Investment

Art as Investment

Art can do more than inspire creativity or enliven a home – it can help you build a diversified portfolio at minimized risk.

According to Artprice, blue chip art outperformed S&P 500 by over 180% between 2000 and 2018. Their findings show that since 2000, the top of the art market has appreciated at an average annual rate of 8.9%, while the stock market has trailed it significantly, growing at a rate of 3.4% in the same time-frame. Deloitte estimates the total value of art to be $1.7 trillion.

Many savvy investors are putting 10-20% of their wealth into this asset class because of the low correlation to other markets and consistent growth over the last 60 years.

What is Blue Chip Art?

In business, “blue chip” is used to describe industry leaders whose value is universally accepted. Similarly, in the art market blue chip refers to the most important and widely recognized artists whose works are reliably profitable and expected to hold or increase its economic value, regardless of general economic fluctuations. Here at West Chelsea Contemporary we sell a range of blue chip artists, which you can explore here.

Source: Artprice

Historical Returns

The art market has grown steadily and significantly over the last fifty years, with very low correlation to other asset classes and despite economic downturns. According to Sotheby’s Mei Moses Index, there has been an 8.8% compound annual growth rate between 1950 and 2018.

Source: Sotheby’s

Let’s take a look at how some of the blue chip artists in our collection perform:

WARHOL KAWS

2019 Auction Sales (Hammer Price) 2019 Auction Sales (Hammer Price)

$228,327,115 $108,445,628

Historical Return Historical Return

11.60% 38.50%

Risk Adjusted Return Risk Adjusted Return

0.72 0.9

Historical Appreciation*

12.7%

*Historical appreciation is defined as the median annualized appreciation rate across art that has sold at least twice at public auction by a given artist. Appreciation rates are not comparable to returns.