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Móyòsóré Martins: Taking on NYC, One Painting at a Time

By Gertrude Oby April 30, 2024

My artwork is intentionally raw and I like to use a lot of different materials and have rough-cut edges on the canvas. The paintings are textured with scratches, scribbles, and mud-like paint, as well as clay, liquid plastic, oil sticks, and chunky layers of oil paint. I layer the background and then deconstruct them, which gives the feeling of wear and tear on the canvas. No painting is alike as each has symbolic patterns and encrypted messages hidden within it. I want to merge the vision with the given and the new world that I live in now. The word “Why?” is seen in a lot of the work because it leaves you asking the same question.

—MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS

Attestation (Vouch), 2022 is a vibrant and energetic piece that showcases the artist’s unique blend of figurative, abstract, and narrative elements. The title is the artist claiming his spot, evidence of his work and style, and awareness of his position in the art world. This is his first auction. The painting features a central totemic figure with exaggerated features, bold brushstrokes, and raw energy.

He is one of today’s most collected emerging, contemporary African artists; his contemporary works have become in high demand among the art community of collectors, auctioned at Sotheby’s and Phillips in New York.  In this conversation with Gertrude Oby for Modaculture‘s May cover, Móyòsóré Martins chats about his artistic journey, dealing with his emotions, and the lifestyle choices he’s made to get him to where he is today.

It’s been over a week since that interview with Martins and still, I’m swayed by the intensity of that one-hour-plus Zoom studio session. This intensity which I speak of must come as no surprise to many, I mean it is an artist we speak of. But it wasn’t that, it was the realization that no matter how many artists you have shared space with in conversation, you never quite get used to that deep feeling of being sucked into their world which almost often felt like a mosaic of buried emotions begging to make their way to the surface. With each artist comes a different range of emotions, a different kind of organized chaos. Of thoughts. Of life lessons. Of experiences. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It was the same with Móyòsóré Martins. And he didn’t hold back while telling his story.

The visual artist, now one of the most collected in New York City, did not start out as a success. It took a lot for him and from him to get there; from dealing with parents who didn’t support his work, leaving behind the place he called home to migrate to the United States in 2015,  to working menial jobs to make ends meet while waiting for his dream life as an artist to kick off or not. He grew up in Lagos city as the last child of his parents. He did live a rebellious little life in his younger days—kicked out of school twice—and eventually moved to Ghana to give university education a try again. And now that he is here, it doesn’t get into his head. When asked about his success, he quickly, almost awkwardly, responds briefly before changing the subject. 

“Success comes in different forms. Success, to me as an artist, is being free from all the norms which is something I embrace. I could wake up on a Monday, when everybody is going to work, and decide to go shopping or like, just chill with the TV and relax. That’s success—being able to give back, and change people’s lives, in America as well as back home, that’s what success is to me not really the sales. I mean the sales, that’s amazing. It does give you the approval and the freedom and the means to have a good studio, materials and a good body of team. I would sound crazy if I said that doesn’t really count, it’s a blessing, and I don’t take it for granted. I’ll just move past that because I really don’t like talking about money and success and all those things.”

Móyòsóré Martins. Photographed by Daniella Liguori © 2024

But away from all that success, art remains selfish, according to him. It is jealous and wants all of him. You could tell from his journey. He tells us that it has been a stormy ride, a dark one at that, because it’s all a game of perception and an endless cycle of sowing and reaping, and one has to stick it out, like it or not. “What you put in is what you get, you know. How you see yourself is how people see you. It’s just about you gaining mastery of your craft and living it. It’s not something you wake up today and go like ‘I wanna be an artist today, and then tomorrow you make some money and then the next, you wanna be something else. You don’t even choose yourself, you need to be chosen for things like this. It’s deeper, it could be frustrating, it could be depressing, it could be very dark. It’s art. It drags you in, it’s selfish. It’s very jealous.” 

Does he have shortcomings and regrets when it comes to his art? Not at all. He embraces everything that comes with it and stays vulnerable through it all as he has had to sacrifice everything for it. So, the bigger question becomes this: How much of all these experiences goes into his art? “I’m an abstract expressionist, I try to move away from my realism or anything that a camera can do. So that is number one. You just have to give everything in,” he says.

The dry days are longer than the wet but the wet days feel better. The wet days cover for the drought but the dry days are very long. That’s why I say you need to be chosen for this because we’re not all built to be crazy. It is only a crazy person who believes in something that’s not even happening yet. Just like religion, we believe in something we don’t see, some feel it and some can’t even feel it. 

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MODACULTURE MAY 2024

“So, people that don’t feel it, they believe in those things even though they don’t feel it yet and growing up being catholic, an alter boy, everything all catholic schools and stuff and now I’m spiritual, I believe in everything but mainly I believe in spirituality, intuition, my consciousness and I believe in myself so I engrave and infuse everything into my work. There is no way out, that’s my therapy. That’s my canvas, that’s the way I get to say things I can’t say to normal human beings without appearing crazy.” As we talk, he walks me through his over 3,000 square feet studio featuring two large rooms, one he works in and one for relaxation, as well as a storage room and roof deck, in the heart of New York and it was quite the experience. It was full of art pieces, floor to ceiling, all over. It was a world of its own, Martins’s not-so-little world. In it, you’ll find pieces; art in progress, art completed, bare canvas, and layers of tools that bring all of his ideas and thoughts to life. It consumes—his relationship with art—but he makes it work, devoting hours, days, and weeks to seeing nobody else but his art. It’s what saved him and got him off the street, anyway.

