Glass half empty

A column in Art World Salon has sobering news for artists (culled from a new book by Don Thompson named The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Art and Auction Houses)

Some of the more interesting albeit dreary and downshifting points of note were as follows (of course, a lot of these could just be hearsay, but somehow for me it seems to resonate appropriately – maybe it is all those rejection letters that I routinely get):

• Eight of ten works purchased directly from an artist and half the works purchased at auction will never again resell at their purchase price.
• Only one artist in 200 – and that is 200 established artists – will reach a point where her work is ever offered at Christie’s or Sotheby’s auctions.
• There are approximately 40,000 artists resident in London, and about the same number in New York. Of the total 80,000, seventy-five are superstar artists with a seven-figure income
• Fewer than half of the modern and contemporary artists listed in a Christie’s or a Sotheby’s modern and contemporary auction catalogue twenty-five years ago are still offered at any major auction.

Full article with commenting here.