🔥 Hockney Lessons + Otani Workshop

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HEY Y’ALL!

Thanks for all the great feedback on the Terry O'Neill piece I shared last day!

🔥 ICYMI – Catchs from the Last Week:

1. Michael Childress, Aurummm, 2021 - priced at £4,000

2. Tomokazu Matsuyama, Daylight Away, 2021 - priced at £5,500

3. Tracey Emin, No! This is sad, 2022 - priced at £9,500

Today we have an Otani Workshop that looks like a kawaii war god: bronze, big, and priced like 2022 never happened. Plus, how museum math predicts the next 3x market flip.

-Today’s Catch-

Otani Workshop

💭 My 2 Cents: Otani Workshop’s Daughter is what happens when a ceramic sculptor goes bronze, scales up, adds gold leaf, and says, “Yes, I want a six-figure energy for a mid-five-figure price.” It’s 90cm of strange, solemn charm, basically a kawaii Buddha crossed with a war memorial. If you’re in the business of collecting early icons before they hit their institutional prime, this is a flex without looking like you're trying too hard. That said, timing matters. Otani’s market has been riding a weird rollercoaster: up 600% in 2023, down 52% in 2024. So either he’s about to pop or collectors got cold feet.

🔑 Key Numbers: Asking price: £62,500. Otani’s auction record? ~$60K. Average sale price last year? $5,387, but let’s be honest, most of those lots were mid at best. Sell-through rate hovers around 61.5% and most works stay under $50K. This piece is an outlier: bronze, large, and backed by Kaikai Kiki pedigree.

🧠 Why It’s a Smart Pick: Because Otani is entering the museum phase (hello, Vancouver), and large-scale bronzes are rare in his output. It’s a high-beta buy—maybe a bit early, maybe perfectly timed, but when that Biennale nod comes? You won’t find another Daughter sitting pretty.

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-In a Minute-

🔥 Words I Like: FOMO, shark, arbitrage

Hockney Lessons

Hockney proved that a second museum blockbuster inside ten years flips the auction switch from sleepy to savage.

The rule starts with Retrospective Pairing: log any living artist over seventy already ticked once and locked for a second survey.

Museum calendars and grant announcements feed the list daily.

Volume Gate filters noise: annual lots must sit under four‑hundred with turnover suddenly climbing.

Low float plus fresh demand equals tight supply ready for squeeze.

Catalog Weighting unlocks the pocket: download the new show book, rank every series by page share versus current market value.

The fat gap marks under‑loved gold, exactly how Yorkshire panoramas sat before Tate 2017.

Pre‑Show Sweep lands inventory six to twelve months before opening, paying last hammer plus five percent, wiring fast, skipping negotiation theatrics.

Contracts grant first‑refusal rights, buying time if owners panic later.

Beacon Listing comes next: seed a clean mid‑tier auction sale at twenty‑five percent above cost to reset public comps.

Museum wall text does free marketing, so loan a second piece and let curators shout its importance for eighteen months.

Exit when lot count climbs past six‑hundred or when another octogenarian secures dual retros; stage sales across two seasons to dodge indigestion.

Reload capital into the short‑list built with the same filters; edge compounding repeats.

No artist escapes the museum megaphone; front‑run institutional light and you write tomorrow’s price curve.

-Whenever You Are Ready-

Here are 3 ways I can help you:​

1. Serious about collecting? Join Frame&Flame Circle, my exclusive WhatsApp group for top-tier art connections. Apply now!

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See you soon!

-Alvaro (@theartmarketguy)

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Disclaimer

Not financial advice. Frame&Flame is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions.