Where is the art and decorative art market heading in 2026? Straight to the 1970s.
High profile sales this past weeks show collectors aggressively returning to sexy trophy objects. The more culturally evocative the better. Take for example a recent sale by the private boutique auction Fair Warning in November. Indicative of the accelerated strong market demand for Warhol’s most iconic portraits of celebrities, famously beautiful faces entered the lexicon of contemporary visual culture, thanks to Warhol’s creations in mid-1970s America.
The Sale Result:
Brigitte Bardot, in two colors: gold ground, magenta screen, signed and dated 74 on the overlap, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas 47.2” square. Estimated $8,000,000-$12,000,000 sold for $16,675,000.
Andy Warhol made eight silkscreen paintings of Bardot in 1974, all based on a 1959 photograph by Richard Avedon commissioned by Gunter Sach, Bardot’s husband 1966-69. Five discreet paintings of Bardot have sold since 2006. Two paintings in this series came up on the auction block twice. One of which, significantly, is that very recent sale of Nov. 19, 2025. The Fair Warning Bardot silkscreen in two colors sold previously at Sotheby’s in 2012. At that time, this work sold for $4,732,607.00. The sale of the Fair Warning Bardot, as compared to the 2012 sale, indicates an accrued value rate of approximately a million dollars a year.
Five different color combinations of the Bardot portraits are rumored held in private hands. In 2011 the Gagosian Gallery, London presented six Bardot silkscreens together. One Bardot is at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The desire to own the French New Wave Sex Kitten existed since the 70s. Today forty-five year old collectors harbor deep nostalgia for the 1970s and all that represents. Sex, celebrity, money, and masterpieces drives the “hip” market in 2026. Buyers will seek artists and works that became ‘brands’ and pay high prices for “flash.”
Best Result of the Year
The Fair Warning $16.7 million sale exceeded the maximum estimate of $12 mill, the best result of the year for a Warhol. Four bidders competed for the gold and magenta Bardot, bidding past the $10 mill threshold. As interest increases for the artist’s iconic mid-20th century subjects, those famous silkscreened faces of modern celebrities of the 1970s come up for sale.Think Mick Jagger, Queen Elizabeth II, Marilyn, Jackie…. the 1970s and 1980s make a total comeback.
The Warhol unveiled on December 1, 2025 at Gallery Levy Gorvey, Art Basel Miami signals that the market for Warhol’s sexualized celebrity faces remains in high demand. This image shows Muhammad Ali (1977), a three quarter portrait of the handsome fighter in a potent eye-to-eye confrontational strike pose. The same Ali portrait sold at Christie’s in 2021 for $18.1 million. The accelerated market changed the connoisseur landscape. Gallery Levy Gorvy leveraged Art Basel Miami as a return to market for Warhol’s “Ali” at the Gallery’s Miami Convention Center booth. A marketing stroke of genius: Ali fought there in 1970s. It sold December 3 for $18 million to an undisclosed buyer.
Market Hot For 1970-1980s Prints In Editions
Prints offers a spectrum of availability from signed and numbered to “estate” prints—quite affordable. Again, cultural artifacts such as Bardot and Ali prints, laden with nostalgia for the 1970s-80s, will guide the way.
Historically significant images of our American recent past, the 1970-80’s period, matter. Furthermore, artists that hit their peak in the era of the 70s are hot: Basquiat, Calder, de Kooning, Fontana, Ryman, Twombly, and of course Warhol. Cross pollination from social sources impact the way we buy art: think of Netflix’s The Andy Warhol Diaries.
Furniture and decorative objects from the 1970s and 80s, even the 1990s—begin to command top prices. That Italian Brass and Glass dining table is back, as well as the dining room by the way.
The Muhammad Ali sale a few days ago at the 23rd Art Basel in Miami Beach was the most expensive sale of the Fair. The Gallery Levy Gorvey’s booth was visited by hundreds of fans of the civil rights era athlete. Some big names came to worship at the shrine of the image, including Ali’s sons Assad Amin and Muhammed Ali, Jr.
Known by his nickname “The Greatest,” Ali’s portrait from a series of eight from 1974, along with the sale a few weeks earlier of Warhol’s Bardot portrait inching close to the $20 million price point, indicate our expectations for 2026: Flash, Sass, Cash, and Splash, 1970s style.