Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In February 2025, Sotheby’s will launch an outpost and auctions in Saudi Arabia. As the kingdom proves increasingly attractive to the art and luxury trades, the auction house has taken offices in the Norman Foster-designed Al Faisaliah Tower in the Saudi capital Riyadh and will host its first sale in the nearby historic town of Diriyah.The vast country is “a sleeping giant that has woken up”, says Edward Gibbs, chairman of Sotheby’s Middle East and India. He cites the state’s Vision 2030 culture project, launched in 2016, as a sign of the region’s commitment to the arts within its broader economic ambitions.The effect is spilling into auctions, Sotheby’s reports. The number of its Saudi buyers increased 74 per cent and bidders rose 125 per cent between 2019 and 2023. Last year, nearly 50 per cent of its Saudi bidders were under the age of 40, says Sotheby’s specialist Ashkan Baghestani.News of the launch comes just one week after the auction house announced the completion of a $1bn investment that made the Abu-Dhabi-based investment and holding company ADQ a minority shareholder. The announcements are “separate and coincidental”, says Baghestani, but each “shows our commitment to the region”.Some artists and institutions have shunned Saudi Arabia following the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and amid accusations of “art-washing”. In relation to the kingdom’s human rights record, a Sotheby’s spokesperson says: “In the last decade, Saudi Arabia has undergone a sustained period of unprecedented and positive change. We believe it’s the product of the kingdom’s desire to engage with the international community and in that, Sotheby’s has a clear role to play . . . in encouraging dialogue between countries and regions.”In September, Christie’s announced that its business had been granted a licence to conduct auctions in Saudi Arabia, though there is no update as to when these will begin. In 2017, the house sold “Salvator Mundi”, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for $450mn, the highest-ever auction price for a work of art. The latest rumour is that this since unseen work will be unveiled at a new museum in Riyadh.The potentially huge implications of artificial intelligence on the art world — from the art itself to its authentication, valuation and legal status — are explored in a new book. Written by journalist Jo Lawson-Tancred, AI and the Art Market ultimately comes down in favour of the latest technology. “It’s not that I feel strongly either way,” says Lawson-Tancred, “more that I am open-minded and curious while a lot of the art world’s rhetoric is much more cautious.”Her book refers to the humanoid Ai-Da Robot, a project devised by UK gallerist Aidan Meller, as “somewhat gimmicky”. This week, Sotheby’s is offering Ai-Da Robot’s “A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing” (2024), with an estimate of $120,000-$180,000. Of the robot, Lawson-Tancred says: “It works as a sophisticated science project and captures the public imagination, but ultimately doesn’t have much artistic intent, so I think feeds into the negative stereotypes around AI art being meaningless.” There are, she says, more artistically interesting projects by the likes of Harold Cohen, who created the Aaron computer programmes in the 1970s, and more recently Sougwen Chung, both covered in the book. AI and the Art Market is part of the “Hot Topics” series published by Lund Humphries and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (£19.99).As the art market becomes more of a higher-volume, lower-value field, online platform Artsy has launched an “edition shop” bringing together work from some 16 well-known galleries and publishers, priced from $30 to $35,000. Most of the current offering is traditional artist prints and photographs, though there are some more unusual items, such as a Jeff Koons 2012 rocking-horse vase (€6,480) and a Gregor Hildebrandt chess set, “Schwarzes Bianco” (2023, €7,400), both offered through Almine Rech. David Zwirner offers an “instant library” of 100 or 150 art books published by the gallery ($3,000 or $5,000).Edition sizes vary — the Koons is one of 3,500, while the chess set is one of only eight. Photographs by Christian Marclay come in attractive editions of five, while one, “Los Angeles 2003”, is unique (all $6,000, White Cube).Editioned works “have proved an important way for galleries to attract new collectors, who can get lower-priced works by blue-chip names and sometimes go on to buy higher up the scale”, says Alexander Forbes, Artsy vice-president of global partnerships. Initially conceived as a temporary shop and timed to coincide with the present-buying season, Forbes says the plan now is to keep it a permanent fixture. Sales of limited editions, which account for 46 per cent of Artsy’s e-commerce sales, are up 60 per cent year on year. Among the buyers at Artissima, this month seeing the 31st edition of the Italian contemporary art fair, was the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, the charitable arm of the since subsumed savings bank. Since 2000, the foundation has bought works to lend to Turin’s two public modern and contemporary art museums: the Castello di Rivoli and the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM). This year, the foundation upped its Artissima contribution from €200,000 to €280,000 and bought 10 works with a combined market value of €400,500 (but sold at a discount). Going to the Castello di Rivoli are four works by Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova, which reflect the Russian invasion, and one piece by each Sara Enrico and the late Italian artist Chiara Fumai; GAM gets two new paintings by Turin’s Guglielmo Castelli and another two by the British artist Chantal Joffe. The art foundation, which has more than 930 works and a punchy expert committee, “is a case study in how to support museums”, says powerhouse local collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, its president since 2023. The wider Fondazione CRT now commits €2.5mn per year to its arts branch, she says, comprising acquisitions and educational projects. Funds come from a 2.18 per cent shareholding of UniCredit bank.Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen
