The rise of Africa in the contemporary auction market: Myth or reality?

Abstract

In the West and Africa alike auctions dedicated to contemporary African art have become increasingly common. Along with other developments, these specialized sales are cited in claims of a boom for contemporary African art. However, there is a dearth of empirical research on long-term changes in the incorporation of African born artists in “mainstream” contemporary sales at Western auction houses. Given that these sales bring together art from across geographic lines, they are an important indicator for measuring the degree to which the market for this work has internationalized. This paper helps to fill this gap in knowledge by presenting the first complete history of African born artists in the main contemporary sales at Christie's. It draws on an original archive of all artworks consigned at Christie's New York May and November contemporary day and evening sales from their inception in the 1970s until 2015. Findings show that there has been a slight rise, but not a boom, in the consignment of works by African born artists in the post-1989 era. I speculate that the small increases are related to directed efforts to legitimate contemporary African art as well as other shifts in the symbolic valuation of contemporary art. This paper advances scholarship on the internationalization of the art market by offering new empirical insights on the cultural hybridization of contemporary auctions in the West. More specifically, while the increases support arguments that contemporary African art is globalizing, the small rates of participation across time lend credence to critiques that claims of a highly internationalized art world are overstated. Also, by attending to the particularities of the African case, this paper sheds new insight on how the contemporary art market has internationalized.