People take pictures of a suspected new mural by artist Banksy on a wall at HM Reading Prison in Reading, Britain, March 1, 2021. — Reuters picPARIS, March 15 — A surprisingly rapid shift online helped cushion the art market from the worst ravages of the coronavirus pandemic although sales still fell by a fifth last year, an Artprice report said today.
Digitisation has opened up auctions to a huge new customer base, particularly 30- and 40-year-olds, who rarely dabbled in the market previously. “The market was 30 years behind the times. It has made up the gap in just one year, when even the most optimistic projections had predicted it would take until 2025,” said EhrmannChina’s success in containing the Covid-19 outbreak propelled it back to the top of the sales charts, dominating the market with 39 per cent of global fine art sales by value.
Despite Hong Kong coming under stricter Chinese control in recent months, it has remained a major base for global art sales, with Sotheby’s doing a quarter of its business there, Artprice said.