As galleries, auction houses, and art advisors examine the causes and consequences of the slowdown in the global art market, the 31st Artprice by Artmarket Report provides a detailed analysis of the Contemporary Art auction market.
It exposes both the drivers and the extent of the contraction, but also highlights a number of positive signals: the rise of female artists, the emergence of new scenes, and the emergence of AI, which represents a genuine paradigm shift. More than just an inventory, this report outlines the key trends in tomorrow’s market.
Meanwhile, in order to remain focused on market trends on a regular basis, Artprice has just launched a new press agency, Artprice News, with its long‑standing partner Cision PR Newswire. With nearly 30 years of experience as a World Leader in Art Market Information, we will now be publishing daily global art market news in 122 countries and 11 languages.
With Artprice News®, Artprice is supplementing the weekly publication of its ArtMarket Insight® with a daily global news feed that runs 24/7.
This initiative will allow Artprice by Artmarket to supplement its famous annual reports with the analysis of its proprietary AI tool, Intuitive ArtMarket®, and its partnership with Perplexity AI, giving users access to an unfathomable volume of data and parameters in its proprietary AI application, Blind Spot®.
Artprice – which owns the world’s largest collection of manuscripts and auction catalogues dating back to 1700 – is currently absorbing a colossal volume of historical information into its proprietary AI, Intuitive Artmarket®. This data will be tokenized for use in the next Global Art Market Annual Report (the 32nd edition) to be published in March 2026. Loyal readers will therefore have access to a whole new world.
Incidentally, in response to a request by Artmarket.com‘s board of auditors, Artprice’s collection of manuscripts and auction catalogues has recently (January 2025) been valued at 43 million euros, and it is of course, the primary foundation for Artprice by Artmarket’s proprietary AI tools.
Artprice’s annual art market reports are now capable of highlighting extremely complex transversal artistic trends which largely escape the academic, institutional, and commercial spheres.
A fractured top and bottom?
One quarter of global art auction turnover may have evaporated in a single year, but the auction market has never been so busy: auction houses have in fact recorded a record number of transactions for Contemporary Art.
A premium segment running out of steam, but with far more artists, more lots on offer and more traffic than ever.
Over the past year, works by tens of thousands of contemporary artists have been sold through auctions around the world, and the scope of acquisition possibilities has never been broader. One in five of these artists was new to the auction market, and many of these were under forty years old. A new generation is therefore emerging, tracing the contours of tomorrow’s market.
The art market’s affordable segment (under $5,000 or even under $1,000) is continuing to grow, fueled by online sales. Cheap and easy to access, this segment is attracting a young, connected clientele hungry for works in tune with their times and concerns, in line with their vision of a new, multi‑polar world, both geopolitically, philosophically, and digitally with AI.
According to Thierry Ehrmann, CEO of Artmarket.com and Founder of Artprice:
“Affordable artworks are experiencing a tsunami of interest. Indeed, this interest prompted us to meet with senior executives of the main global auction houses in NY and Beijing to discuss ways of promoting artworks priced between $5,000 and $15,000 and open up to sales in cryptocurrencies, now conducted mainly by ETFs since 2024, after the United States approved the Bitcoin spot ETF as well as the Ethereum spot ETF.
Giants like BlackRock (iShares Bitcoin Trust) and Fidelity now offer these products that directly replicate the price of Bitcoin/Ethereum. They are tradable like traditional stocks and eliminate all technical ownership risks.
Almost three years ago, Artprice by Artmarket moved to quote all of its art catalog databases in Bitcoin and Ethereum, including price fluctuations since March 2010 (birth of Bitcoin), in addition to the 8 international currencies that already existed in our databases. This initiative raised our database consultations in cryptocurrencies from 2 % to 36 %.
