Bright young artists share how they splashed the cash after the price of their work rocketed… only for their careers to take a sudden and unpleasant turn

A number of young artists have said that a sudden increase in the market value of their work, followed by a dramatic decline, has left them in financial trouble.

The art market has been in decline for a number of years, especially among young artists.

During the pandemic, a boom fueled by the belief in quick returns saw collectors spend $712 million on works by artists born after 1974.

According to the New York Times, that was a huge increase from the $259 million spent on the same type of artists a year earlier.

That sudden and dramatic increase caused the price for these artists, now known in the industry as “ultra-contemporary,” to drop by nearly a third.

One of the people affected by this unfortunate decline was Amani Lewis, who rose to fame after selling her painting “Into the Valley, the Boy Walks (Psalm 23:4)” for $107,100 in 2021.

The piece sold for more than double its estimate. Two other works exceeded expectations, and a collector paid $150,000 for pieces straight from her studio.

As her popularity grew, she also started performing in Paris and Miami. She moved into a new art studio and bought a Tesla.

Despite the sudden increase in market value, the painting resurfaced at auction in June, where it sold for $10,080, 90 percent of its value.

The sale forced Lewis to give up her $7,000-a-month rental of a luxury Miami apartment and move in temporarily with her brother.

Speaking to the Times, the 29-year-old said: “It was such a nice high and then it goes down. It’s like, “We’re done with Amani Lewis.”

She added: ‘There are things I should have done with the money I earned to protect myself from the current situation, but I didn’t.

“I’ve lived in cars, I’m from the hood,” before admitting that 2023, when the bubble burst, was “the hardest year of my life”

That same year, a collector messaged her saying he was “in two minds” about whether to sell her paintings.

In a text seen by the medium, it says: ‘I moved into a 120 year old house with some expensive defects and your painting is one of the few saleable things I own.’

Lewis replied, “If you want to renovate, take a loan, mate.” The work sold for $10,000 including fees, $2,500 more than the original price.

In 2021, a painting by Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Taku called “Sisters in Pink” sold for $189,000.

Like Lewis, Taku saw its price plummet after it went up for auction in March, selling for $10,160.

Two years ago, a number of cubist portraits by Isshaq Ismail sold for around $367,000, but now they are not even sold for more than $20,000.

Ismail said he regretted sometimes selling as many as five works at a time to art advisors and collectors, who then quickly sold them again.

He told the outlet, “Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” adding that buyers reached out to him via email or Instagram, making it difficult to distinguish him.

Brooklyn-based artist Allison Zuckerman has also been affected by the market’s sharp decline: her painting “Woman With Her Pet” sold for $212,500 three years ago.

In June, the painting was put up for sale again and sold for just $20,160, proving once again how crowded the market is.

Zuckerman was 27 and working out of her cramped New York City apartment when mega-collectors came knocking on her door.

Her work has been auctioned 50 times since 2021. Zuckerman told the Times: “It feels very outside of your body.”

She added: ‘Everything that went into that painting, the discoveries, the resolution of that one corner, that brushstroke that really brought it all together, that’s not talked about.’

Despite the price drop on “Woman With Her Pet,” Zuckerman added that most of her paintings sold for $35,000 to $65,000 at a solo show in June.

Zuckerman said she wished she had learned how to run a business, adding, “For me, graduate school was about finding my voice. I wish I had taken a business course.”

She says that now, using her experience in the market, she is planning a series of paintings around the conclusion of her work.

Laurent Mercier, an art dealer representing Emmanuel Taku, told the Times that what happened to Taku is “very sad and crazy.”

Mercier said there were nearly 500 buyers on a waiting list for his paintings and promised museum donations that would enhance Taku’s reputation.

In the years that followed, his works flooded the market, exceeding demand, causing prices to plummet.

Mercier said he and Taku are now trying to limit sales to revive demand and “clean up the mess.”

He said, ‘People don’t want to miss out and end up paying too much. Then the tide swings the other way and even when prices are too low, few want to get in.’

Experts believe the downward trend will continue: sales of work by young artists have fallen by 39 percent in the past year.

Collectors had overestimated the power of the market and were afraid that their work would no longer be able to be sold. That is why they sold their work in order to at least earn some money back.

Record high prices in 2021 led to a surge in the number of sellers, flooding an already fragile market.

Artist prices were subsequently increased, but in some cases they rose above the level, which deterred buyers.

In 2022, a dealer raised prices for Lewis, preventing the artist’s exhibition from selling out, only adding to the pressure.

Loring Randolph, director of the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Art Collection in Dallas, told the outlet, “When prices get that high, everyone gets excited and people tend to make a lot of mistakes.”

According to Randolph, buyers who felt they paid too much are now “really pulling out.”

Georgina Adam, author of two books on the contemporary art market, said that changes in taste used to determine the rise of declining artists, but that cycles are now shorter, which she said is fuelled by speculation.

According to the Times, mMore than a third of buyers at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in 2021 were new clients.

Adam added that they may have been more interested in making a profit than actually becoming a lifelong customer.