Opinion Columns

Reading Charles FitzRoy’s “The Rape of Europa” sharpens a familiar but still under-discussed truth: major collections are rarely formed by taste alone; they are consolidated by geopolitical power and art market progress. Titian’s The Rape of Europa , painted in Venice around 1559–62 for Philip II of Spain as part of the poesie cycle, is not just a masterpiece of movement, sensuality and danger. Its later passage through French aristocratic hands, an English private collecti

Hera Büyüktaşcıyan occupies a paradox in today’s contemporary art landscape: institutionally established, critically regarded, yet still conservatively priced relative to her visibility. Born in Istanbul in 1984, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that examines memory, architecture, ecology, and erasure—showing how personal and collective narratives are shaped by displacement, rupture, and the slow violence of urban change. Her profile is not emerging in the usual

In the last couple of years, major auction houses have seemed to rely more heavily on auction guarantees to keep top-tier sales moving in major art hubs like New York and London. For the contemporary art market, the guarantee has started to look less like an exception and more like infrastructure—closer to structured finance than pure price discovery. But, why would the art market guarantees be rising now? An art market guarantee—whether underwritten by the house or a third

Chen Ching-Yuan is the kind of emerging artist markets notice late: technically exacting yet emotionally oblique, narratively rich but commercially underexposed. His work’s quiet volatility—and a still-modest public profile—signals a gap between artistic significance and art market recognition, a gap that spells opportunity. Constructing the Unseen Chen builds reality out of blur. Figures float between conscience and the unconscious, dream amnesia and deliberate behavior; fa

Paris is no longer just a capital of museums and fashion weeks; it could be positioning itself as a contemporary art trading floor. Over recent marquee October auction cycles with Frieze London and Art Basel Paris , Paris might be taking a visibly larger share of the season’s hammer totals, potentially edging toward London’s long-held dominance in contemporary art. Looking back across roughly twenty years, London used to dominate without question, but new data from the Londo

Since the last 17th Istanbul Biennial in 2022, the city’s art institutions have undergone significant evolution, the economic landscape for artists has shifted, and changing geopolitical dynamics have further impacted art investor confidence. This year’s Istanbul Biennial arrives at a pivotal moment, offering an opportunity to revive an art market characterized by resilient institutions and a strong arts community, yet still challenged by persistent underlying problems . Art