire market, except for a few pockets <\/p>\n Alain Servais, collector<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Eroding confidence<\/p>\n \u201cThe speculative froth has been taken off the entire art market, except a few pockets. The gap between primary and secondary is unmistakably visible,\u201d says Alain Servais, a prominent Brussels-based contemporary art collector. \u201cThere is definitely a big transfer underlying the auctions. Many of my fellow collectors are looking to liquidate or at least reduce their collections,\u201d adds Servais, who cites soaring storage costs as a key factor. \u201cIt ensures a steady flow of good quality material to auctions.\u201d<\/p>\n For Servais and many other collectors, the widening gap between the prices \u201cAt Art Basel Hong Kong<\/a>, I was recently offered a work by an artist with multiple museum solo exhibitions for $85,000. Just days earlier, I had acquired a comparable work by the same artist, with a better, earlier date, at Phillips for $5,000,\u201d Servais says. \u201cHow can you build a growing market on such prices?\u201d<\/p>\n Such out-of-kilter pricing, resulting from the onerous expense of running bricks-and-mortar spaces and participating in art fairs, has been blamed for the recent spate of gallery closures, culminating in the shuttering of the London- and New York-based Stephen Friedman Gallery in February.<\/p>\n And yet there still seems to be life in the contemporary primary market, if buyers feel works are not overpriced. In April, for instance, London\u2019s Josh Lilley gallery held a sell-out show of 12 new paintings by the widely exhibited British figurative artist Nick Goss. The works, inspired by the legendarily louche Eel Pie Hotel on the River Thames, which was destroyed by fire in the 1970s, were pitched at \u00a355,000 to \u00a365,000, just slightly above the artist\u2019s current auction high of \u00a350,800, set last June.<\/p>\n \u201cFor quality artists who have built up a reputation and who continue to produce interesting work, the market for them feels robust,\u201d says Lilley, commenting on his sixth solo show devoted to Goss. \u201cBut there are less people in the room. I\u2019ve had a lot of advisers saying they\u2019re concentrating on blue-chip and scaling back,\u201d says Lilley.<\/p>\n If buyers turn away from today\u2019s art in favour of the tried and trusted 20th-century names, where does this leave growth in the market? Where does that leave contemporary art and artists?<\/p>\n Wealthy collectors could of course pay higher and higher prices for the most desirable works by Picasso, Warhol, Rothko, De Kooning et al. But for how long can that kind of price expansion be sustained as the Boomer-generation buyers die off and their kind of art becomes less and less desirable and relateable to succeeding generations? Why pay $15m for a Warhol Brigitte Bardot silkscreen if you\u2019ve never heard of Brigitte Bardot?<\/p>\n Certainly initiatives like LGD Hammer, the boutique auction platform set up in May by the top-end secondary market dealership L\u00e9vy Gorvy Dayan, suggest today\u2019s wealthy are currently in no hurry to spend their millions on blue-chip 20th century art. The gallery hoped that by offering the 1984 De Kooning abstract<\/a>, Milkmaid, estimated at $10m-$15m, for a limited time to a select group of competing clients, some urgency might be added to a lacklustre private sales trade.<\/p>\n A solo Banksy auction<\/p>\n LGD Hammer\u2019s methodology was similar to Lo\u00efc Gouzer\u2019s Fair Warning<\/a> auctions of high-value single lots. This May, Gouzer sold for $18m Girl and Balloon on Found Landscape from Banksy\u2019s 2012 Crude Oils series in a pop-up, invitation-only sale at Tiffany & Co\u2019s flagship store in Manhattan. Outperformed its massive estimate of $13m, the eye-watering price only enhanced the irony of a modified chocolate-box painting by the world\u2019s most famous outsider artist being auctioned in a gleaming temple to luxury consumerism.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9fa20d5ee7f0c90dd8c17aa7f6995707f90f74ec-497x1034.jpg\"\/)
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overhead-burdened galleries are asking for new works and the prices at which similar pieces by the same names can be acquired at auction is eroding confidence in the primary market for contemporary art.<\/p>\n