Today, this means that the 300 new millionaire art collectors are mostly young computer scientists between 25 and 40 years old who own Bitcoin and Ethereum. These new art buyers are seeking a form of social recognition that they find in the purchase of art, and particularly in digital artworks with the emergence of AI, which represents a genuine paradigm shift in art.
Based on its long‑nurtured expertise in AI (since 1987 with Groupe Serveur, its parent company, its proprietary AI Intuitive Artmarket® and its recent collaboration with Perplexity) Artprice predicts that compared with today’s several hundred generative AI creators, the future will see the emergence of billions of creators of all ages and professions, among whom several million will emerge to radically expand the volume of the art market like never before in its history.
At the premium end of the spectrum, the market’s powerhouses are marking time: six‑digit results have fallen sharply. Hong Kong’s art auction turnover is half the average of the last ten years, and the picture is not much better in London and New York.
The most powerful marketplaces – the United States, China, and the UK – currently account for more than three‑quarters of global art auction turnover. Meanwhile, Paris now stands out as the world’s most dynamic capital in transaction volumes, ahead of London and New York.
New scenes and new faces
Our auction data also reflects the emergence of new scenes and the emergence of new faces. The Japanese scene is confirming its influence beyond Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. Female artists are reaching important new milestones, breaking records and challenging the long‑established hierarchy.
As screens of all sizes become increasingly present in our daily lives, the Contemporary Art Market has every opportunity to explode. Digital images, promoted by a multitude of outlets dedicated to digital artworks, now have a quality of definition beyond what the human eye (the sensor) and the brain (the actual generator of the image) can observe. Screens now offer exceptional resolution at a cost that has been divided by ten in just a few years.
Moreover, the creation of digital artworks, based on AI prompts, offers artists infinite possibilities without having to learn computer programming (which constituted a real obstacle to artistic creation).
The best auction result so far for an AI artwork was hammered for Ai‑Da Robot’s A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing (2024) on 11 July 2024, fetching $1.1 million at Sotheby’s New York.
This sumptuous work is a tribute to Alan Turing, a true pioneer of AI, who, thanks to cryptanalysis, deciphered the Nazi Enigma Code, enabling the Allies to win WWII. Prosecuted in 1952 for his homosexuality, Alan Turing was sentenced to chemical castration and decided to end his life by taking cyanide on 8 June 1954. Queen Elizabeth II recognized him as a war hero and granted him a posthumous royal pardon in 2013.
Faced with this paradigm shift, auction houses are rethinking their strategies like never before, and, with rare audacity, collectors are redefining their priorities, and young buyers are imposing new codes.
Contemporary art is therefore not on hold: it is changing course and paving the way for a more inclusive, more fluid, and more diverse ecosystem.
Methodology
This Report analyses all public auction sales of works of Fine Art (painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, print, video, installation, tapestry) and NFTs. It does not cover sales of antiques, anonymous cultural goods or furniture. It covers global auction results recorded by Artprice by Artmarket for artists born after 1945 (Contemporary Art), with a focus on artists under 40 years old (Ultra‑Contemporary Art), between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024.
All prices quoted in this Report refer to public auction results, including buyer’s fees. All “$” symbols refer to the US dollars.
About Artmarket.com
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Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information (the original documentary archives, codex manuscripts, annotated books and auction catalogs acquired over the years) in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 879 900 artists.
Artprice Images® allows unlimited access to the largest art market image bank in the world with no less than 181 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.
Artmarket, with its Artprice department, constantly enriches its databases from 7 200 auction houses and continuously publishes art market trends for the main agencies and press titles in the world in 121 countries and 11 languages.
Artmarket.com makes available to its 9.3 million members (members log in) the advertisements posted by its Members, who now constitute the first global Standardized Marketplace® for buying and selling artworks at fixed prices.
There is now a future for the Art Market with Artprice’s Intuitive Artmarket® AI.
Artmarket, with its Artprice department, has twice been awarded the State label “Innovative Company” by the French Public Investment Bank (BPI), which has supported the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the art market.
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