Abstract
This article investigates the valuation of artworks during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines how art market participants employ fictional expectations of the future to stabilize valuations during uncertain times. A total of 86 forecasts originating from both the center and periphery of the global art market were analyzed. Taking a meta-analytic approach, focus was placed on what each analysis predicts, how it constructs the future it purports to know, and how the expected value of artworks and methods for their purchase are justified. This uncovered the paradoxical reality of art market forecasts—their authors are convinced that the power of crisis could reformulate the art market, but their conclusions do not assume the possibility of real change. Further, the argument is made that speculation about the future is at the core of today’s art economy. Therefore, in a crisis, market participants conservatively orient themselves toward artworks that already have established value.
Highlights
I will conclude that the paradoxical nature of predictions arises because they are devices involved in artwork value production, and from that comes their conservative bias toward the durability of value and the predictability of the art market
As I will argue on the basis of the analysis, that art market participants act in moments of crisis to stabilize and strengthen existing ways of valuing rather than to undermine them
The puzzle stated at the beginning pointed out the paradox of predictions which shared a conviction about the power of crisis to reformulate the art market, but their outcomes did not assume the possibility of real change
Summary
COVID-19 Will Not Change the Global Art Market. Arts 10: 50. I concentrated on what each analysis predicts, how it constructs the future it purports to know, and how the expected value of artworks and methods for their purchase are justified In this context, my title “Why COVID-19 will not change the global art market” is meant to be provocative. I treat analyses considering the future of the art market as fictional expectations, the imaginaries and narratives that people employ to act as if they know the future, providing the confidence needed to undertake actions with unknowable outcomes (Beckert 2016). I will conclude that the paradoxical nature of predictions arises because they are devices involved in artwork value production, and from that comes their conservative bias toward the durability of value and the predictability of the art market
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