Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

Christian Giacomotto, president of the Conseil des Ventes Volontaires (CVV), the organisation that represents French auction houses, presented statistics regarding the French art market last year on 20th February. The report didn’t bring good news. In fact, the survey underlined the erosion of the French market that reduced by 2% with respect to 2006. The auction houses’ turnover went from 2, 202 million euros in 2006 to 2,154 million euros in 2007. That which mainly worries the French is the particular fact that their weight in the world market has been reduced. Looking more in detail at the results of the report, an increase in the number of auction houses can be revealed: they went from 374 in 2006 to 381 in 2007. It is interesting to ascertain the development of the concentration of players: 3% of auction houses generate around 44% of the overall turnover (in 2006 it was 39%). The crisis doesn’t seem to affect the bigger houses for which this is instead another positive moment. The prime 20 French auction houses have increased their turnovers by 2.3% throughout the year. Considering their usual art sales, the leader is always Christie’s; and contrary to some data divulged at the start of the year however, in second place we don’t find Artcurial (who is instead third) but Sotheby’s.
According to French market experts, reducing the amount of entire business is not a logical consequence of what is defined as a disastrous fiscal state, of picky regulations and inertia of some of the French market operators among which the Hotel Drouot is quoted. That which has been a main worry however as was alluded to is the loss of relative importance to the rest of the world for the French. Looking at a panel (a sample that remains unvaried in time, used for periodically repeated statistical surveys), which comprises world operators, CVV calculated the evolution of the French market with respect to the world market. In 2006, the French market had 16.34% of the sample. In 2007 it rose to 18.54% reflecting 31.31%. This method of revelation was considered by some to be not very trustworthy. Reasoning in solely auction house terms, and not being able to verify the real turnover of myriad English and American auction houses, runs the risk of undervaluing them. According to the reporters, the French situation therefore could well be worse. The average price of sales achieved totally increased, going from 49,98 euros to 52,43 euros, an increase of 5%. This increase is not due to the antique arts sector which instead underwent a decrease (from 79 to 76 euros) nor to antique books, which remain stable. The major increases were in ceramics (from 33 to 37 euros), coins (from 52 to 54 euros) and watches (from 92 to 99 euros).