Móyòsóré Martins photographed in his Bronx, NY studio room. Photographed by Daniella Liguori © 2024

“That’s what saved me. That’s what got me off the street. That’s what changed my name. That is what gave me the life I have so I owe everything to it. You can’t cheat the energy. The people collecting art, because I don’t say they buy art, it’s ‘collection.’ You could buy clothes and stuff but when you start getting rare things, it is a collection. The people that collect art, they know what they feel, they know what to expect, they’re not fools. They work hard for everything they have and everything they own and for them to want to collect anything you create, they need to feel the frequency. It’s all about energy, vibrations and everything. It’s more than just putting a canvas, or a paint and a brush on a canvas and be like ‘Errr, okay that’s it.’ Nah!”

Everything goes into his art. It’s all in there. It’s his life. It’s his one medium of expression. Whatever he could give is right there in his art, whether all of him or some of him, it’s all there. 

“Sometimes I get 50-50, I put everything in there, sometimes it’s 70-30, it’s in there. Sometimes it’s like 90-10, it’s in there. Sometimes a piece is extremely borderline dark, and twisted, but it’s in there, you could feel what I go through at that moment,” but it’s not always dark and twisted and sad because “sometimes you see the paintings full of joyful manifestations,” and you could tell, “it’s in there.” 

If art is a spectrum, then you can be certain this painter takes himself through the stretch.

“The reason I create like that,” he continues, “is because I don’t like being in front of the cameras, I don’t see myself as this influencer with a camera with my phone and all those things, I’ve never been about that, I’ve always been about my business because I’m very obsessed with this stuff. There’s something I see that I know is gonna happen but not yet, I’m on the way there. As much as I keep seeing these things, there’s no way for me to stop. That’s why I do this every day, trying to learn every day. I work every day just as if I haven’t sold anything yet. I’m hungry as hell, not desperate but extremely articulated and intentional with everything with my moves. It’s a lifestyle to it—what you eat, what you wear, where you go, it all boils down to what you create—the kind of books you read, what you watch on TV, the people you talk to, your access as human beings, you know. So the designs in general, the architecture, music, sound, design, the food, smell, you know we can’t just be one-sided; an artist is just an umbrella of that creative-know-all so everything is all in there.

If I’m going through my emotions and everything, you could feel it in the pieces. I won’t lie or hide what I create because most of the time I don’t put the messages in myself, it comes. Sometimes I get the premonitions and sometimes I don’t”.

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MODACULTURE MAY 2024

So, what’s the takeaway from Móyòsóré Martins’s art? The constant message is that life is an eventful journey that gets dark, every now and then, and art is a gift that gets one through. As much as one may have heard this, it could never stop being true—one ought to seek the light continuously. This constant struggle is not unique to him, many other artists like him experience it too. For instance, there’s always that pendulum that swings back and forth from cash cow status to doing art just for what it is. For some artists, that pendulum is just a phase; for others, it’s their whole life. “I talk to many artists, from time to time, and understand that they are trying to get clarity of the light because we’re all in a tunnel, some will never find the light. Some will just get a crack of the light and some are in the light and refuse to shine the light and let other people have a trail of where they’re going.” 

“So most of us have always been about the journey—life itself, where we’re all heading, what we’re going through and what is to be expected of us and what to expect from people being an artist, being a cash cow, because it starts with a hobby, then it turns into a business, then it turns into something else and how to stay grounded in everything because most people that went to art school they never taught them about how to handle success and how to handle the art market, human relations, aesthetic, your voice, signature and everything. They just think that after going to art school, that’s it. Nah! It’s way deeper, finding your voice is a lifetime kind of thing so people are chosen and blessed to have it. That’s why I said it’s a gift. It could be anybody else as well. With that basic understanding of how the universe actually works, I input everything in my work trying to make it as self-explanatory as possible so I don’t have to be at the shows or in front of the cameras.” 

But, in essence, what was this journey truly like and how did it all begin? From the time Móyòsóré Martins first arrived in New York until he was discovered and started selling his art, he amassed even more experiences making his discovery quite the story. None of it was pretty. He walked into many galleries in the city and got too many rejections so he stopped seeking representation. But he never stopped making art. He painted so many pieces and hung them in his home, there wasn’t a single white space left. There were pieces unhung in every room in his apartment. Eventually, he bent a knee to capitalism. While at his security job, he landed a freelance role as a graphic artist where he worked and made a few cheques. He’d assumed he could make a living off those cheques at the security job working two shifts in a 24-hour schedule. It was cold. 

