News-Antique.com - Jul 03,2010 - Since posting part 1 of my Predicting Art Market Profit Potential posts I have had some people question whether it is possible to predict whether an artist will achieve market success before they actually do. Unfortunately many people either don’t know about ArtFacts.net or don’t understand how it works which is why I am writing this post. One person said that: “A successful artist with lots of exhibitions and fame, will certainly have an extensive auction sale record, whereas an unknown artist will not.” I can understand where this person is coming from, but their statement is incorrect. An artist who has been widely and extensively exhibited can have a strong primary market (galleries etc.) for their work and a virtually non existent secondary market (auctions etc. ) for their work. In fact, I know of many contemporary artists whose works fetch considerable amounts of money on the primary market but have not had any of their works sold at auction or via any secondary market Before an artist develops a strong secondary market they usually have to have developed a strong primary market which would mean having their work exhibited by galleries, at fairs and as part of group shows. What ArtFacts.net does is utilise primary market data to establish how much attention an artist is receiving. That primary market attention, if properly leveraged, should then be able to be turned into secondary market attention and increased secondary market value. According to ArtFacts.net “According to ArtFacts.net, “The career of an artist depends on the success of their exhibitions”. This is certainly true for the long term career of an artist. Because price data is rarely available for primary market transactions, ArtFacts.net have developed a ranking system that ranks artists according to how widely and extensively they are being exhibited and how prestigious the galleries/museums they are being exhibited at are. Although some of the older/deceased artists will be having their work exhibited/sold on the secondary market, much of the data is for emerging contemporary artists whose work is being sold/exhibited on the primary market, and who don’t yet have a secondary market, which gives people the opportunity to use the data the ArtFacts.net have collected to make predictions regarding the future secondary market potential of an artist and their work. In order to provide some sort of context in which to place the more emerging artists, the ArtFacts.net Artist Ranking tool includes a large number of modern artists such as Warhol, Picasso, Richter, Nauman etc. who, as one would expect, occupy the top spots of the ranking. By having the more senior artists to make comparisons with, it is much easier to put the success of the emerging artists into context and see how their career compares to the careers of artists who already have a strong and established secondary market.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with ArtFacts.net, the first of their Artist Ranking Tool was created in 1999 and has since undergone various adjustments and changes
