Art Market and Current Trends: SOFA Chicago - Case Study Example

General Background

• Historical Overview

Across the world, the 1970s art market and trends had been shaken greatly by political and social climate. This was the time several markets were being faced with troubling times, due to major countercultural movements in U.S., Vietnam War, economic crisis and uncertainty that was prevalent in Middle East. The radical movements in U.S which started in late 1960s and spread to early 1970s, shook the art market drained the achievements that had been made by most artists. Besides the challenges that were being faced, the realm of art making was still alive to formalist fear (Elsworth, 1990). Quite a number of artists moved to Green Street, New York and collectively echoed need to spur the market with unique arts, which created a shared experience of the SoHo streets. The trends started improving slowly as new frontiers set up the art landscape stretching it beyond New York streets. At that time, New York street art had outmaneuvered the Paris as capital of art. This were moments of 1970s laid foundation to many arts of painters and performers, and led to reinventions of Photorealism, which was considered an offshoot of Pop Art, that gave birth to Pictures Generation. The late 1970s became iconic moments for Land Art, Feminist Art, Performance Art and Gutai.

The 1980s were considered the art boom period, which was ushered in by achievements of late 1970s. The art market experienced a rapid growth throughout the 1980s that revealed a money-obsessed decade where many millionaire artists turned out to become billionaires. There appeared to be no control in the market leading to continued increase in prices. Surprisingly, the boom provided the once-unbelievable prospect of $100 million painting (Elsworth, 1990). It almost came to surpass. In early 1990s, the art boom was also characterized with slowed economy that led to fall in auctions at Christie’s in New York and Sotheby’s in London, showed that the previous white-hot marketplace for contemporary art and Impressionist art had cooled. The Impressionist and contemporary works could not sell 20% and 50% of the art in auction market.

Several factors spark fear of art investment because of because of economic slowdown and uncertainty into the market. The creative crisis has made some arts to be passive because of lack innovation in ever changing market and thus undervalue the art in prevailing markets. Imaginative capacity is very pivotal and impact positively on the arts. However, lack of creativity among artists has scrambled the arts markets because of lack of relevancy of art to economic development, educational accomplishment and creative economy investment. According to Bruton (2017), this is a reason why many people do not want to spend much on art because they believe they are overpaying it. They consider it not being a good match for the value for their money. The market seems to be opaque and contemporary artists have not fully offered the best to their work. Contemporary artists must seriously invest a lot of time in their work and nurture creativity so that they can produce quality art that will sell and start building the lost trust among the public. This will help to regain the trust of investing in the art.

• International Biennials and their leading trends

The Biennial turned out to be more and more fundamental to international art exhibition, particularly in 1990s as it spread out to several cities. Biennials grew rapidly at the end of 20th century (Kendzulak, 2017). The major function of Biennial was to assist change the art focus from major cities and art centers to other locations, primarily to give support to local tourism sector. The biennial also shows latest developments in art, which benefits both the audience and artists in contemporary society. Fundamental goal of Biennials is to display contemporary visual art of the world in unique and appealing manner that entertains, educate and compete at same time. This unique characteristic makes them different from art museum. The growing trend of Biennials is prevailing over museums and established them in the market.

Some of the leading International Biennials include Art Basel in Switzerland, Frieze Art Fair in London, TEFAF Maastricht in Netherland, India Art Fair in India and SOFA Chicago. The art Basel is considered the granddaddy of all art fairs, established by local art gallerists in 1970s; it is the biggest modern art fair across the world. According to Kendzulak (2017), Art Basel is held every year in June, Basel, Switzerland and provides a leading display place for celebrated artists and galleries. Frieze Art Fair is a contemporary art fair that is held every October in Regent’s Park, London. This art fair is staged by Mathew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, who are the frieze magazine publishers. It is provides opportunities to both celebrated and emerging artists. TEFAF Maastricht is held in Netherland and shows most prestigious art as well as antiques of the world, of over 7000 years ago. The India Art Fair started in 2008 it is held in New Delhi every January. The Biennial trends appear to be shifting slowly to East, after long domination by the Western-art. Market is tremendously shifting beyond borders as India turn out to be the latest region in modern art.

SOFA Chicago

Founded in 1994, Sculpture Objects Functional Arts and Design (SOFA) is Chicago’s considered the longest and continually functioning art fair as well as the world’s leading fair devoted to masterworks of modern art and design across all media. Bruton (2017) asserts that the art fair is owned by Urban Expositions that is Atlanta-based, which creates Art Palm Springs. Art Aspen and FORM MIAMI. All these art fairs encompass galleries across the world showing contemporary art in a selection of media, such as painting, sculpture, photography alongside mixed-media.

