Auctions for living artists: real opportunity or false good idea

01How your work ends up at auction

Before judging whether auctions are good for you, it helps to understand how works by living artists arrive in sale rooms. The most common scenario is resale by a collector. Someone bought one of your works a few years ago, through your gallery, from your studio or at a fair. For reasons of their own, they decide to part with it: financial need, change of taste, relocation, divorce, estate settlement. Rather than selling privately, they consign the work with an auction house that places it in a catalogue.

A second scenario is deliberate speculation. A buyer acquires your work not out of love for art but with the intention of reselling quickly to profit from a rise in your market value. This phenomenon has affected artists such as Oscar Murillo, Avery Singer and Matthew Wong, whose works were resold at auction sometimes just months after gallery purchase, at spectacularly higher prices. These cases make headlines in specialist media, but they represent a very small fraction of the market.

A third scenario, less well known, is direct consignment by the artist. Some auction houses offer artists the chance to consign works directly for their sales. This is rare and generally reserved for artists who already have an established secondary market, but it is a channel that exists and that you might consider at some point in your career.

02When auctions can serve you

A strong auction result can accelerate your career significantly. The hammer price is public, verified, indisputable. When a collector hesitates between two artists of comparable standing, the one whose works have been knocked down at solid prices at public sale inspires greater confidence. Price transparency is a powerful argument in a market where gallery prices are often opaque.

Artist Cecily Brown saw her market transformed by auction results that validated her galleries' pricing in retrospect. This validation by the secondary market creates a virtuous circle: gallery prices rise, collectors who bought early see the value of their holdings grow, and demand becomes self-reinforcing. For a mid-career artist whose work is strong and whose collector network is expanding, a successful auction passage can be the catalyst for a change in scale.

Auctions also give you access to a pool of collectors you would not reach otherwise. Auction buyers are not the same people who frequent galleries. Some collectors do not feel comfortable in the gallery world, with its implicit social codes and waiting lists. Auctions offer them egalitarian access: everyone can bid, the highest price wins. This openness can broaden your collector base in unexpected ways.

03When auctions can hurt you

The principal risk is the "bought-in," the work that fails to sell. If your work is presented at auction and finds no buyer, or sells below the low estimate, the signal sent to the market is devastating. The information is public, accessible to all: galleries, collectors, institutions. A bought-in at auction can create lasting doubt about your market value and discourage potential buyers who would have purchased through a gallery without this negative information.

The Zombie Formalism movement in abstraction, propelled by speculation in the 2010s, illustrates the danger starkly. Artists such as Lucien Smith and Oscar Murillo saw their works reach peaks at auction before experiencing spectacular declines when the trend passed. Collectors who had bought at the top found themselves holding works worth a fraction of their purchase price, and the artists' reputations were durably affected by this volatility.

A second risk is loss of control over the distribution of your work. When you sell through a gallery, you can choose your collectors, you can refuse to sell to someone you know will flip the work immediately. At auction, the buyer is anonymous or at least beyond your control. Your work may end up with a speculator who will reconsign it six months later, creating an impression of liquidation that damages your market standing.

04Your gallery's role facing auctions

If you work with a gallery, auctions become an essential topic of discussion with your dealer. Most serious galleries include in their terms of sale a right of first refusal clause: if the collector wants to part with the work, they must offer it to the gallery first before consigning it at auction. This clause protects both artist and gallery by allowing the work to be placed with a trusted collector rather than left to the chance of bidding.

Dealer David Zwirner has been vocal on this subject, explaining that galleries invest in an artist's career over the long term, through exhibitions, catalogues and institutional placements, and that auction speculation can destroy in one evening years of patient building. This position is shared by most leading galleries.

Some galleries go further and intervene in the sale room to support their artists' prices. When a work risks being sold at a bargain, the gallery may bid to repurchase it and prevent a disastrous result. This practice, though controversial, is common and contributes to price stability. As an artist, you should know that this support has a cost: a gallery that repurchases a work at auction ties up cash and will probably bill you for this intervention in one form or another.

05Resale royalties, an often-forgotten income stream

In the European Union, the artist's resale right guarantees you a percentage on every resale of your works at auction or through a professional art market intermediary. This right, established by the 2001 EU directive, applies throughout your lifetime and for 70 years after your death. The rate is degressive: 4 percent on the first 50,000 euros of sale price, then 3 percent, 1 percent, 0.5 percent and 0.25 percent on higher brackets, capped at 12,500 euros per sale.

In the United States, there is no federal resale royalty right, though California enacted one in 1977 that has been repeatedly challenged in court. If your works are sold at auction in New York, you receive no resale royalty under current federal law. The UK retained the EU resale right framework after Brexit, so works sold at auction in London still generate royalties for qualifying artists.

Artist Bridget Riley has benefited from resale royalties on numerous auction sales of her works, a meaningful income supplement over a career spanning decades. For you, even if the amounts are modest at the beginning, the resale right is a passive income stream that rewards original creation and can become significant if your market grows.

06Building a clear-eyed auction strategy

Auctions are neither a blessing nor a curse. They are a tool whose impact depends on your situation and how you manage them. If you are early in your career, auctions should not be a priority. Focus on building your collector base, developing your relationship with one or several galleries, maintaining the quality of your production. Auctions will come naturally when your market is sufficiently mature to absorb them without risk.

If you are at a stage where your works are beginning to circulate on the secondary market, take the time to understand the mechanisms and put the right clauses in your sales agreements. Right of first refusal, resale conditions, communication with your gallery in case of consignment: these points are not legal details, they are career protection tools.

On Artedusa, you build a direct relationship with collectors who buy to live with your works, not to speculate. This approach to collecting, founded on the bond between artist and buyer, is the best protection against the speculative excesses of the auction market. Build your base of loyal collectors, and auctions, if they come, will only be stronger for it.