Hockney’s Multiple Market: Deep, Complex and Volatile

Last week, the folks at Artnet published some data on David Hockney’s market, including a breakout of the sales of Hockney’s prints and multiples. Turns out the Hockney multiples market has more complexity and volatility than market for his paintings.

Colin Gleadell went into greater detail. He points out that Hockney’s penchant for trying new media has meant that his multiples market is also segmented by collectors who are interested in the specific experiments made possible by each of the mediums.

He breaks it down thus:

The most expensive are the Paper Pool series, made in the late 1970s out of paper pulp, though they are not strictly prints. When they first came out they cost about £20,000 each and have since fetched as much £1 million at auction.

The most expensive pure prints have been his large colourful Los Angeles lithographs of the 1980s, such as Caribbean Feature, which were highly sought after by the Japanese in the late 1980s art boom, and sold for as much as $275,000. That boom then went bust, and is only now beginning to recover those levels.

The etchings, particularly the early ones, are less obviously decorative and are more of a connoisseur’s market, says Ingram. At the moment they seem very reasonably priced, from £12,000 to £30,000 in this exhibition. When Hockney made A Rake’s Progress, his dealer, Kasmin, sold the etchings for about £500 each. Now a complete set of the 16 prints would be worth over £250,000 says Ingram.

There’s more in the Telegraph. So click through for the details.

David Hockney: the revolutionary prints that won’t be at the Tate (Telegraph)

David Hockney’s Market Soars Ahead of Major Retrospective  (artnet News)