Richard Polsky does a round-up of the 2004 art market on Artnet and makes some predictions for 2005, and guess what? Of the dozens of artists he looks at, only four--Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (??) and Ross Bleckner--are anticipated to go down next year. Most are going up, or are predicted to be "status quo," which I take to mean either "they'll go up, but I don't know why" or "they'll go down, but I don't want to piss off my dealer/artist/collector friends by saying so."
Murakami and Nara are cheap/easy shots: their auction prices have been wild for a while. Bleckner's market has been sort of sleepy for a while, so no one's shocked by that. And Felix, he's just wrong on that one: the work that came up this year was either atypical, or sold very well. Soon enough, people looking for good Felix's will find there aren't that many left. I think Polsky's just being pissy.
In any case, his analysis reminds me of the i-banks' stock recommendations during the bubble: all buys, no sells, with all arrows pointing up. And we know how that turned out.
Art Market Guide 2004 [artnet]