Móyòsóré Martins in his Bronx, NY studio, 2023  Photography by Daniella Liguori © 2024

“But I’ve been used to the nos ever since I was a kid anyway so it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore since the people that actually gave birth to me have been telling me that all my life so who are you to tell me ‘No’ that’s gonna matter? So that’s what really made me very stubborn. I’ve changed now, I’m very calm and laid back. So I would go around Chelsea, Soho, all these places looking for gallery representatives, then they’d tell me ‘No’ and then I stopped going around. I was just working. I was just painting and keeping my paintings. Yeah, I have my paintings in my beautiful apartment. You need to love what you do, it’s like a tailor who makes clothes and doesn’t even wear what you make, it makes no sense. So my paintings were beautifully curated in my apartment alongside So my paintings were beautifully curated in my apartment alongside other things I’ve collected because I’m a collector myself. Then I worked for many years being an independent artist. I was bored, and I needed to do something else you know in NY, everybody is very fast and swift and I was just in my studio. I would look out of my studio and see people go to work and come back and I was doing quite okay but I felt like I was missing out, it felt like a stimulation in New York. I was like ‘Dude you need to be out there again,’ so I started putting out CVs.”

Foreseeing, 2023 Oil, oil stick, pigments, graphite on canvas 75 X 70 inches.

While narrating this, he doesn’t miss out on any chance to acknowledge and appreciate his support system, emphasising that he did not get to where he is today alone. When he met his best friend, now wife Joanna Martins, they worked hard to build each other and work their way to the top. “I had no one, then I met my best friend, Joanna, who is my wife. We became very close friends and everything. She saw my vision and what I wanted to do. We actually helped build ourselves together. It wasn’t as if I was walking around with a cape on my back like Superman. I had a support system, people who saw things I wouldn’t see. I just want to put that out there.”

He touches on the subject of identity and how much impact it could have on the trajectory of one’s life. “Being Black in America is real, there’s an advantage to it, there’s also a disadvantage to it, you will see the advantage if you think differently. I’ve been different. I don’t follow man-made rules or anything. Your idea of me is not the reality of who I am, so I’ve always been like that. I walk into any room. I’ve never seen colours like that. You know I’m married to a white woman, my kids are mixed so I’ve never seen anything like colour. I’m very stubborn if I want something I’m walking in there. And I’m not from here so that’s a very major advantage, it makes you see things differently, and it makes you work out of the box entirely because I came as a grown man with a culture already so having culture is an advantage to who you are as a person, you know the convenience, the language, the food is an essence of your individuality so I had that, so I knew who I was, I knew where I come from, so there’s a difference and the Black people here as well they see that and they go through that as well. It’s a lot. It’s mental stuff, things that make people think small of themselves, it’s traumatising.” 

Lekki 2021, Oil on Canvas 73 x 64 inches (About #EndSARs and the 2020 Lekki Toll Gate Massacre in Lagos, Nigeria).

There are more bright sides to being a POC which are advantageous to one’s life as an artist, and he delves into that. 

Yes, my tradition, how I grew up and me being Black—being Black is different—it comes with so many things. It comes with history. It comes with wisdom. It comes with patience. It comes with the ability of self-consciousness and all these things make you a good artist. You just have the natural intuition that what you’re doing is the right thing as much as the whole world says ‘Nah, that ain’t it.’ So, it’s a blessing, I wouldn’t change it for anything.

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MODACULTURE MAY 2024

“And growing up back home, with everything I went through and saw, I feel like that’s what made me who I am today—my ability to push things through.”

All it takes is one moment. 

At this point, we circle back to the topic of his discovery. Móyòsóré Martins tells me that his boss and her husband had gone on a voyage to Switzerland, and somehow they had stumbled on his painting. Surprisingly, he had worked with them awhile and had kept his artistry safely tucked away from them. He would sit in on meetings while they discussed major artists, museums, etc., and he never pitched himself or leveraged an opportunity to project himself, as most people would have. He sat in on those meetings, simply taking notes—being an assistant—and then, he would go home to his art. “Hi Móyò,” he narrates his boss’ email, “Don’t tell me this is your work, so you’ve been an artist and you never told me”, followed by a promise to pay a visit to his studio as soon as they both returned. They’d insisted on taking a tour of wherever he made his art. After they explored his space and the pieces, they signed him on and they’ve worked together ever since at Traffic Arts.

A section of Móyòsóré Martins’s studio.

Móyòsóré Martins is not your typical artist who’d go with the ebbs and flows of inspiration. Routines and structure were everything to him. He was so dedicated he had several pieces to churn out each month. Whether the inspiration came or not, he would sit with his bare canvas staring it in the face till it succumbed to him. “I paint at midnight. I paint from 12 am to 6/7 am and then wake up and it’s a circle. I don’t have a normal life, I was woken up for this interview. I don’t have a normal life. You can’t be normal if you want to do something different because you can’t fight the originality, you’re gonna be fake, you’re gonna be something else.”

I live in my art world in the sense that I don’t do anything else but art. I don’t engage in anything that does not revolve around this, I don’t go to clubs, I don’t go to parties, I don’t go anywhere. Sometimes, I’ll be in my studio for two weeks without seeing the sun. It’s a routine. It’s a practice. It’s a possession. You need to be possessed with this stuff. I’m being honest with you and whoever is in your life needs to understand that you didn’t choose this, you were chosen for this.

