Tendencies and Trends in the Art Market 2023

Central theme of 2023 has been global economic and political uncertainty, from which the art world was not insulated. The sales for artworks in 2023 plummeted, with inflation viewed as the primary contributing factor, followed by other macro issues such as taxes/duties and geopolitical considerations. According to the data from ArtTactic.com ‘The Art Market 2023’ report, there were lower artworks sales value, but higher artworks volume, as more buying activity took place at the lower end of the market in 2023.

A double-digit fall in auction sales already in the first half of the year underlined some of the challenges within the business. It was always going to be a challenging task to match or exceed last year’s record sales, and 2023 was no exception, particularly as both economic and geo-political headwinds continued throughout the whole year. For example, the auction sales results for Old Masters, Impressionist, Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, ended up at $5.76 billion in 2023, down 27% from 2022 and 12% lower than 2021, but 5.8% higher than 2019.  The weaker results in 2023 have largely been driven by a 30% fall in the number of $10m+ lots entering the market in 2023. However, the lower end of the market remained very active, with a 18% increase in the number of artworks sold below $50,000 in 2023.

Tim Schneider has been writing at The Art Newspaper that historically aggressive interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve over a 16-month stretch ending last July have tamped down inflation in the US, from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.1% in November 2023. The UK and European Union’s central banks both kept their high rates steady in December 2023, with the latter refusing to even hint at future cuts. This means borrowing money will stay expensive in these regions in 2024, limiting the capital reserves of the art collecting class. Meanwhile, China’s economy continues to look shaky amid its ongoing crisis in the market for real estate, with no strong reason to believe it will right itself soon. And numerous economists anticipate the UK will grow less than 1% in 2024. 

Also, T. Schneider in his future predictions says: “I can’t see global fine art sales under the hammer improving by more than 4% year-on-year without a strong rebound from at least two of the perennial top three national markets (the US, China and the UK). That doesn’t mean sales won’t modestly increase, just that they won’t surge by an attitude-resetting amount.”

Vivid example based on Lisson Gallery’s indefinite postponement of an Ai Weiwei show scheduled to open last November after a (since-deleted) social media post by the artist implied an anti-Arab bias in US policy and media coverage, showed changes in galleries' behaviour reacting to their artist's opinions. A strong attitude was depicted by Australia’s Anna Schwartz Gallery dropping the artist Mike Parr over his performance work that reportedly invoked ‘apartheid’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in regard to Israel’s political and military strategy in Gaza.

In-person buying has returned with a vengeance by now, with the vast majority of collectors purchasing through a dealer and most of those buying in person at their gallery
or premises. Nevertheless, collectors were travelling less, with an average attendance at four fairs in 2023 versus five in pre-pandemic 2019, based on The Survey of Global Collecting 2023, published by Art Basel and USB. Most collectors were motivated by personal pleasure and self-identity when it came to assembling their art collections; financial motivations were the second-highest prime motivator for buying artworks in 2023.

Youth has been another thread and took a strong position in the art market during 2023 as there was a marked difference in the interests and strategies deployed by younger galleries (those in business for less than three years), which are connecting with younger collectors and artists to a higher degree than their more established peers.

Despite an increased focus on digital art and other mediums in the last few years, by far the most activity and largest spending in 2023 by collectors on aggregate was in the traditional medium of paintings, with works on paper as the second-largest element. The need to point out works with palpable textures and material supports were especially popular. Abstract art was a genre that made strides in the secondary market in 2023. These works, which express intuitiveness with how the artists use shape, colour, form and line in their abstract imaginations, definitely were a trend in 2023, especially with their large-scale dimensions. Oversized artworks have been gaining popularity in recent years anyway, and this trend is expected to continue in 2024. Oversized pieces make a bold visual statement and offer the viewer an immersive experience, and 2023 proved that this is what the art buyers have been seeking solidly. Impasto or intertwining watercolours were some of other the most popular oversized artworks acquired by the public in 2023, too.

