«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

We are witnessing the construction of veritable collections that are in perfect harmony with the 21st century art market, emerging countries such as China and safe investments like Post-War American art.

In some cases, Artprice notes that entire collections, North American and / or European have been purchased privately or at auctions by various Qatari cultural foundations to accelerate Qatar’s conquest of the art market and establish itself as an unavoidable player on the global art market, with museums and Contemporary art centers that can easily compete with their American and European counterparts.

Anecdotally, we have observed intense searches on artists like Richard Serra, Murakani, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Louise Bourgeois, Rothko and Paul Cézanne.

Hence the purchase of Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players for $250 million, which represents the largest transaction ever recorded on the art market. Concerning this acquisition, based on the data requests launched by Qatari cultural authorities, Artprice can confirm 99% that this transaction has taken place. Amongst its professionals subscribers Artprice also has all the major advisors and curators that work for Qatar. It is also worth noting that Qatar tried in vain to buy Christie's and is still seeking to acquire one or more international auction operators.

Still amongst the major works, we note that several months before the sale of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, various entities (subscribers to Artprice’s professional screens) extensively studied using index tools and ultra-targeted searches the whole history of Munch’s works and his biography. Likewise for Paul Cézanne and Richard Serra.

After analyzing hundreds of thousands of data searches, we can see that the Qatari cultural authorities have a pragmatic but visionary approach. The great strength of Qatar is the Sheikh’s motto "nothing but the best" and "I’m only interested in masterpieces." What is interesting is that the Qatari authorities are daring in their choice of artists, demonstrating a clear desire to modernize their country. They are generating a worldwide reputation and will undoubtedly be in the global top three if not the number one position in 2013. This hypothesis is being confirmed every day now as a virtual certainty.

However, with Islam as their State religion, the Qataris are preserving their Islamic culture. They also realize that it is necessary to impose a certain pedagogy for Qataris and their general visitors, and, according to our analysis of their data searches on Artprice, this pedagogy includes the undeniable influence of certain artistic movements such as Impressionism and Cubism, and a certain European influence in general

-Artmarketinsight