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MOD

Móyòsóré Martins photographed in his Bronx, NY studio room

His creative process is pretty sensual. From preparing his canvas to enjoying some jazz, smoking a bit and then drinking some coffee in between, it’s got a certain pizazz to it. “I prep my canvas, I leave it on the wall, I walk around, I enjoy myself, I put some jazz music on, I drink, I smoke a little bit, I drink coffee, I chill, I open books, I watch the news, you know I’m like an old man, and I just get to it. I don’t think too much, there’s no fear, everything you make is amazing. But you could know if you need to push further or not. That’s where you need to be true to yourself as an artist because you can tell if you can actually make that painting better or not, so I always make all my paintings as if it’s my last ones because I understand the art of the time. I don’t joke with time, I feel like that’s one of the most important things in my process, the time at which I used to create and yes, some paintings take months, weeks, and years and I get back to it. And some, I finish right there.” 

I don’t work on one painting, I work on four or five paintings at the same time and I have the same palette. And I don’t go to places to look for inspiration, I create my own inspiration. I enjoy collecting things that inspire me and stimulate my mind—furniture; figurines—then curating, arranging, and redesigning my studio. I’m like a mole, I live 35 minutes away and I’ve been in my studio for two weeks now, the only thing I do is Uber eats and just eat. 

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MODACULTURE MAY 2024

“My wife and kids come to check on me. It’s also a blessing to have someone who understands your life, not trying to change you or trying to make you live like how they wanna live. I’m free and being free adds up to how I create. I’m free mentally and spiritually. I have no weight on me so instead of internalizing things, I pour everything on my canvas, and I have no pity for my canvas because I really treat them ‘ruggedly’ because I don’t want them to look very fine and pretty because I’m not fine and pretty because I’ve been through a lot, I’m scarred, it takes a lot.” 

Martins is a man who is rough around the edges, as you can probably tell by now, and he is not afraid to let all of that show in his art. One could tell as the conversation starts to take an even deeper but not unexpected turn, and he leans into his vulnerability and bares his emotions.

“There are some things there’s no way I can heal from, I just need to carry the cross like that, and there are things I will forever be trying to heal till I leave this phase because I’m scarred forever and everything shows in my works, and how I treat people, and how I listen to people and understand them, and being emotionally intelligent, and being able to say ‘no’ and being able to say ‘yes’ and standing on your words, meeting objectives and stuff like ‘In a week, these are how many paintings I’m making, whether you sell or you don’t sell.’ You need to have a routine, you need to be structured. Most artists are not like that. They take it as a freestyle, you need to treat it like a 9-5, you need to clock in and clock out, and you need to clock in forever. That process sometimes is something I can’t explain because I really don’t understand how I make the painting. All I know is I have a routine, not really a process but timing; certain foods I need to eat, certain things I need to do. I’m always by myself, I like being alone a lot, by being alone I get to have the finest clarity I need without my thoughts being hindered or tinted by any source of external inspiration or whatever the case, not like trying to check the internet and looking for things. The structure is what makes you who you are and you can just tell, those things don’t lie, sometimes you might be a genius, but if you don’t have a routine or you are not structured, you can’t make anything useful of yourself. You might be having the best time of your life but when that time (for work) hits, it’s ‘Alright I got to go.’ Most artists don’t see that. And that’s what separates artists from artists,” he reveals as he demystifies the place of structure and discipline in an artist’s life, and the necessary pain of the process, one masking the other. 

So what does it take to stand out as an artist? The painter emphasises structure, ethics, vision, and an unparalleled focus on the art. “I really don’t have many artist friends because they’re very competitive, everybody wants to be the best artist, they want to be number 1. As much as people don’t see it like that, it’s a very competitive sport. I want to be the best, the most sought-after, the most sold, but are you putting in the work? Do you have the ethics? Do you have the structure that’s gonna take you to where you’re going? That’s what separates the people out there from the people lamenting and complaining. That’s what I’ve been doing, routines and structures, being on my own, solitude and everything. Abstinence from things that are gonna take my superpower away, you need to know these things, it’s spiritual, it’s like music.”

A section of Móyòsóré Martins’s studio

Everything Móyòsóré Martins has done, everything he does now, and everything he plans to do in future leads him down one path: timelessness. For him, it’s about what his work says, and how it will be perceived in the long run. “Will it make them want to buy new furniture, or will it add to what they have going on?” At this point in the conversation, he’s starting to preach the essence of training oneself as an artist to better heights and improved taste. 

An artist needs to have good taste in everything: fashion, food, seeing things and understanding the value, aesthetics, silhouettes, cut, design and everything because the people that collect your stuff are people of the finest quality of taste so why would they want to buy something that looks ‘raggedy’ and put in their living room or bedroom? So, the stuff needs to be amplifying, stimulating, something they could learn from, something inspiring, and something mind-blowing. I say mind blowing not culture-shocking because human beings don’t like that. 

