For much of the past decade, the art market behaved as though history had stopped. Collectors and speculators chased the wet paint with missionary zeal, convinced that the next studio visit might yield a future masterpiece (or a tidy return when flipped onto the secondary market). Auction houses obliged, turning evening sales into pageants for artists who barely had time to form a reputation.
That fever appears to have broken, according to the latest Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report, written by economist Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics. While the global art market returned to modest growth last year, reaching an estimated $59.6 billion in sales—a 4 percent increase after two years of decline—auction sales of postwar and contemporary art have continued to fall. Those categories generated $4.5 billion last year, compared with $8.5 billion in 2021.
Despite four consecutive years of decline, postwar and contemporary art remains the largest segment of the auction market, underscoring how central it has become to the trade over the past two decades.
For a decade, contemporary art seemed to eclipse everything else. Now collectors appear to be rediscovering the appeal of artists whose reputations were settled long ago. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works rose 47 percent at auction last year, while Old Masters climbed 30 percent, reversing several years of decline.
During the pandemic boom, recently created works flooded the auction market. Works made within the previous 20 years accounted for 34 percent of postwar and contemporary auction sales by value in 2021, up sharply from previous years. By 2025, that share had fallen to 19 percent. The number of works created in the previous two decades that sold for more than $10 million fell from twenty-one in 2021 to just three in 2025.
The report draws a distinction between “Postwar and Contemporary” art, broadly defined as artists working after 1945, and the more speculative ultra-contemporary segment, made up largely of works created within the past two decades. Works by younger painters such as Avery Singer, Lucy Bull, and Jadé Fadojutimi have become emblematic of that fast-moving sector in recent years.
That pace was unlikely to last. Markets eventually ask the same question they always ask: which artists will still matter twenty years from now?
In shaky economic times, that question tends to push buyers toward safety. Monet, Degas, or a seventeenth-century Dutch painter may not offer the thrill of discovering the next sensation, but their reputations are unlikely to evaporate with the next turn in fashion.
None of this means contemporary art is disappearing from the market. Auction houses still rely heavily on postwar names to anchor their sales, and galleries continue to introduce new artists every season. But the mood has changed.
The art market still rewards novelty. It is simply rediscovering the virtues of age.
