Le marché de l'art est immunisé contre une mauvaise économie.

C'est donc bien cela la leçon que nous enseigne la fabuleuse vente Hirst à Londres, ainsi que l'étudie cet article:

"But on Monday evening, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers and sale of Merrill Lynch led Wall Street toward its worst single-day loss in seven years and insurance giant A.I.G. teetered on the brink of failure, Sotheby's was bringing the hammer down on an $18.7 million bullock preserved in formaldehyde.By the end of the evening, Sotheby's had realized $127 million in sales, sweeping past the night's presale high estimate.The auction house's salesrooms were filled to capacity, with all of the nearly 700 tickets reserved beforehand. When the sale concluded Tuesday evening, every one of the 223 lots had been purchased, for a total of $198 million—10 times the previous single-artist record, set in 1993 for 88 works by Picasso.The Golden Calf, a white bullock sunk in formaldehyde with 18-karat gold hoofs and horns and a gold disk crowning its head, set an auction record for Hirst. The Kingdom, a tiger shark in formaldehyde, made $17.2 million, more than double the high estimate. A glass case filled with fake diamonds, Fragments of Paradise, went for $9.4 million—around five times the presale estimate".

Le commentaire de l'artiste?

"I think the market is bigger than anyone knows,"

Mais qui sont les gens qui achètent? Des Russes, nous dit-on...et des milliardaires des Etats du Golfe. Ainsi, les Russes auraient acheté pour un total de $23.2 million. Ce sont donc typiquement des "cash-rich individuals" qui ne souffrent pas trop d'une crise principalement localisée aux US. Ce qui explique aussi l'absence remarquée d'acheteurs américains dans la salle.

Malgré ce succès flamboyant, certains continuent à jouer les Cassandre:

"This looks like a repeat of 20 years ago, when global markets crashed and the art market kept chugging along for another year and then it crashed," prédit Todd Levin, directeur du Levin Art Group (New York)

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