MÓYÒSÓRÉ MARTINS, MODACULTURE MAY 2024

“Culture shock is like change and we are not used to changing, we love things that are nostalgic, that we’ve seen before. As soon as we see something brand new, it’s a turnoff, that is how racism and everything started. People are scared of things they don’t know, so we need to create things that are welcoming. As much as your message could be deep, dark, and heavy, you should learn to figure out a way to express it in a comforting manner, if that makes sense. That’s why my paintings are dark, yet very childlike. Channelling those emotions, that’s what I have been doing, and I keep learning, trying to gain mastery and pushing myself to the next limit every day.” 

And where does he see himself going, what kind of messages does he want to pass through his art as he continues to grow? “I see myself being happier, I see myself designing things that would implement the functionality of human beings, especially growing up in Nigeria, I saw things we lack and need that could make our lives better, things that we don’t even think of, like having a good bus stop and everything, public toilets—things that make us human—parks, and places you could go sit down and just chill without spending money because everything doesn’t have to do with currency,” he says excitedly talking about all the ways he intends to impact the lives of others and his legacy. “I want to have an organisation where I could help artists by giving them scholarships, make them find their true artistic self, that I would be doing next year.” 

“And I’m enjoying the now, I try not to dwell too much on things like that, so I try to make use of the time I have now, and that’s what I’ve been doing and that’s how I see myself and that’s what I know for myself.”

He talks more about his intentions of becoming more humanitarian, changing the dynamics of daily human operations, and making his art more functional in society. “I feel most of the designs we have now aren’t complete, everything is being put out in a rush like a teaser, and everything that’s out now isn’t new. It could be better, it could be safer. Living in America, they don’t have public toilets. When I came to America, I always wanted to pee all the time, especially because it’s cold, your bladder gets filled up, and you always want to pee. I feel like a basic human being needs a public toilet. We’re animals, we need to go. There is no good bus stop in America. They all sit in the cold, the buses don’t come frequently, and you can’t have a normal job if you’re preparing to take a transportation system like that so I really want to go humanitarian and change the dynamics of how we operate as human beings.”

He’s also taking it back home to Lagos, Nigeria where he plans to design bus stops and transportation systems. “That’s something I really want to do as well when I come back home: inventing and designing new bus stops and transportation systems using simple designs that would really make our lives feel better, that would make you feel like oh! I got it. So I just want to be more humanitarian and implement my art and designs into things that would make our lives functional as human beings in general so that’s my goal—improving functionality, design, how we live, how we see spaces, the space, curation of space, the things you need, and the basic needs of human beings that make your lifestyle more suitable for you to live. Because I live here and live there and have the best of both worlds, I could tell the lack there and the lack here too in as much as everything looks so rosy. So, once you could figure out what they need, you could find the solution to it, and I feel like I’ll have the solution for it. It’s just that the time isn’t right, and I do believe when the time is right, everything will be like in reality.”

From New York, Móyòsóré Martins took a trip to Accra, Ghana where he is currently participating in a six-week residency with MOU Arms Around The Child foundation. He has his art studio set up with the children’s school from April through May 2024, volunteering to help the school and orphanage, creating art with the children.

Móyòsóré Martins during his residency at Arms Around the Child| Image courtesy of the artist

One of the works will be auctioned off in the fall in London at an exhibition, and part of the proceeds will go to the school orphanage. 

Photographs by: Daniella Liguori© 2024

Key Findings 1. Global art sales increased by 3% year-on-year to an estimated $67.8 billion, bringing the market higher than its pre-pandemic level in 2019. After a strong recovery in sales of 31% in 2021 from the pandemic-induced low point the previous year, results were more mixed in 2022, with variations in performance by sector, region, and price segments resulting in more muted growth. 2. The volume of transactions fell sharply during the pandemic in 2020, but recovered in 2021, with the number of sales rising by 19% to 37.3 million. In 2022, these increased only marginally (1%) to 37.8 million, with the rise mainly due to more sales by dealers. 3. The high end of the market continued to be the driver of growth in 2022. Sales in the public auction sector dipped slightly by 1% to $26.8 billion, with works priced at over $10 million being the only segment to increase in value. The dealer sector grew by 7% to $37.2 billion, and sales for those operating at the higher end were significantly better than their peers in the lowest tiers. 4. The US retained its premier position in the global ranks, with its share of sales by value increasing by 2% year-on-year to 45%. The UK moved back into second place with 18% of sales, and China’s share decreased (by 3%) to 17%, as it fell back into third position. France maintained its position as the fourth-largest art market worldwide with a stable share of 7%. 5. After a significant decline in sales during the pandemic, the US art market has seen one of the most robust recoveries of all the major markets. From a pandemic-induced low in 2020, sales bounced back in 2021, increasing by just over one third in value to $28.0 billion. Growth continued in 2022 with a further increase of 8% year-on-year to $30.2 billion, its highest level to date. This was driven by a major uplift at the high end of the auction sector, along with more moderate but positive growth in dealer sales. 6. Despite a year of intense economic and political pressures, sales in the UK maintained their momentum, with a rise of 5% to $11.9 billion in 2022. This second year of growth boosted the market from its 2020 low, although sales were still below their prepandemic level in 2019 of $12.2 billion. 7. China had a significantly worse year in 2022, with lockdowns stalling activity, and sales and events curtailed or cancelled. Sales declined by 14% year-on-year to $11.2 billion, and although still 13% above 2020, this was their lowest level prior to that since 2009. 8. The French market saw positive, low growth of 4% year-on-year measured in US dollars, with the increase somewhat muted by deteriorating Euro values in 2022. Following a drop in value of 30% in 2020, sales in France had a particularly strong uplift in 2021, increasing by 58% year-on-year to $4.8 billion. The continued growth in 2022 led to a new peak of just under $5 billion, the highest level to date. 9. As exhibitions, auctions, and fairs all ran on much fuller schedules and collectors began to reengage with live events and sales, both dealers and auction houses reported a further reduction in their share of e-commerce in 2022. Online-only sales fell to $11.0 billion, a decline of 17% from the 2021 peak of $13.3 billion, but still 85% higher than in 2019. Online sales accounted for 16% of the total value of the art market’s 2022 turnover, down from the peak of 25% in 2020, and 4% lower than the share of global retaile-commerce (20%) in 2022. 10. After reaching a peak in late 2021 of close to $2.9 billion, sales of art-related NFTs on platforms outside the art market fell to just under $1.5 billion, a decline of 49% year-on-year. Despite the significant drop in value, sales were still over 70 times those in 2020 (at just over $20 million). The decline in value was much greater for art-related NFTs than other segments, and they accounted for just 8% of the value of NFT sales on the Ethereum network in 2022 (versus 67% for collectibles-based NFTs)

