How did the best years of Amani Lewis’ career turn into the worst time of the artist’s life?
According to the criteria of
A haunting painting Lewis made in 2020 sold at auction just a year later for $107,100, more than double its estimated price. Two other works had recently tripled expectations and one collector offered $150,000 for new pieces straight from the studio. There were exhibitions in Paris and Miami.
But when the original painting resurfaced at auction in June and its price plummeted to $10,080, the party was over. By then, Lewis had stopped renting a $7,000-a-month luxury apartment in Miami and had temporarily moved in with his brother.
“It was such a nice rise and then it falls,” said the artist, now 29. “It feels like, ‘We’re done with Amani Lewis.’”
Over the past year, as money has dried up in the art market, young art stars around the world have experienced dramatic setbacks that have derailed their careers.
Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Taku sold a painting in 2021 for $189,000, only to see its price drop to $10,160 at auction in March. Cubist-style portraits by Isshaq Ismail, which sold for as much as $367,000 two years ago, have not gone above $20,000. Allison Zuckerman, a New York artist, sold her riotous painting “Woman with Her Pet” for $212,500 three years ago, but raised only $20,160 at auction in June.
Early in the pandemic, there was a speculative boom fueled by a mistaken belief in quick returns, with collectors spending $712 million at auction in 2021 on works by artists born after 1974 — a huge jump from the $259 million spent just a year earlier. But from 2021 to 2023, prices for these artists — “ultra-contemporary” is the industry term for them — plummeted by nearly a third, according to the Artnet Price Database.
The trend continues; in the first half of 2024, sales of works by young artists fell 39 percent compared to last year. Collectors had overestimated the strength of the market; fearing that the work would soon be unsellable, they wanted to recoup at least some of their money — regardless of what public failures might mean for an artist’s future.
Looking back, Ismail, 34, said he regretted selling as many as five works at a time to art consultants and collectors — who quickly resold them. “Everyone wants a slice of the pie,” he said, adding that it was difficult to distinguish the genuine collectors from the speculators.
“When prices are so high, everyone gets very excited – and people tend to make a lot of mistakes.”said Loring Randolph, director of the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Art Collection in Dallas, Texas.
Zuckerman was 27 and working out of her tiny New York apartment when mega-collectors Donald and Mera Rubell discovered her and bought more than 20 pieces. Since 2021, her work has sold at auction 59 times, a remarkably high volume for a young artist.
While Zuckerman said most of his paintings sold at a solo show in June for between $35,000 and $65,000, he couldn’t ignore the auction debacle. “Woman with her pet” that same month.
Today, he is making new works about the loss of control of his paintings in the market.
Speculating on artists is different from speculating on stocks and cryptocurrencies. Artists say it feels intensely personal.
“You’re buying a piece of my life — a little bit of my story and my people’s story,” said Lewis, who gives the subject a portion of the proceeds from each sale.
Lewis and other artists say the experience of navigating the market has made them stronger. Ismail, for example, now sells his work exclusively through galleries.
In October, Lewis will have his first exhibition in two years at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami. The new works — richly colored images that look like they’ve been tossed around in a washing machine — were inspired by this recent, unsettled chapter.
“This is the perfect time to buy Amani Lewis”said the artist.
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