What is the argument for investing in emerging artists? Nothing overrides emotion like experience and having dominated auction results for the past decade, demand for the work of art market stars such as Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Gerhard Richter fell off at a recent Christies' auction. The Company's February International London auction saw five of the ten works for sale by these artists sell at or near their low estimates. The results are hardly surprising in light of the growth in demand and prices for the top artists' work over the past decade, not to mention the understanding that future growth of anything close to that magnitude will have to come from less well-known artists. 

Around the world, interest in emerging artists continues to drive sale of contemporary art. For instance, the work of little-known Indonesian artists did extraordinarily well at a recent auction in Jakarta. Economic growth in Indonesia was very strong in 2007, the strongest in fact in eleven years. As has been the experience across the globe, economic prosperity has caused a surge in interest in Contemporary Art, particularly of one's own country. However, prices for most of this nation's artists still lag their enormously popular brethren in India and China, which makes them all the more interesting.