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1.1 Overview of Global Sales After two years of disruption from the global pandemic, 2022 was anticipated as the year the art market would return to a more regular momentum. Early in the year there were predictions of a boom in sales as the full art fair calendar resumed and auctions featured high profile collections. Collector sentiment surveys conducted mid-year also indicated optimistic buying plans. But in reality, while the year was certainly marked by exceptional sales and events, the overall results were much more mixed, with variation in performance by sector, region, and segment resulting in more muted growth than anticipated. The COVID-19 pandemic created a very difficult operating context for the art trade, with restrictions on operations, travel, exhibitions, and events all contributing to a contraction in sales of 22% in 2020 to $50.3 billion, its lowest point since the global financial crisis in 2009. However, just as the market bounced back in 2010, sales also recovered quickly in 2021, driven by both the rapid adaption of the art trade to digital channels and strong sales at the high end of the market buoyed by the expanding wealth and spending power of high-net-worth (HNW) collectors. As nearly all regions and most segments recovered in 2021, values reached $65.9 billion, an increase of 31% from 2020, bringing the market higher than its pre-pandemic level in 2019. Collectors and those in the art trade began 2022 with a highly optimistic outlook as sales and events resumed a more regular pace in most regions. The first half of the year was marked by strong sales in the auction sector, with many record prices achieved. There were positive indictors from the dealer sector with busy fairs and exhibitions. However, as the year progressed the context proved to be more challenging than anticipated, with political and economic instability, the intensifying war in Ukraine, rapidly increasing inflation rates, supply issues, and looming recessions in key markets. In the last quarter particularly, despite the headline-grabbing $1.6 billion Paul Allen sale at Christie’s in New York, the market appeared overstimulated and began to cool, with reports of more subdued bidding and buying at events. Tight zero-COVID policies in China also meant the cancellation of many events and auction sales in the region throughout the year, which took a heavy toll on the art market’s growth. High transmission rates from the abrupt end of these regulations at the start of 2023 have continued to cause short-term disruptions. While the other major markets including the US and UK posted positive results, this divergence in performance created more subdued growth, with global sales increasing by just 3% year-on-year to an estimated $67.8 billion.

Prior to the events of the last three years, the last major recession in the art market took place in 2009 when sales fell by 36% to $39.5 billion. The fallout from the global financial crisis affected nearly all segments of the market, including the high end. The market bounced back strongly in 2010, with a booming Chinese market and strong sales in the US operating in unison to push values up by 44% to $64.6 billion by 2011. The recovery was stalled to some extent by the abrupt end to the boom in China in 2012 slowing global values, but from 2009 to 2011 global art sales had advanced in value by 63%. This time around, the market was already under pressure prior to the pandemic-induced contraction in 2020 as geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty negatively impacted sales in 2019. The onset of the pandemic in early 2020 created an unprecedented crisis for the market, with closures and restrictions on events all taking their toll. Nevertheless, the market showed considerable resilience, and online trading helped salvage value, with the year-on-year nominal decline significantly less severe than in 2009. This has been matched, however, with a less pronounced recovery than from 2009 to 2011, with sales from 2020 to2022 increasing by 35%.

