Art sales rebound to record $2.7 billion

Contemporary art auctions rebounded to an all-time high of $2.7 billion over the last year, boosted by online sales and the arrival of digital art in the form of "NFTs", according to the annual report by Artprice released on Monday.

Having seen sales collapse by a third in the previous year because of the initial crisis caused by the pandemic, sales soared between June 2020 and June 2021 as auctioneers quickly adopted a more online approach.

"Photography and prints have been particularly successful in this new online environment and in 2021, we have seen the sensational arrival of completely dematerialised artworks, the famous NFTs," said Artprice CEO Thierry Ehrmann in a foreword to the report.

NFTs, or "non-fungible tokens", allow people to buy the rights to online art, including images, animation or even tweets.

In March, US artist Beeple sold an NFT of his digital artwork "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days" for $69.3 million to an Indian blockchain entrepreneur - the third-highest price ever achieved by a living artist.

Christie's said 22 million people, nearly 60 percent under the age of 40, logged in to the sale, the first public auction of an NFT.

NFTs accounted for a third of online sales, and 2 percent of the overall art market.

Street artist Banksy got in on the game shortly after, selling an NFT of his work "Morons", which featured an auctioneer selling a painting with the inscription: "I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit".

It sold for around $380,000.

But Artprice said another key driver of growth was the emergence of the Asian market, with Hong Kong establishing itself as the contemporary art world's second city after New York.

China actually beat the United States for auction turnover, taking 40 percent of sales to America's 32 percent.

Britain was in third place with 16 percent.