Study Finds Correlation Between Auction Price & Google Hits

Tags: Auctions, Munch, Picasso, Record Price

Washington State University conducted a study on the sales of 1,100 paintings auctioned between 1998 and 2011 and applied hedonic regression theory in an attempt to draw conclusions between price and characteristics. Among their findings was a correlation between Google hits and the price realized at auction: a 1% increase of Google hits equated to a 38% increase in auction price.

Other findings included:

• The more times a work sold at auction, the lower its price at auction (perhaps because of apparent ease of attainability)
• Buyers prefer an artist’s typical subject matter, and that they value the subject matter over style
• The gifting of a work by the artist to someone (friend, lover, mother) lowers its value, as does the swapping of works between two artists
• Works produced later in an artist’s life are valued higher than those produced earlier

Of course, there are exceptions to their findings. Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, which sold for a record $104 million in 2004, was painted when the Spanish artist was only 24 years old.

[via Pacific Standard]

Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe (1905) and Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) both broke records at auction.