In both cases, the market’s rebound has exceeded its decline. Sales in 2022 were greater than before the pandemic and the second-highest point achieved in the market to date, with values just below the peak of 2014. A significant factor helping the market contract less (and recover faster) has been ample demand at the higher end of the market from wealthy collectors. Despite the widespread negative social and economic effects of the pandemic, global billionaires saw a significant boost to their wealth of almost one third in 2020 with certain industries such as technology, e-commerce, and healthcare thriving. The continued growth of this segment highlighted important differences between the pandemic and other previous financial downturns, including the global financial crisis of 2009, which resulted in the number of billionaires worldwide falling by 30% and their wealth decreasing by 45%. Growth in high-end wealth continued in 2021 with the number of billionaires and their wealth rising further, by 16% and 19% respectively, reaching an historical peak of $13.6 trillion and 2,657 individuals. Using Forbes World’s Billionaires lists (compiled since 1987), and measuring real-time wealth in December 2022, it was evident that there was some slowing of this trajectory over the year. The reported number of billionaires dropped to 2,487 (down by 6%) and their combined wealth was down 14% to $11.7 trillion. Some of the biggest losses were in Russia, with the billionaire population down by 18% and their wealth declining by one quarter, and China (including Mainland China and Hong Kong), which lost 99 billionaires, a 16% decline year-on-year, with wealth also decreasing by 27%. Nonetheless, even with this contraction in 2022, billionaire wealth has more than doubled in 10 years, and it has increased by more than one third since 2019, just before the onset of the pandemic. Along with the adaptions made by the market, the expansion in wealth for the world’s richest individuals has undoubtedly helped the art market weather the COVID-19 crisis better than it otherwise would have and to recover more rapidly. The extent to which these billionaires have focused their buying on the thin segment at the top of the market may, however, have increased inequalities in how businesses in the art trade have fared.

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Moyosore Martins
Starving Artist, 2023
Mixed Media, collage mounted on wooden stetcherbar
72 × 60 × 3 in | 182.9 × 152.4 × 7.6 cm

Visit Moyosore Martins on Artsy

Dear All,

The Plunge Protection Plan has been in high gear this week, (that is the use of taxpayer money to prop up the markets for Trump’s political purposes.) It has been pretty active for the last four years but yesterday and today, blatant. Investors need to ask themselves what happens to that support on the occasion of a trumped Trump. Yes, when he loses will he continue to use taxpayer money to prop up the market?

See video below.

Asher Edelman

Parents of 545 Children Separated at the Border Cannot Be Found

A new report shows hundreds of cases in which migrant children were taken from their families, and their parents, who were deported, cannot be located.

By Caitlin Dickerson

Radio spots are airing throughout Mexico and Central America. Court-appointed researchers are motorbiking through rural hillside communities in Guatemala and showing up at courthouses in Honduras to conduct public record searches.

Their efforts are part of a wide-ranging campaign to track down parents separated from their children at the U.S. border beginning in 2017 under the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration policy. It is now clear that the parents of 545 of the migrant children still have not been found, according to court documents filed this week in a case challenging the practice.

About 60 of the children were under the age of 5 when they were separated, the documents show.

Though attempts to find the separated parents have been going on for years, the number of parents who have been deemed “unreachable” is much larger than was previously known.

Under court order, the government first provided an accounting of separated families in June of 2018, reporting that about 2,700 children had been taken from their parents after crossing into the United States. After months of searching by a court-appointed steering committee, which includes a private law firm and several immigrant advocacy organizations, all of those families were eventually tracked down and offered the opportunity to be reunited.

But in January 2019, a report by the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of the Inspector General confirmed that many more children had been separated, including under a previously undisclosed pilot program conducted in El Paso between June and November 2017, before the administration’s widely publicized “zero tolerance” policy officially went into effect.

Under that policy, the Trump administration directed prosecutors to file criminal charges against those who crossed the border without authorization, including parents, who were then separated from their children when they were taken into custody. Some parents who crossed the border at legal ports of entry were also among those separated from their children.

The Trump administration fought for months against providing documentation on the additional families, arguing that it was not necessary because the children had already been released from federal custody into the care of sponsors, who are typically relatives or family friends. The parents of the children had already been deported without them.

But in June 2019, under court order, the government eventually acknowledged that an additional 1,556 children had been separated from their families; 200 of them were under 5 years of age at the time they were taken into custody.

When that information came out, the search efforts started again, but were made significantly more difficult by the amount of time that had passed between when the children were released from federal custody and when volunteer researchers began trying to find them. The effort hit another roadblock with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, during which travel through the Central American countries where most of the families live has been severely restricted.

“The Trump administration had no plans to keep track of the families or ever reunite them and so that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now, to try to account for each family,” said Nan Schivone, legal director of the organization Justice in Motion, which is leading on-the-ground search efforts for separated families.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading the court challenge to the family separation policy, said it had also been unable to find 362 of the children, many of whom are likely living in the United States, whose parents were deemed unreachable.

“The fact that they kept the names from the court, from us, from the public, was astounding,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the A.C.L.U.’s case over family separations. “We could have been searching for them this whole time.”

The latest findings were first reported by NBC News.

In some cases, members of the steering committee have had only names and countries of origin to go on in trying to locate separated parents. Even after conducting public record searches to identify the cities where the families were from, they faced additional hurdles. Many of the families had fled their homes because they were escaping violence or extortion, and intentionally withheld information from friends and neighbors about where they were going.

Researchers are presuming that about two-thirds of the parents now being sought are back in their home countries.

As part of the legal case over family separations in the Federal District Court in San Diego, overseen by Judge Dana Sabraw, the search efforts will continue and the government will be required to provide information about any additional families that are separated at the border.