During the last few years, and 2023 has been no exemption, surrealism has maintained its dominance in contemporary art while suggesting the mysterious and incomprehensible beauty of the subconscious mind, full of creativity and inspiration. With the perfect harmony, surrealism has been coughing between rational vision and dreams, many of the world's leading museums, such as the Tate Modern in London and the Art Centre in Seoul, included surrealism and its leading artists in their exhibitions. As a trend, surrealism strengthened its position in 2023 from works with a particular emphasis on collective emotion, politics and feminism. 

Also, during the last twelve months, we continued witnessing a rise in textile-based art practices, as well as a continuous and strong appearance of ceramic art, broderie, sculptures and different material mixture techniques used in creating artwork. Many other styles are emerging as key tendencies that may have their moment in 2024 continuously.

A certain number of the digital artworks in collections were linked with an NFT in 2023. But after a huge wave of activity in 2021, interest and sales of art-related NFTs were much more subdued in 2022, and this decline continued into 2023, with the value and volume of sales falling on NFT platforms during the last twelve months. NFT in 2023 has been more of education and deployment in art market. The pandemic years were NFT boom, but in 2023, the frenzy for digital art subsided. NFT has remained of interest to experimental artists and curators, but the speculative market for them has slightly collapsed. The slowdown on these platforms parallels the loss in the share of digital art in collectors’ portfolios in 2023, as a greater number have anchored on more traditional and unique mediums, for example, already mentioned paintings. At the same time, new tools such as AI or the accessibility of NFTs have been transforming the way of creating and consuming art every day. Whether you are a seasoned collector or a budding one, these art trends are worth keeping an eye on to guide for future acquisitions. This has been what made it possible for investors and art collectors from many parts of the world to come together and share their art experiences in the digital universe. 

Another interesting thought in relation to digital media is video gaming which has been on the background of the art world for some decades already, but could be taking a different path in the near future. For example, Hans Ulrich Obrist is looking towards the work of artists who are rethinking notions of ownership, land, and the body in relation to futurity. He is particularly excited by video games. As he has explained, “Video games are to the 21st century what movies were to the 20th century, and novels to the 19th century. Today, it’s much easier for artists to develop their gaming environments. The art is a desire to understand what a world is. Now more than ever, the dream is to be able to possess the agency to create new worlds.” 

Technology will continue to be a trend! It still feels like the art will surprise us all, especially thanks to new media. The art world cannot and will not avoid the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) made some noise in the world in 2023. Different ways of using AI already exist, such as prompt art that generates images through text. But what about AI in the art market? It looks like 2024 might be the year to bring more ideas, understandings, developments and answers in relation to this question.

In 2023 we were finding more and more artworks dealing with socio-political issues in the top-level galleries. Collectors were looking for works that are engaged, denouncing inequalities, and injustices, or highlighting underrepresented narratives. For artists and art collectors alike, finding one’s place and asserting one’s identity in art has been an important element recently. Political art, social justice art, and art as activism all had a major role in the 2023 art scene.

Socially active artists continued and were using their work in 2023 as a form of activism, addressing issues such as human rights, freedom of speech, and political corruption. The aim of these kinds of works, as always, was to promote understanding, empathy, and action with the potential to create a lasting impact in communities around the world. 

Art of this focus was and still is a powerful tool for inspiring social change and raising awareness about important social justice issues. Unfortunately, several reports have shown that collecting art produced by female artists has been steady during 2023. The fact therefore indicates that there still are either fewer female artists’ works available to collectors and unfortunately fewer female artworks being bought by them in 2023. It still has been notable that the share of spending on works by female artists in 2022 and 2023 was a minority and less than the spending on male artists in all markets. Although there has undoubtedly been progress in selling, exhibiting and purchases of female created artworks over the last five years, there still needs to be more research, public conversations, publications and auctions with the focus on the female existence in the arts and its history.  

The interest in works by Black artists and contemporary explorations of the notion of identity has been taking a strong place in the art market in 2023. Authenticity and indigenous will be the keywords in 2024 among the main worldwide artistic institutions and art marketplaces. The public as well as the professionals of the art world will be calling for a return to the roots. Palpable artworks, unfiltered artists from all horizons, stories that make people think about their identities, and history and move forward. That is what will carry, drive and trend the contemporary creations and active discussions this year! Let’s start discovering 2024!