Art Market Stays Steady

The years-long frenzy to buy contemporary art appears to be coming to an end as the crunch bites, but the art market held steady in Paris this week when top gallery owners gathered for the FIAC art fair. Shrugging off falls on London's once juicy market and a slowdown at its Frieze Art Fair, dealers reported it was basically business as usual yesterday at the yearly four-day gathering of 189 leading world art galleries, closing at the weekend. "Crisis, what crisis?" said French art gallery owner Yvon Lambert. Deals, however, "are perhaps taking a little longer to clinch," he added. "Some buyers are thinking harder. Before you'd get impulse buying, now people are really talking art." Many gallery owners agreed, with New York's Lachner saying that "people are focusing more on essentials, on building an art collection." Staged inside the lacy metal-worked Grand Palais, as well as the Louvre museum, the fair showcases works by top contemporary artists such as Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Bridget Riley or Marc Quinn as well as moderns like Picasso, Picabia or Calder. Works on sale by Britain's Quinn — famed for a 2006 sculpture of Kate Moss in yoga position and another this year of the model in solid gold-sold like hot cakes at well over 100,000 euros a shot."Great works sell whatever the times," said Hopkins-Custot gallery. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art