Outside Frieze’s big tent, the London art world faces severe headwinds

Frieze art fair’s big tent in Regent’s Park should at least keep attendees dry as the art world descends on London this week for the annual event, which takes place during one of the wettest autumns on record. But outside the marquee, London’s art world is facing severe headwinds.

Ahead of the 21st edition of the fair, which has now expanded to four cities around the world and brings week-long celebrations as well as sales, there has been a sense of doom and gloom about the state of the capital’s art market over the last 12 months.

Several galleries, including the blue chip 80-year-old institution Marlborough, have folded, with redundancies following. Brokers have also struggled: Christie’s auction sales plunged by 22% in the first half of 2024, while the Financial Times reported that Sotheby’s core earnings were down 88% (a spokesperson from the auction house told the Guardian that the FT report lacked “context”, including the substantial investments the broker had made in its New York, Hong Kong and Paris flagship locations).

That environment has led some commentators to say “choppy waters” lie ahead, while the Wall Street Journal declared the “art market is tanking”. A more understated FT claimed there’s been a “chill in the market” ahead of Frieze.

At the launch of this year’s fair at the Royal Academy, the RA’s chief executive, Axel Rüger, was in a defiant mood. “London, despite what the papers write, is still a major art capital in the world,” he said. “We need to be proud and hang on to that before, you know, these other art fairs and capitals elsewhere try to encroach on our terrain.”

While the sabre-rattling was tongue-in-cheek, there was a serious point underlying his remarks.

Rüger didn’t mention any other fair by name in his opening address, but that was because he didn’t have to: everyone knew he was referring to Art Basel Paris.

Since it launched in 2022, the event has developed into a new contender among European art fairs. London currently accounts for about 17% of the art market while Paris makes up about 7%, with both sitting behind the US and China.

“I think there’s space for two cities to be great together,” said the Frieze director, Eva Langret, who, along with Paris director Clément Delépine, has denied any rivalry. “It’s a different offering, you don’t see the same artists when you go to Paris.”

When asked recently if Paris’s emergence would hurt any other European fair, Delépine said no, but that Brexit had “allowed for a second European capital to emerge”, as the UK’s tax regulations has made it a less desirable place to buy and sell works.

Gus Casely-Hayford, the director of V&A East, who has attended all 20 previous Frieze editions, says the Paris versus London narrative is misleading. “You look at something like London fashion week and Paris fashion week, there are some designers who choose to do one or the other,” he said.

“But that helps to inflect each one of those different fashion weeks with a particular kind of localised feel, and that will probably continue to happen as the kind of Paris offer strengthens.”

London’s cheerleaders regularly point out its uniqueness (art schools such as Central St Martins, established galleries, international outlook) but it’s not only Paris and Brexit that’s presenting a challenge for the capital’s art sector.

Clare McAndrew, founder of the consultancy Arts Economics and author of the annual Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report, said the key reason for the downturn in the market has been the drop in high-end sales: those multimillion-pound deals for blue chip pieces that have become a fixture for London’s auction houses.

She said: “If you talk to dealers, they were saying people were willing to spend five- and six-figure sums quite easily at some of the bigger fairs, but when it got over a million, they were just a little bit more cautious.”

That hesitation has been seen across the market, with the negative headlines and the uncertainty caused by the various conflicts around the world, high interest rates and a pivotal US election giving buyers pause.

As one dealer said recently: “It’s a psychologically stressful time, and I think that permeates into the psyche of the art world.”

But McAndrew believes some of the headlines about the decline of London and the art market are mostly premature. “I don’t want to sound like an old granny, but I’ve seen it be much worse than this before,” she said, adding that it’s the lack of megasales that is affecting the general market.

“Frieze has that kind of wonderful balance of having a range of price points and a range of galleries between the fairs,” she added. “So it covers a lot of different values.”

Whether buyers are cautious or confident, Frieze is looking like a much needed pick-me-up for a market that has lost some of the feelgood factor after a year that’s been a washout for many.