“You never know what triggers the crash,” said collector Alain Servais, who started his career in the financial industry the day the market tumbled in 1987. “I’ve been through five or six crashes. What strikes me is that the day before, the articles in the newspapers are still fine. But the conditions are there, and that’s what worries me.”
Indeed, global auction sales dropped a modest 12 percent in 2008. It wasn’t until the following year that the financial crisis made real ripples in the art market, driving total sales down 36 percent further, to $6.4 billion,“The art market is like a Brontosaurus, of which you cut the tail,” Servais said. “You know, the time that information gets to the brain, it could be a couple of months.”
“The consignments are done between six months and three months in advance for the auctions,” said Servais, noting that most May auctions were sourced earlier in the year when “people thought inflation was provisional and the market was stable. I don’t think it would be possible to have this kind of consignment in the current uncertainty,” he said.
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