The cooling of the contemporary art market around 1978

The cooling of the contemporary art market around 1978 is recorded not as a single collapse but as a tension between reassuring high prices and signs of faltering demand. Through auction results, conversations with dealers and collectors, and Warhol’s own calculations about profit, the diary shows how a market could still produce six-figure sales while seeming to have lost its upward momentum.

Auction prices and immediate relief

In May, as people spent the afternoon discussing an auction that included paintings Peter Brant had put up for sale, Warhol went to a party hosted by Diane von Furstenberg. Bob Colacello called from the auction with the results: a large Disaster had brought $100,000, while a medium-sized Mao sold for $5,000. Warhol was relieved that the paintings had sold acceptably and told Bob they could still enjoy themselves. But the relief was qualified. He suspected buyers no longer wanted to purchase at auction because they could not expect to make a large profit.

The results at another sale seemed to support that concern. At the Parke Bernet auction, an Elvis sold for $85,000, below its estimate of $100,000 to $125,000. Todd Brassner reported that a Mao had been about to sell for $4,000; after he bid it up to $5,000, another buyer took it, to his delight. The episode records both a weak result against an estimate and a contest over a lower-priced work: the market had not stopped, but the numbers no longer guaranteed the kind of return that could sustain confidence.

Strong sales, uncertain signals

At a fifteenth-anniversary party for Tom and Bunty Armstrong, Leo Castelli relayed the fuller results from Brant’s auction. The de Menil family had bought several works: François bought a Soup Can for 95, Mrs. de Menil a Disaster for 100, and Philippa a Funeral for 75. Set beside the $100,000 Disaster and $5,000 Mao Bob had reported, these purchases suggest that individual works could still command substantial prices. Brant, Warhol observed, looked exceptionally happy now that he had disposed of the paintings.

That success did not settle what the figures meant. Warhol’s response to the first report was relief that the paintings had sold, paired with the thought that auction buyers could no longer count on making a large profit. The de Menils’ purchases and Brant’s satisfaction therefore coexist with the weaker Elvis result rather than cancelling it. The diary presents the market through particular transactions, where strong sales could reassure sellers even as missed estimates and low bids fed doubts about future resale.

A market judged through transactions

By November, Warhol’s assessment had become more definite: he recorded that the market for contemporary art had peaked. The statement follows the Elvis result, but the diary does not offer market-wide statistics or identify a single cause. Instead, it places the judgment beside concrete auction prices, estimates, bids, buyers, and the reactions of people directly involved. Its account of cooling is consequently local and practical: works still sold, sometimes for impressive sums, but their prices no longer seemed to promise easy gains. The difference between a successful sale and confidence in the market’s continued rise is the central distinction the diary preserves.