Did you watch the Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight? What a money suck it was, all show and no go. The women’s super lightweight bout that preceded it, Katie Taylor versus Amanda Serrano, was bloody, brutal, and amazing. It reminded me that many women are much tougher and meaner than men, and those two were fierce to the last second. That was not the case with old “Iron Mike.” He looked stiff and a bit dull, like he had taken a Xanax before the fight and was just waiting for it to be over. His tattooed opponent is an Instagram influencer I had never heard of, but he has over 29 million followers! I haven’t a clue what for, since he looks to me like a bouncer in a Las Vegas strip club. But what do I know? There’s no doubt this guy can sell energy drinks, tobacco chews, and Tequila coolers all day long. However, I did make this connection: these two pugilists explain today’s art market.

I perused the recent auction previews in New York with bewilderment, while disagreeing with anyone I bumped into. (I’m a born contrarian.) One high-powered advisor, formerly an auction house head, said: “Isn’t this great? It’s a market bottom!” As I looked around at all of the estimates in the hundreds of thousands and the millions of dollars, I quipped, “How do you know?” He said that he had lived through the ’90s, and it felt like that now. I responded that, when I worked on Wall Street, we were taught to “never catch a falling knife.” There is actually no reason to think that the prices of our art market darlings have bottomed.

Jeff Koons’s sculptured New Hoover Celebrity IV, New Hoover Convertible, New Shelton 5 Gallon Wet/Dry, New Shelton 10 Gallon Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981–86) on display during a press preview for Christie’s Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York City, on November 8, 2024. Photo: Kent Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

Seriously, no one can pick bottoms nor tops, not even Steve Cohen! So many great works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool were selling or BI-ing below their estimates last week, and in some cases, artists like Mark Grotjahn were selling for 80 percent off their peaks. According to the FT (yes, I subscribe), the top line at both big houses is down about 40 percent from last year. Anyone who doesn’t feel the market changing is just in denial. So how do we understand this phenomenon, when the interest rate cuts keep coming and the stock market is hitting all-time highs? The Tyson-Paul fight gives us insight…

“Iron Mike” is no doubt one of the greatest boxers of all time, with an amazing knock-out punch that at the height of his career flattened his opponents. Today he’s more famous than ever, just like those great artists of the last market cycle. But he’s lost his stamina, and he had to stick to two-minute as opposed to three-minute rounds because he’s old. He’s lost power, and so have they. The market darlings of yesterday’s evening sales are selling for 50 cents on the dollar from where they stood at their peaks. The advisor claims that they’re a buy now, but I’m not so sure. Yes, they were and are my heroes, since it’s the art I experienced in galleries, museums, and top private collections. But just because they’re worth less now doesn’t mean they can’t drop further.

René Magritte’s L’empire des Lumières (1954) is on display during a press preview for Christie’s Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York City, on November 8, 2024. Photo: Kent Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

You may be wondering how most of the art market can be like Mike Tyson when a Magritte is selling for $121 million and a banana for $6.2 million. Those prices are in a separate category—they are just outliers. They aren’t part of the “real” market for collectors. They’re trophies for billionaires. If, as the Canvas, reported, the Magritte was bought by the ubiquitous Ken Griffin, that’s nice for him. It’s a pretty cool painting to have, even though the artist made several of them. But Griffin has made as much as $4 billion in a single year, so the purchase would represent around 3 percent of his income. And how about the amazing Ed Ruscha, rumored to have been bought by Jeff Bezos for $68.3 million? Throw out that result, too, as the man could literally spend any amount and not even notice.

Who are our art-world Jake Pauls, you are wondering? This market is full of them, and they’re actually more powerful than we think. Instagram influencers and TikTok scenesters are like the speculators fueling the market, whether it’s for Nicholas Party or Jonas Wood. Among them are Asian buyers that keep bidding these works into the stratosphere. And let’s not forget the multiple Hilary Pecis’s that have gone for over a million dollars each. Though I happen to like the artist, these prices are absurd. That said, Wood’s auction results surpass that regularly, as do Rashid Johnson’s (as do those of many more artists).

All of this will continue until the day the speculators stop, and then these artists will also find a new level. The Jake Pauls of the art world have taken over this market, and they’re not giving it back just yet. They’re busy finding the next hot button and bidding it through the roof. The art market loves price escalation at auction, but beware: once the tide turns, there are often no bids or just a few from value punters still catching falling knives.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian is seen during a press preview for Sotheby’s Evening Auction on October 25, 2024 in New York City. Photo: John Nacion/Getty Images

But let’s return to the Cattelan Banana. Doesn’t that show market strength? Editions of the work sold for $120,000 to $150,000 at Miami Basel in 2019, and now one has cleared $6 million just five years later. Sorry, but as a Cattelan fan, and one who did a secondary market show of his work at my gallery, and one who was a patron of his 2012 retrospective at the Guggenheim, I find the banana pretty uninteresting. It’s worth a chuckle at best.

However, none of this matters because the Jake Pauls love it, and we know why; the secret is in the crypto. This was the only lot of the week that advertised that it could be purchased with crypto—bitcoin, in fact. The crypto kings and NFT bros were all over this thing. Its title, Comedian, tells all. This banana was an instant meme. In fact, leading up to the sale, a cryptocurrency called Comedian was launched to some success. Imagine if it were backed by the actual banana. It would soar! The crypto scene relishes anything that pokes fun at the velvet-roped art world. They do not value possessions, let alone paintings or sculptures, unless they relate to tech. I’ve tried to show art to Ryan Zurrer and Cosimo de Medici, two of the banana’s underbidders, who are both crypto and NFT kings, but I couldn’t get them to engage. The winning banana bidder, 30-something billionaire Justin Sun, was really just buying himself a boatload of publicity. He clearly likes to see his name in print, and that’s what he got. Immediately after winning the lot, he went on Twitter and announced his victory.

Mike Tyson, a battle-tested, world-famous champion will always be famous, but he is long past his prime. Jake Paul, the canny influencer who understood how to use Tyson’s fame to sell millions of dollars of pay-per-views on Netflix is in his prime and on primetime. He’s the smart one here. I don’t think we are anywhere near a market bottom. Some things are still on the way up, but many things still have a long way to fall. I am certain that a rebound will come. The Jake Pauls of the art world are going to decide what that rebound looks like, and they’re gaining influence, whether we like it or not. They’re going to pick their own favorites and without a doubt surprise us all once again.