Contemporary art prices

The sensational escalation of contemporary art prices continues. Bridget Riley has gone into the £1 million bracket, while a David Hockney has fetched £2.9 million. Both were record prices and represented a huge jump from the previous peak.

Rachel Heller, Seated Lady I, 2006

This is good news for all holders of work by well-known artists, but it doesn’t follow that these huge rises will rub off on everybody. There’s a massive gap between artists whose work sells for, say, up to £70,000 and the top band, among whom Riley and Hockney figure strongly.

There is a reason for the gap. Many of the new buyers coming on the arts scene would rather pay a lot for a picture than a little. Buying expensively gives you more cachet than buying cheap. Equally, the higher the prices, the more buying art contributes to investing your pile.

You won’t, incidentally, find Hockney or Riley amid the exhibits at the Royal Academy’s current Summer Show. There are plenty of big names on show, but not a few are labelled ‘NFS’ (Not For Sale) and the prices, even of highly respected people like abstract painter Bert Irvine, are hardly stratospheric, at a quoted £28,200 for Bert.

Most of the works at the RA are far cheaper than that – including Rachel Heller’s drawing ‘Lady Sleeping in Bed’, which sold for £450. Since it also won the handsome Casson prize for drawing, however, my daughter has done very well.

Her new exhibition opened at Flowers East in Kingsland Road, Hoxton on July 14th. Her buyers at the RA were evidently thrilled with their purchase. In that, they won’t be alone: the Summer Show attracts crowds of buyers and potential buyers, some of whom save their art purchases for this bumper annual show.

Is that wise? Yes, in that you get an enormous selection (over 1,000 exhibits) covering a wide range of style and skill, and drawn from many types of art. On the other hand, the sheer numbers and the crowded hang may be intimidating or confusing.

The best policy is to identify artists whose work truly excites you; by all means buy the work, but always follow up. Seek out their dealer, if any, and make sure you’re invited to their private views. Of course, there may not be any. Many artists labour away without winning the prize of a solo exhibition. So long as that’s the case, the Summer Show has a real and important function.