WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY

ART V STOCKS

In the past decade, the value of American

pop art has risen nine times faster than
the S&P 500. We nd out which artistic
genres offer the best return
JAMES TOZER

Making money is art, Andy Warhol

once wrote. If so, death has done little
to diminish his productivity. His work
has sold for a cumulative $3.38 billion

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at auction in the past decade.

Plenty of other artists have generated
eye-watering numbers. According to
artprice.com, Warhol is one of ten to
have turned over $1 billion at auction
since 2006. Most are global superstars;
but the success of Zhang Daqian and Qi
Baishi, two 20th-century artists
unknown outside China except to
connoisseurs, indicates how much
Chinese money has been pouring into
the local art market.

Most genres have outperformed the

stockmarket but some genres have
done better than others. According to
Art Market Research Developments, the
underlying value of American pop art
has increased nine times faster than
the S&P 500 index in the past ten years.
Some of the biggest gains have come in
niche categories, like 19th-century
American photography or 20th-century
Belgian painting. The latter group has

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been dominated by Ren Magritte: 22 of

his paintings have sold for more than
$5m over the period. Before borrowing
heavily to speculate on a Renaissance
masterpiece, you should know that
Italian Old Masters have lagged the S&P
since 2006. Still, even if they havent
been a great investment, if you love
them, now may be a good time to buy.

Post-war art, a catch-all category which

includes the abstract expressionist
Willem de Kooning, the \gurative
painter Francis Bacon and the Swiss
sculptor Alberto Giacometti, has
performed strongly. But the $11m
average fee for a Mark Rothko canvas
might put you o_, while a Jackson
Pollock would set you back $2.5m. A
more a_ordable purchase could be a
Salvador Dali: with thousands of prints
on sale, the average price of his work is
a modest $19,000. Twentieth-century
Spanish art has provided a much better
yield than a wad of share certi\cates.
And it would certainly look better
hanging on your wall.~ J A M E S
TOZ E R

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James Tozer is editorial data analyst

of The Economist
GRAPHICS: MATT MCLEAN
IMAGE: GETTY

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READERS' COMMENT
SIGN IN OR CREATE YOUR
ACCOUNT TO JOIN THE
DISCUSSION.
KIRISAME314 - JULY 15TH 2016

This is just a symptom of wealth inequality, in my

opinion. The poor are too poor to own stocks,
while the rich can spend bx as much as they used
to on their various follies. It's not that art is a good

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investment, it's that investments are less

important as part of a wealth preservation strategy.
The rich are essentially guaranteed to be rich for
their entire lives, so why worry about dropping a
de-dfg million on a painting?

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N E W S PA P E R L I M I T E D 2 0 1 6
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