Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust.

Artists rarely benefit from high auction prices, since most works at auction are sold by collectors who have bought their works earlier and are now hoping to sell them for a profit. The artists also rarely speak — as they do here — about how art market speculation affects them personally and professionally. In retrospect, Ismail, 34, said he regretted selling up to five works at a time to art advisers and collectors — who swiftly resold them. “Everyone wants a piece of the cake,” he said, recalling how buyers made offers over email or on Instagram. It was hard to tell genuine collectors from speculators, he said.

Then, around 2021, record high prices caused a stampede of sellers, which flooded the fragile market. Gallerists raised artists’ prices but in some cases they overshot the target, discouraging potential buyers. When a dealer raised Lewis’s prices in 2022, the artist’s exhibition failed to sell out, adding to the financial strain. That was the beginning of the end.

“When the prices inflate that much, everyone gets really excited — and people tend to make a lot of mistakes,” said Loring Randolph, director of the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of art in Dallas. Buyers who felt they overpaid are “really pulling back now.”

Guessing Which Way the Pendulum Will Swing

Laurent Mercier, an art dealer representing Emmanuel Taku, said in a text message that what happened to the artist was “very sad and crazy.”

In 2021, Mercier said,Taku’s paintings had nearly 500 wait-listed buyers and promises of museum donations that would improve the artist’s reputation. But in the next two years, as other dealers entered the picture, works by Taku suddenly flooded the market, with supply outstripping demand. Prices began to collapse with some collectors offloading the artist’s work at auctions. Now Mercier is trying to clamp down on sales to build back demand.

“People don’t want to miss out and in the end will overpay,” Mercier said. “Then the pendulum swings the other way and even at too-cheap prices, few want to get in.”