SOFA Chicago is the world’s famous art fair dedicated to Sculpture, Objects, Design and Functional Art. The art fair is held this November, 2nd to 5th at Navy Pier Festival Hall, situated along 600 East Grand Avenue in Chicago was incredibly great. It brought together over 70 dealers across the world that came to exhibit a collection of wood, fiber, wood, metal, glass and innovative design along with variety of photography, works on paper and paintings (McCallum, 2017). Over 36,000 people attended the SOFA Chicago this year, 2017, who comprised fairgoers, collectors, artists, curators and designers. The fairgoers at SOFA Chicago created opportunity to enjoy favorites like the Corning Museum, Roadshow, the CONNECT; which brought together students to compete among themselves in design. Attendees also got chance to attend annual Lecture Series as well as Special Exhibits together with dealer presentations stating emerging trends in the market and recognized artists.

The sale at SOFA Chicago was about $15 – 20 million in this year’s show (Bruton, 2017). The lecture series at the SOFA Chicago offered educational emphasis examining the artworks while looking at new trends that were emerging in the art world. This art fair has indeed continued to evolve in global marketplace and among communities, which shows a coming together viewpoint that converge art, design as well as individuals. This perspective helped to build the international image of SOFA Chicago making it famous to many fair goes not only in America, but across the entire world.

Artists at SOFA Chicago

The choice of artist was based on nature of their created pieces and inspiration it drew. It appears that the work of these four artists is stirred by nature. The pieces inspire reflection and meditation, while showing great deep feeling about the art. The artists’ search for materials and their effect and texture was incredibly great.

• Rubber Necklaces – BY Dutch artist: Annemieke Broenink

The created pieces of necklaces by Annemieke appear as if they were created from freshly picked flowers alongside the trunk leaves, but the exact material they are made from is rubber. From the history of these necklaces, the artist has been making them since 2004 and was inspired strongly with traditional lace necklaces as well as neck pieces that Dutch used to wear in 17th century. Working with rubber makes her examines and invites new directions of looking at the art with contemplation and meditation. This necklace seems to be her passion in using basic material that are nature inspired and design for purpose.

• Apex predator – BY Artists: Fantich & Young

These are two artists, Mariana Fantich from Ukraine and Dominic Young from UK. The two started working together in 2008, and have created wonderful pieces of art, the stilettos and other shoes as well as sculptures. This is part of current series commonly known to many as Darwinian Voodoo. They drew inspiration from the incongruity of combining the Darwin’s theory along with voodoo as well as other mystic practices or ceremonial ritual. There pieces brings out the concept of nature as well as super-nature which are combinable in their work. The sculptural combination addresses the existing differences in social evolution along with natural world evolution.

• Honky Tonk Woman, Macho Macho Man – BY Artist: Donna Rosenthal

The artist design dresses that are out of rare medium, such are magazines, newspapers, comic books and atlases. In her art, she explores gender roles, cultural normal alongside social positions. The artist use repetition along with cultural symbolism of apparels to show the struggles existing in the external as well as internal self. The pieces are nature inspired and bring the feeling of meditation of work from the viewer. She decided to use the mixed materials in linking the existing gap between art and craft.

• Recycled Paper Jewelry – BY Artist: Janna Syvanoja

The artist behind amazing and delicate pieces of jewelry that is made from layers of catalogues, books, dictionaries and maps is Janna. She combines all these materials to create intricate shapes of jewelry and usually use metal wire to maintain the form of mounted papers. This use of such materials creates beautiful scenery of both exterior and interior design that appear to be nature inspired. And slowly generates meditative though in an individual viewing it. Her work has been presented in many galleries around the world. This shows how unique and inspiring pieces of Janna Syvanoja appear to be.

Conclusion

From the research and explore of the pieces of work at SOFA Chicago 2017 shows emerging trends of new art and artists. The amazing thing has been the focus on outstanding contemporary art and design across all the media comprising of glass, ceramics, design, jewelry, painting, and work of paper, metal and photography. This year’s art fair in SOFA Chicago explore all the media and interesting thing, it gave emerging artists opportunity to showcase their arts to many fairgoers. The combination of emerging artists alongside celebrated ones made the whole event more successful and it aligned with expected trend in the industry of nurturing the upcoming new people in the fields. It was evident at SOFA Chicago that emergent talents were enthusiastic about the lessons they learned during the exhibition, especially the lectures and pondering the market trends. This gave good insights on new beginners on the best areas they can approach the art and make remarkable mark in the industry. Several artists presented pieces that were nature inspired and offered fascinating impression to those who attended the fair. Quite a number of emerging artists had good exposure during the art fair and stage is set for them to work on best contemporary pieces and present them to various galleries across the world.

Beside the high-end art markets, there are some small community galleries that can be helpful to young artist and a practicing artist. One can begin at low level and start glowing slowly to reach the anticipated level of top art markets. In Chicago, we have gallery 400 that is also good for emergent work and as young artist it will be nice to start small and grow big. Moreover, the nature and quality of art produced is the one that will gauge the level at which that particular piece will extend. It will be of great important for upcoming artists to devote much time in their work to come up with outstanding contemporary pieces that can sale easily in the market.