This Week’s Newsletter on Art: Is the Art Market’s Comeback Real?
Big Picture:
Hilma af Klint’s paintings might disappear into a spiritual vault, Nvidia’s CEO just saved an art school, and AI art is cashing in hard. Meanwhile, the art market is on shaky ground—booming in some areas, struggling in others. All that in this week’s newsletter on art. Buckle up.
Top 5 Art Stories This Week
1. Hilma af Klint’s Art — For Your Eyes Only?
Imagine if one of modern art’s greatest pioneers vanished from museums forever. That’s exactly what Erik af Klint, chair of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, is fighting for. He wants to lock her paintings away in a private temple, allowing access only to spiritual seekers—no more public exhibitions.
🔒 Why Does He Want This?
Erik argues that af Klint’s work wasn’t meant for just anyone. She saw her paintings as sacred and believed they should be housed in a spiritual setting, not displayed as just another piece of modern art. He insists that the foundation’s statutes require them to honor her original wishes, even if it means limiting public access.
🔥 The Backlash: Critics say this erases public access and buries her legacy. Courts in Sweden are now involved—this fight is far from over.
Hilma af Klint “Altarpiece No. 1, Group X” (public domain)
2. Nvidia CEO’s $45M Power Move: Saving an Art School 💰
The California College of the Arts (CCA) was in trouble—budget deficits, layoffs looming, even whispers of a merger. Then, in swooped Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s billionaire CEO, with a $45M rescue package.
🔧 The Deal: $25M goes into a new San Francisco campus, merging art, design, and tech. The rest keeps the school running.
💡 Why It Matters: Art and tech are no longer rivals—they’re partners. The future Picasso might also know Python.
3. Liu Jiakun & Sophie Ristelhueber: Two Visionaries, Two Big Wins 🏆
This week, Liu Jiakun won the Pritzker Prize (architecture’s biggest honor) and Sophie Ristelhueber took home the Hasselblad Award (the top photography prize).
🏗️ Liu Jiakun isn’t your typical starchitect—you won’t find his name slapped on glassy skyscrapers in Dubai. He builds with history and people in mind—his "rebirth bricks" repurpose earthquake rubble into architecture with soul. His projects, like the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum and West Village in Chengdu, are cultural statements.
📷 While Liu Jiakun is rebuilding cities, Sophie Ristelhueber is capturing the scars left behind. The French artist has spent 45 years documenting the aftermath of war—not through the usual frontline battle shots, but through landscapes that hold the silent echoes of destruction.
🔗 Liu Jiakun’s Pritzker Prize Win
🔗 Sophie Ristelhueber’s Hasselblad Award
4. AI Art Hits Big Money … But Not Everyone’s Buying It 🤖
Christie’s just held its first-ever AI art auction, pulling in $728,784. Top seller? Refik Anadol’s "Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A" for $277,200.
🖥️ Who’s Buying? 48% of bidders were Millennials & Gen Z, and 37% were first-time buyers at Christie’s.
🔥 The Controversy 6,000+ artists signed an open letter against AI-generated art, calling it exploitative. Christie’s response? AI isn’t replacing artists—it’s a tool.
🎭 The Big Picture: AI is also reshaping architecture (see Refik Anadol’s AI-driven Guggenheim project) and music (France’s music market just crossed €1B, thanks to AI-curated playlists).
5. The Art Market: Is the Comeback Real?
📉 What Happened Before?
2022-2023: The market slowed post-pandemic, with high-end contemporary art struggling.
2023: Auction houses saw sales drop, and big-ticket works failed to meet estimates.
📈 What Now?
Is the market back?
It’s recovering but unevenly—some areas (blue-chip and AI art) are surging, while others (mid-market contemporary) are still finding their footing. The next few major auctions will be key indicators of whether this comeback is real or just a temporary spike. This week brought these news:
📈 Christie’s: “The Market is Going Up”
Christie’s London 20/21 Century Sale pulled in $167.8 million, exceeding expectations, with Surrealist and contemporary works leading the charge. Collectors are still going after fresh-to-market, high-quality pieces, proving that the right material will always sell.
🔹 Some pieces blew past estimates, showing strong international demand.
🔹 The Surrealism category performed particularly well.
🔹 Auction houses remain optimistic about sustained interest in both historic and modern art.
🏙️ New York Auctions Show Signs of Recovery
Over in New York, the mid-season auctions totaled $50.6 million, with 73% of 530 lots sold. Notably, nearly 25% of sales exceeded high estimates, showing a return of buyer confidence.
🔹 Experts say the market is healing but not yet fully recovered.
🔹 More collectors are willing to pay above expectations, a good sign for sellers.
🔹 While things are improving, prices aren’t back to pre-downturn highs just yet.
🇬🇧 London’s Market Shrinks by 50%
While some auctions thrive, London’s modern and contemporary art sales have contracted massively—down 50% since 2019. Experts blame this on a shrinking supply rather than lack of demand.
🔹 Fewer top-tier works = fewer big-money sales.
🔹 Christie’s and Sotheby’s evening auctions have been noticeably smaller.
🔹 The UK market is feeling the squeeze, especially post-Brexit.
📊 The Verdict: The market is recovering, but unevenly. While New York and Christie's are seeing strong results, London is struggling with fewer top-quality pieces hitting the block. Buyer confidence is growing, but we’re not back to pre-pandemic boom times just yet.
What do you think—are we on the way up, or is this just a lucky streak?
🎨 Art Drop of the Week: Designing the Future of Living
This week’s standout creative project isn’t a painting—it’s a radical rethink of how we live.
🔹 CityLab-UCLA’s Bold Challenge: Architects are competing to transform forgotten urban lots into sustainable, high-density housing. With L.A.’s housing crisis in full swing, this initiative pushes for smart, sustainable, and high-density solutions—turning overlooked spaces into vibrant communities.
👉 A reminder that creativity thrives where others see emptiness. 🔗 Read More
💡 Steal This Idea 🎯
Architects turn overlooked spaces into something meaningful. What if you did the same in your art?
🛠 Creative Challenge: Find an unused "forgotten" space in your work—the background, negative space, or even the surface itself. Make it intentional.
🖌️ Paint on an Unexpected Surface – What’s your version of an overlooked, unused lot? Maybe it’s the back of an old canvas, a torn book page, or a wooden panel from a discarded table. Maybe it’s the art tools you once (too quickly?) dismissed. Challenge yourself to breathe new life into something that was meant to be ignored.
⚖️ Balance vs. Chaos – What happens if you push emptiness to the forefront or let the margins of your work carry the story?
📚 This Week’s Book
📖 Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
One reader shared:
"Instead of doomscrolling in the morning, I open this book by my morning coffee, letting it set the tone for the day. It helps me zoom out, breathe, and start in a calmer mindset, like a secret protective layer that smooths the impact of the hectic, crazy world news that will come anyway during the day." 🙏😌
✨ Today’s excerpt:
“True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present.
True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.”
(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: @cinematicfella
🎶 Studio Soundtrack 🎵
This week’s jam: Keplermomo's Morning Piano [44]: Time for waiting to bake a bread.
Why? Because it’s about authenticity, simple living, and art in its purest form—a quiet moment in a faraway place, on a small island, surrounded by nature and tranquility. Slow, intentional, and deeply human. Just love the vibe. 🌿🎶✨
That’s a wrap for this week’s newsletter on art and creativity. Got a take? Hit reply—we’re all ears. 📩👂
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