Word: designators
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...market for rare contemporary design is suddenly in the spotlight as collectors like Krakoff flock to auctions and art shows to snap up coveted limited-edition pieces. And the works of contemporary-design stars like Arad and Newson are beginning to surface in art galleries...
...also getting incredibly expensive. Last June a prototype of Newson's aluminum Lockheed Lounge, perhaps the most iconic piece in the post-1985 contemporary market, fetched $968,000 at Sotheby's in New York City--the highest price ever paid for the work of a living designer. According to James Zemaitis, director of 20th century design at Sotheby's, the average price for a piece at the auction house's December show, the biggest of the year, was $30,000. But based on the current interest in the market, Zemaitis estimates that over the next few years a rare piece...
Dealers like Meyers and his partner Evan Snyderman are setting up shop at fairs such as Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, and its newer outpost in Miami, which two years ago spawned a smaller venue called Design Miami. The major auction houses such as Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury are cashing in too, staging big sales of 20th and 21st century design. The Christie's December 2006 sale of 20th century decorative art and design--the largest of the season--raked in $23.7 million, breaking all records...
...People write about auctions now the way they write about movie-box-office results," says Zemaitis. When he got to Sotheby's in 2003, he says, less than 5% of the catalog consisted of postwar design. Now it constitutes more like 60% to 70% of the 20th century auctions. Big prices have attracted a whole new audience too: art collectors and investors looking for something to furnish their real estate investments, or younger collectors in their 30s and 40s who are not interested in the decorative collectibles their parents treasured...
...boomer generation is also bidding. Meyers credits the trend for what he calls "starchitecture" for creating the rush on contemporary design. "If you've seriously been collecting art for 25 years and you've got all the best pieces of the artists you collect, and you're ready to retire, then you're going to build your own personal museum," he explains. And in that "museum," the object you sit on has to be as important as the art on the walls. Meyers estimates that 90% of the people collecting design are contemporary-art collectors. "The art world is eating...