World Art Market

Archive Report

Rush Into Art as Inflationary Hedge

Spectacular Rise in Auction Prices for Art

The global art boom continues to gather momentum. World record prices—$1.5 million for an early Dutch landscape by Albert Cuyp, $675,000 for Picasso's 1901 work Le Mort, $550,000 for a 14th-century Chinese porcelain wine jar, $287,500 for a pair of silver Queen Anne chandeliers, $2 million for a 1953 Jackson Pollock abstract—have tended to dramatize the universal character of the rush into art. Almost no collecting field is being ignored. Oak furniture, art nouveau lamps, gold medallions, old ceramics, Victorian landscapes, American primitives—all are being bid up with such a lack of discrimination that part of the phenomenal increase in values clearly must be attributed to inflation. The flight from money into tangibles ...

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