News-Antique.com - Jan 21,2011 - Top 2010 Art Market Trends Pt. 1 – artmarketblog.com
1. Arte Povera: The Arte Povera trend that took hold in 2010 has more to do with the concept of “Arte Povera” as opposed to the actual artists involved in the movement. The trend also extends to the work of other artists whose work embodied the concepts of Arte Povera such as Art Brut artists and naive artists. Without a doubt this has been the most dominant and most visible trend of 2010.
According to the Tate Modern website:
“The name (Arte Povera) means literally ‘poor art’ but the word poor here refers to the movement’s signature exploration of a wide range of materials beyond the quasi-precious traditional ones of oil paint on canvas, or bronze, or carved marble. Arte Povera therefore denotes not an impoverished art, but an art made without restraints, a laboratory situation in which any theoretical basis was rejected in favour of a complete openness towards materials and processes”
The glossy, blingy art that has dominated the market for years has given way to a desire for the more gritty and raw work of artists such as Lucio Fontana, Helio Oiticica, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alighiero Boetti, Piero Manzoni, Jean Dubuffet etc. The un-primed slashed canvases of Fontana, the graffiti style of Basquiat, the artist’s shit of Piero Manzoni and the unusually textured canvases of Dubuffet all represent artists who took a stand against the commercialism of the art market – a stand that collectors have taken up as they turn their back on the current commercialism of the art market.
Interestingly, the Tate Modern opened galleries dedicated to the Arte Povera movement in May 2009. According to a Tate press release “The central space of the new Energy and Process wing will be devoted to a selection of works made by artists in the 1960s and 1970s. The term Arte Povera was coined by the art critic Germano Celant to describe the activities of Italian artists who used the simplest means to create poetic statements based on everyday life. Seen as a reaction against the commercialism of the art market, the work demonstrated a keen appetite to use commonplace or ‘poor’ materials and new processes.”
2. Naive Art: The naive art trend is closely related to the Arte Povera trend with work produced by “naive” artists often resembling the work of Arte Povera artists. The work of artists who produce work in a naive style such as Basquiat, Dubuffet and Antonio Ligabue has proven to be extremely popular of late with many auction records being broken. A new auction record for Ligabue, one of the most famous 20th century naive artists, was set on the 24th of November 2010 when his ‘Autoritratto, olio su faesite’ sold for €152,000 against an estimate of €50,000-70,000.
3. Latin American Art: Although there was a general trend towards nationalistic and culturally representative art, there has been a particularly strong global increase in the popularity of Latin American art. Funnily enough,
