According to a recent post in The Art World Daily, 2012 represented a “record-breaking year” for the art world, which is not surprising considering last May’s nearly $120 million sale of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Art proved to be a favored alternative with investors to the volatile global stock market in 2012 as the top ten highest earners at auction garnered nearly $600 million in sales (i.e., $594.6 million), which is reportedly a 44% increase from 2011.
Contemporary art made a strong presence in 2012’s Top 10 earners at auction. “Postwar [art] has become a new blue-chip where modern art was the blue-chip 10 years ago[,]” advised Artvest Principal, Michael Plummer. Art auction houses in London and New York generated evening sales of Impressionist, Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary art up to nearly $4 billion, over half of which ($2.3 billion) represented sales in the Post-War and Contemporary Art category.