Is the Fastest-Growing Segment of the Art Market the Cheapest?
Prints and multiples, long an afterthought, are gaining momentum.
(Bloomberg) -- In June 2017, Heritage Auctions decided to increase the number of its prints and multiples auctions from four times a year to once a month.
It had been holding live and online auctions in the category (which describes any artwork that is produced in editions, rather than one-offs) for about a year, and when “we tried it online at a lower price point, we couldn’t believe it,” says Leon Benrimon, director of modern and contemporary art at Heritage. “Everything sold.”
The sales have gone so well, he says, that they plan to start holding them weekly this summer. “People are excited,” he says. “But we’re still only capturing a fragment of the marketplace.”
Prints have been around since the Renaissance, and have always occupied a slightly uneasy place in the art market. They’re designed by an artist and often signed by the artist, but they are, by definition, reproductions. “They used to call it a gateway drug,” says Deborah Ripley, director of Bonhams auction house’s prints and multiples department. “It was where beginners in the art world started collecting, and that would encourage them: They might have been buying works at a lower price point, but they could tell their friends, ‘Yes, I have a work by Warhol.”
Prints might be an entry point into the art market, specialists say, but it’s increasingly clear that for many, the category has become a destination in itself over the last two years or so. “Off the top of my head, I’d say that 50 percent of every auction [is made up of] new bidders,” says Benrimon. That's a lot of new people each time. “And that’s not after one or two auctions—that’s after 15 of them. And we just look at it, and we don’t get it: How is that possible?”
Reputation and Quality
As with every market, the prints market has tiers. There are very, very expensive prints, a few of which have sold for more than $1 million; there are merely expensive prints, which sell for six-figure sums; and there is the so-called “low market” of prints, effectively in the sub $15,000 range.
The most expensive prints will have been designed by an artist expressly as a print: It’s a work of art that is intended to be reproduced. At the lowest end of the market, in contrast, prints are copies of paintings.
The value of a print— any print— is largely determined by two things: “The reputation of the artist and the quality of a print,” says Dick Solomon, president of Pace Prints, a New York gallery and publisher that deals with the very highest end of the market. “To a lesser extent, there’s also the number of prints in the edition.” The edition size, or number of reproductions, is decided beforehand by the artist, and it is finite: If it’s an edition of 72, you can be sure only 72 exist. (This is fudged slightly by the phenomenon of “artist’s proofs,” the initial impressions used to test the print, which can add to the total number of works in an edition.)
When Solomon entered the business in the 1970s, the primary economic driver for prints was old masters; once that supply dried up, the market pivoted to work from the 20th century and then the 21st century. “In the old days, there were such things as painting collectors and print collectors,” Solomon says. “Now it’s a mixed bag and really depends on the price level.”
Dealers are currently trying to understand the growth in the prints market, and—just as important—figure out if that growth will continue.
Why They Buy
“The print market is very closely tied to the originals market,” says Robert Kennan, the head of editions in Europe for Phillips auction house. Kennan organized a day and evening sale on Thursday in London that totaled $6.3 million. “That drives what we do, and on the whole, [the market] is led by that,” he says.
On one level, that’s intuitive: If an artist or a genre is selling for millions, a slightly less special work by that artist that sells for mere thousands will be desirable.
But the growth in the market, dealers say, can also be attributed to a different kind of trickle-down from the so-called originals market, and it’s one that’s far harder to quantify: the perception, lent by big-ticket sales that draw headlines, that art is, on some fundamental level, an asset rather than just decoration. “Now they all have the same question, which wasn’t necessarily a question that was asked several years ago,” says Solomon. “And that’s: Do you think it’s a good investment?”
Are Prints a Good Investment?
Solomon, who deals only at the very top of the market, says that his answer can go two ways. “You have to be very honest, and some art is not necessarily a good investment financially but could be aesthetically,” he says. “But sometimes it’s not so aesthetically pleasing, but it’s a hell of a good investment because the artist is hot and there’s international demand.”
The lower end of the market is trickier.
The growth of online sales, and third-party sites that direct traffic to those sales, has contributed to the kind of robust growth in volume that’s allowed Heritage to expand from two sales a year, to 12, and soon to its planned 52. “There are certainly more avenues for consumers, which does create a larger pool of buyers” says Ripley, of Bonham’s. “But we’re also in a fairly strong period in the art market: It’s really that dictum that a high tide floats all boats.” Currently, the art market is doing well, “so you’ll have prints on a lower price point that will find buyers,” she says.
If the art market were to fall, though, Ripley says that the low end would be hit hardest: “Those are the ones that won’t find buyers,” she says, “while the ones that are on the high end—that are one of a kind and really special—will always find a buyer if they’re the correct price.”
Just because there are five buyers for a $2,000 print now, in other words, doesn’t mean that those buyers will be around in three years if an artist’s market has collapsed.
Print Pitfalls
Because prints are, well, prints, they’re very easy to reproduce, and because printing techniques are so advanced, reproductions can be very convincing. “When you have people who don’t know anything about art going into the auction business, you see an increase in the number of fake prints that are being sold,” says Ripley. “Let’s face it: How many authentic prints from the 1960s in perfect condition do you think there are? What you’re seeing are reproductions.”
At the highest end of the market, dealers or auction houses will be able to provide the work’s provenance, or who has owned it beforehand. At the lower end, Benrimon says Heritage employs an “in-house authentication liaison.”
“She works with every major artist’s estate,” he says. “And whenever we get a work, we don’t put it in the auction unless she gives us the OK.” When you’re at such a low price point, he says, “no one needs to have a headache.” If any flags are raised, he says, “we say: ‘OK, let’s table it.’”
Tomorrow’s Major Collector
Ultimately, the rise in the prints market is indicative, dealers say, of the proliferation of art and art collecting in mainstream society. Street artists such as Banksy and KAWS have a thriving print market, largely fueled by relatively young devotees.
Auction houses hope that today’s print buyer will become tomorrow’s major collector—“today they’re buying something for $4,000, but in five years, when they’re doing much better or upgrading, they’re going to know Heritage Auctions, and that’s a big part of it,” says Benrimon. Still, the category’s growth could just as easily point to a collecting base with the means, or inclination, to buy work that has a ceiling of a few thousand dollars. That might not be ideal for the high end of the art market, generally, but it’s great news for proponents of a medium that’s long been considered second-tier.
“The auction houses with popular pricing seem to be doing a very healthy business,” says Solomon. “And that’s very gratifying for those of us at the high end, because one hopes that people matriculate into a higher level of appreciation.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net.
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