As of October 2019, the government had provided contact information for more than 1,100 additional parents who had been separated from their children, but argued that it would not disclose information about some 400 of the parents because those individuals had criminal records that prevented the United States government from reuniting them with their children under Homeland Security Department policies.

Of the more than 1,100, the steering committee has been able to locate the parents of 485 additional separated children. The rest have not been found.

by The Editorial Board

The New York Times

Across America people are waiting for food, sitting in their cars in endless lines that stretch down streets or bend back and forth across blacktop parking lots. The scenes are reminiscent of the Great Depression: Images from a grim past come suddenly to life.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the nation’s economy in the spring and, because the virus continues to spread, millions of people remain out of work.

At first, the Trump administration worked with Congress to provide aid to Americans in need. The Cares Act included one-time payments to most households coupled with an expansion in unemployment insurance.

Then the stock market began to recover, and Mr. Trump lost interest. As the federal funds ran out, the number of Americans living in poverty has grown by eight million since May, according to recent research. That increase happened even as the job market improved, a troubling sign that the economy isn’t recovering fast enough to make up for the shrinking social safety net.

Job losses have been concentrated among low-wage workers, many of whom now need help to feed their families. The result: In the wealthiest nation on earth, hunger is on the rise, and overwhelmed food banks are struggling to help those whom the government has failed.

IMMIGRATION HALTED

The Trump administration has worked to reduce the number of legal and illegal immigrants to the United States with a fanaticism and attention to detail that are notably absent from almost any other area of policymaking, save packing the courts with conservative judges.

The administration deliberately separated thousands of children from their parents to deter immigration. It cut the number of refugees admitted each year to the lowest level on record, denying sanctuary to thousands of people fleeing domestic and political violence. It has pursued the deportation of people brought to the country as small children, who have never known another country. It has prevented the immigration of scientists, engineers and other specialists whose talents might help to revitalize the American economy.

The president also is obsessed with building a wall along the Mexican border — an inane idea his advisers first suggested because they wanted him to talk about immigration, and they knew he liked to talk about building things. The wall became such a fixation for Mr. Trump that he shut down the federal government in late 2018 in an attempt to wring funding from Congress. When that failed, he sought funding by declaring a national emergency. And when that failed, too, he took money from the defense budget to build a little bit of a wall.

If America once shone as a beacon of hope to the world, Mr. Trump tried his best to extinguish it.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS UNDER ATTACK

There have been moments when it’s felt like the backlash to electing a man who’s been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women — and who has in fact bragged about assaulting women — has been so profound, so righteous, that it could be harnessed to overhaul society as we know it.

The raw fury of the Women’s March the day after President Trump’s inauguration and the flourishing of the #MeToo movement were promising. Some men were held accountable for their abuses. A record number of women ran for office, and many of them won. The Equal Rights Amendment lurched back to life.

Nearly four years on, it’s clear that the patriarchy, while jostled on its pedestal, stands tall. Some people think it unmanly to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic, for goodness sake.

More troubling: Roe v. Wade, which is already so hobbled, could soon be overturned or gutted, leading to the further criminalization of pregnant women.

Since Mr. Trump took office, more women have come forward with credible sexual assault allegations against him — including one that surfaced just last month. One of Mr. Trump’s legacies will be whatever damage has surely been done to the national psyche for these claims to be buried by so many other disturbing events.

BLACK LIVES AT RISK

Some of the most consequential moments of the Trump era thus far were the roughly eight minutes that a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck, suffocating him to death.

Mr. Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer — an appallingly common occurrence for Black people in the United States — prompted one of the country’s largest social movements almost overnight. Millions of Americans, mostly masked to prevent coronavirus transmission, took to the streets in cities from coast to coast, outraged by police violence.

Adding to the righteous fury this year: the killing of Breonna Taylor in her home by the police— for which no officer has been charged.

Mr. Floyd and Ms. Taylor became some of the most recognizable victims of police violence in recent memory. But this year’s uprisings were a supercharged continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which had been growing since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Those who march do so not just for the names we know — but for all the names we don’t.

A PLANET IN PERIL

For anyone who cares about the health of the planet, the Trump years have been, to say the least, profoundly discouraging. Barely two months in office, Mr. Trump ordered his cabinet to review and remove any regulatory obstacles to the production of oil, gas and coal; shortly thereafter, he renounced America’s support of the landmark Paris climate agreement, thus shedding any claim to American leadership on a global crisis.

It was more or less downhill from there. He methodically decapitated Obama-era rules aimed at limiting emissions from power plants and oil and gas operations and mandating increases in fuel-efficient vehicles. He also opened public lands hitherto shielded from exploration to mining and drilling.

There were other assaults large and small on environmental protections, but the most damaging were those that undermined rules to diminish greenhouse gases while enabling the industries that produced them. All this despite the climate-related carnage in front of his own eyes, conspicuously the fires in California — and despite authoritative studies warning that failure to wrench emissions drastically downward over the next decade will bring irreversible damage.

Emissions in America, pre-Covid, declined slightly, thanks partly to the switch to cleaner fuels and the determined efforts of states and cites to do the job Mr. Trump won’t do. Globally, however, they’ve been rising, and the seas with them.

Read the full article here