Has The Art Market Peaked?

Collectors will buy more than $20 billion of art this year. Art prices are being driven up by speculators seeking alternatives to stocks. Prices of the top 25 percent of the most expensive contemporary pictures sold at auction more than trebled since 1996, according to Art Market Research. "You need strong nerves to be buying" after the trebling of Contemporary prices, they suggest. The May 1990 sale of Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" for $82.5 million in New York marked the peak of the last art boom. Did the sale of Picasso's "Garcon a la Pipe," which went for $104.2 million in May 2004, signal the top for the current art rise? The best art bargains may be at sales or dealers outside of New York and London. For the full story - click the title Irish Art