Everything Is Not Fine in the Art World

"The press framed the evening as a triumph and a sign that the art market was healthy again. Watching the coverage felt like watching a magic trick you have already seen too many times. A staggering figure appears on the screen, and the audience nods along. The illusion works because everyone agrees not to ask what the number actually means. It works because the number is the performance."

"Auction houses rely on this sleight of hand. Their job is not to measure value. Their job is to perform it. Sarah Thornton wrote about this clearly in Seven Days in the Art World (2009), where she describes auctions as rituals rather than markets, spaces where belief is manufactured through choreography. Reading her work changed how I saw these rooms. The scripts, the coded gestures, the artificial suspense, the carefully timed applause, the way the room breathes in unison."

"But the $2.2 billion worth of art sold last week does not tell us what is actually happening to artists in 2025. It does not tell us about rising studio rents, unstable income, or the asymmetry between the labor required to make art and the wealth extracted from its circulation. It does not tell us that, in the United States, living artists receive none of that resale money."

Christie's November sales totaled roughly $690 million, and headlines emphasized large percentage gains and overall market vitality. Auction performances create spectacle through choreography, scripts, coded gestures, suspense, and timing to manufacture belief and reassure collectors and audiences. The ritual of bidding showcases polished certainty and circulates art as luxury investment, cultural currency, and status symbol. Those headline figures obscure artists' lived realities: rising studio rents, unstable incomes, and the asymmetry between creative labor and wealth generated by secondary-market sales. In the United States, living artists receive none of that resale profit, leaving market success disconnected from artists' economic security.

Read at Hyperallergic