The value of art sold at auctions globally fell by a third last year compared to 2023, with the Chinese market crashing by 63 percent, auction data published on Monday showed.Artprice, a France-based consultancy which aggregates auction data from around the world, said the value of art sold in 2024 slumped to $9.9 billion (9.1 billion euros), the lowest level since 2009.All the major art hubs recorded steep falls, with New York down 29 percent, London down 28 percent and Paris down 21 percent as collectors turned cautious given global economic uncertainty.The Chinese market shrank to just $1.8 billion from $4.9 billion in 2023, underlining the weakness of the world’s second-biggest economy.”Major collectors have grown hesitant including for major artists such as Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly or Jean-Michel Basquiat,” Thierry Ehrmann, founder of Artprice, told AFP.The value of Pablo Picasso sales — a leading indicator for the rest of the market — totaled $223 million in 2024, around a third of the $597 million spent on the Spanish master the previous year, the data showed.Gone are the days of endless record-breaking bids at art auctions, with the once-booming market spurred by speculator cash in decline since 2021.  That has meant some high-end sellers have postponed or cancelled planned sales, making fewer works available.In a sign of the changed climate, leading auction house Sotheby’s laid off 100 staff members — six percent of its global workforce — in December.- Cutbacks – Experts say the steep fall last year was linked to wars in Ukraine and Gaza, major elections across the globe, and higher interest rates, which raised the cost of borrowing. The Chinese economy has slowed dramatically since the Covid-19 pandemic, facing headwinds caused by a debt crisis in its real estate industry and tariffs from its trading partners. For high-net-worth buyers, “art is the first luxury that you stop buying when you need to consolidate, which is why positive economic news feeds back into the art market quite quickly”, said Lindsay Dewar from the London-based ArtTactic art market consultancy. Industry insiders are now wondering how the global market will react to Donald Trump’s presidency. Initial optimism about a “Trump bump” on stock markets has faded fast as he introduces tariffs and rows with allies.Weakening demand at the global art collector level also feeds through to primary sales — sales of work through galleries — which affect artists’ prices and income.Dewar said that her conversations with gallery owners indicated they had a “tough year” in 2024.Nevertheless, she sees reasons for optimism.The overall number of auction sales increased last year — up five percent to 800,000, according to Artprice figures — with activity at the lower end of the market for works at $50,000 or under showing robust health.And some sales are still outperforming, including a Magritte which fetched a record $121 million for the surrealist artist in November, far above the guide price of $95 million. “People do still want to trade, to buy and sell artwork. The desire is still there,” Dewar said.A portrait by an AI-powered robot of the English mathematician Alan Turing, considered one of the fathers of modern computing, also raised a million dollars at Sotheby’s in November, 10 times higher than expected.Two major upcoming auction sales will give a sense of conditions at the top-end of the market. Sotheby’s is set to sell works belonging to late New York banker Thomas A. Saunders and his wife in May, while Christie’s will put part of book mogul Leonard Riggio’s modern-art collection under the hammer in the next few months.

Scraping opium resin off a seedpod in Myanmar’s remote poppy fields, displaced farmer Aung Hla describes the narcotic crop as his only prospect in a country made barren by conflict.The 35-year-old was a rice farmer when the junta seized power in a 2021 coup, adding pro-democracy guerillas to the long-running civil conflict between the military and ethnic armed groups.Four years on, the United Nations has said Myanmar is mired in a “polycrisis” of mutually compounding conflict, poverty and environmental damage.Aung Hla was forced off his land in Moe Bye village by fighting after the coup. When he resettled, his usual crops were no longer profitable, but the hardy poppy promised “just enough for a livelihood”.”Everyone thinks people grow poppy flowers to be rich, but we are just trying hard to get by,” he told AFP in rural Pekon township of eastern Shan state.He says he regrets growing the substance — the core ingredient in heroin — but said the income is the only thing separating him from starvation.”If anyone were in my shoes, they would likely do the same.”- Displaced and desperate -Myanmar’s opium production was previously second only to Afghanistan, where poppy farming flourished following the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.But after the Taliban government launched a crackdown, Myanmar overtook Afghanistan as the world’s biggest producer of opium in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).Myanmar’s opiate economy — including the value of domestic consumption as well as exports abroad — is estimated between $589 million and $1.57 billion, according to the UNODC.Between September and February each year, dozens of workers toil in Pekon’s fields, slicing immature poppy seedpods, which ooze a small amount of sticky brown resin.Aung Naing, 48, gently transfers the collected resin from a small trough onto a leaf plate.Before the coup, which ended a brief experiment with democracy, Aung Naing was areformed opium farmer. But wartime hardship forced him back to the crop.”There is more poppy cultivation because of difficulties in residents’ livelihoods,” he says.”Most of the farmers who plant poppy are displaced,” he said. “Residents who can’t live in their villages and fled to the jungle are working in poppy fields.”In Myanmar’s fringes, ethnic armed groups, border militias and the military all vie for control of local resources and the lucrative drug trade.Aung Naing says poppy earns only a slightly higher profit than food crops like corn, bean curd and potatoes, which are also vulnerable to disease when it rains.Fresh opium was generally sold by Myanmar farmers for just over $300 per kilo in 2024, according to the UNODC, a small fraction of what it fetches on the international black market.And the crop is more costly to produce than rice — more labour intensive, requiring expensive fertilisers and with small yields.Aung Naing says he makes just shy of a $30 profit for each kilo. “How can we get rich from that?” he asks.- ‘Unsafe’ -The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates there are more than 3.5 million people displaced in Myanmar.But fleeing conflict zones to farm opium does not guarantee safety. “Military fighter jets are flying over us,” said Aung Naing. “We are working in poppy fields with anxiety and fear. We feel unsafe.”Opium cultivation and production in Myanmar decreased slightly between 2023 and 2024, according to the UNODC — in part due to ongoing clashes between armed groups.”If our country were at peace and there were industries offering many job opportunities in the region, we wouldn’t plant any poppy fields even if we were asked to,” says farmer Shwe Khine, 43.Aung Hla agreed. With the war, he said, “we don’t have any choice”.