The value of British art exports has surged to its highest level since the credit crunch, despite new rules giving deceased artists estates a share of their work’s resale price, according to Sweet & Maxwell, a legal information provider owned by Thomson Reuters.
The figures compiled by Sweet & Maxwell have revealed that the value of art and cultural objects exported from Britain swelled by 32% to £1.97billion in the year ending May 2012.
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The rise came despite a new law, the Artist’s Resale Rights Directive, which came into effect on 1 January 2012, giving artists or their heirs the right to 4% of resale values.
In a sign that wealthy foreign investors are increasingly prepared to dip into their pockets for lucrative artwork, buyers from abroad paid close to £2 billion for art and cultural exports in the year to May 2012 – £5.5 million a day, with exports of modern art more than doubling in value in the space of a year.
Sweet & Maxwell said exports of modern art, the category most likely to be affected by the new rules, jumped by 105% from the previous year to £687m by May 2012, up from £335m the year before, a quicker rise than the rest of the market.
"Many art experts and dealers were concerned that London’s position in the art world could suffer compared to New York or Hong Kong which haven’t introduced any such levy on the resale of modern and contemporary art," Massimo Sterpi, co-editor of The Art Collecting Legal Handbook, said in the Sweet & Maxwell statement.
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By GlobalData"The early indications are that this hasn’t slowed down the London market," he added.
Bruno Boesch, co-editor of The Art Collecting Legal Handbook, said: "Art is an increasingly important trophy asset for international High Net Worth individuals and some argue that the concept of art as an investment received a big push from the credit crunch – which saw the value of many other assets slump."
Figures from Sweet & Maxwell has showed the UK art export market peaked at £2.11bn in 2007-08 before bottoming out at £1.18bn in 2009-10.
There was a £500 million increase in sales of paintings and sculptures to buyers from outside Europe in the month, almost double the increase of the previous month, according to the Office for National Statistics and HMRC.
