This analysis of the 12 years of Contemporary Art Evening sales at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips was made possible with data from our friends at Pi-eX. It is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscriptions begin with a free month for the curious. (Please note: these numbers do not include single-owner and curated sales that have punctuated the market at various times. The point of these charts is to show year-over-year changes and so the single-owner and curated sales are thought to interfere with a consistent comparison.)
Continuing our look at the last 12 years of Evening sales, we've got data fro Pi-eX on the Contemporary Evening sales from 207-2018. The familiar three-phase pattern we described for the broader market is visible again here (because the Contemporary market composes a large portion of the overall art market and the Evening sales volume.)
Seeing the reduced number of lots sold over the last three years comes as no surprise. But it does confirm the significant shift in the Contemporary art market from the trophy market that dominated the years 2010-2015.
The consistent number of lots sold during the 2010-15 period and the 2016-18 period did not yield a consistent dollar volume. In the chart below, we can see the rising value of the Evening sale lots sold.
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