The Authenticity Premium

Three stories surfaced this month that look separate at first glance. A generation of young artists is returning to plein air painting in parks and studios. Japanese consumers are spending record amounts on jewellery and precious metals. And the global art market is growing again, with collectors concentrating on works where they can see the process and the hand behind them.

The brush is back

Smithsonian Magazine reported this month on a growing movement among Gen Z and millennial artists towards traditional practices: plein air painting, figure drawing, charcoal, oil on canvas. Art schools are seeing increased enrolment. Informal painting groups are appearing in parks on weekends, and they are full of people in their twenties.[1]

The catalyst is familiar, as AI image generation fills screens with perfection, younger artists are reaching for the opposite. They want the direct experience of observation, the slow accumulation of a skill, the feel of paint on a surface. TikTok plein air content from creators like Remington Robinson draws up to 13 million likes per post. Three hours of painting compressed into 90 seconds, with time-lapse clouds and a lo-fi soundtrack. We are really hoping this doesn’t become another performative clickbait into social media, but rather an inspiration to go offline and try it for yourself.

This is often described as a reaction against technology. It is more useful to see it as a form of differentiation. These artists are fluent in digital tools. They document their analogue work on social platforms and move between both worlds comfortably. What they understand, perhaps instinctively, is that in a market saturated with machine-made images, the ability to paint from life becomes a rare and distinctive skill.

Jewellery as a store of value

In Japan, a different version of the same instinct is playing out through luxury retail.

Sales of gems, precious metals and artwork at Japanese department stores rose 19 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026, reaching ¥330 billion (approximately US$2 billion). This is the highest figure since records began in 2008.[2]

The broader context matters. The Japanese yen has weakened to nearly ¥164 per dollar, its lowest level since the 1980s. Core consumer prices are rising. And Japanese consumers are responding by shifting spending towards objects they see as better stores of value than cash.

+19%

Japan dept store jewellery H1 2026 YoY

3.2%

Overall dept store sales growth

$59.6B

Global art market 2025 (+4%)

The gap between jewellery growth and overall department store growth (3.2 per cent) is striking. This is concentrated demand. Consumers are cutting back in other categories and directing that spending towards physical, portable, lasting things. Branded natural-stone pieces, gold, precious metals. Objects with weight, rarity and material integrity.

Satoshi Maehara, president of Tokyo-based jeweller Happiness And D, described the shift simply: it is becoming more normal for people to hold five to ten per cent of their assets in gold rather than cash.[3]

This is purchasing behaviour driven by economic anxiety, but the objects chosen reveal something more than financial calculation. Consumers are selecting things that feel real in a way that digital assets and paper currency do not. The material itself carries the reassurance.

Where the art market is growing

The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, authored by Dr Clare McAndrew, confirms that global art market sales grew four per cent in 2025 to an estimated US$59.6 billion, ending two consecutive years of decline. Dealer sales rose two per cent to US$34.8 billion. Public auction sales increased nine per cent to US$20.7 billion.[4]

Two details within the report are especially relevant here.

The first is that art fair sales reached 35 per cent of dealer turnover, their highest share since 2022. Online sales, by contrast, declined. This tells us something about where trust lives in the art market. At the price points that matter, buyers want to stand in front of the work. They want to see it, touch the frame, talk to the gallerist. The physical encounter still carries more weight than the digital one.

The second is the continued rise in female artist representation, which reached 50 per cent among primary market galleries and 37 per cent of sales by value. The expansion of whose work is recognised as valuable is happening alongside the renewed appetite for craft, colour and material presence.

“The market welcomed a shift in direction in 2025, from the contraction of previous years to modest growth. However, it continued to operate in a volatile geopolitical environment, particularly regarding cross-border trade.”

Dr Clare McAndrew, Founder, Arts Economics

Where scarcity is moving

These three currents, young artists returning to analogue craft, consumers treating physical luxury as a hedge, and collectors choosing works where the process is visible, all share a common thread.

In an economy of infinite digital reproduction, scarcity is migrating. It is moving away from the object alone and towards the verifiable story of how it was made. A painting created in a park over two hours of direct observation is scarce in a way that a generated image cannot be. A natural gemstone shaped by geological time carries a provenance that a synthetic equivalent does not. A canvas bearing visible brushwork, hesitation marks and material decisions tells you something about the person who made it.

The premium being placed on these qualities is becoming measurable. Maddox Gallery co-founder Mario Zonias has described collectors paying more for work that "unmistakably proves a human was here." The Milan Art Institute's 2026 forecast identifies a "new renaissance" in demand for texture, dimensional surfaces and visibly handmade work.[5]

This is the authenticity premium and it is looking to be structural rather than seasonal.

What this means for culture

The implications extend beyond the art market.

Any cultural business, any creative practice, any institution whose value depends on producing something that could be automated faces the same question. The market will continue to pay for outputs that carry legible evidence of human thought, human skill and human time. The premium sits in the process as much as the product.

For artists, this is an opening for a renewed interest in traditional skills, material mastery and direct observation is creating a more receptive environment for practices that have always valued these things. The audience is arriving.

For collectors and cultural consumers, the objects and experiences that feel most valuable right now are the ones that resist easy reproduction. They reward the experience and they carry the trace of a decision made by a person at a given point in time.

And for the broader cultural economy, the shift suggests something encouraging. At the very moment when technology can generate more imagery, more text and more content than we could ever absorb, the appetite is moving towards less, made better, authentic and qualitative, by someone real.

1. "Why Gen Z Is Learning to Paint Like 19th-Century Artists," Smithsonian Magazine, August 2026.

2. Japan Department Stores Association data, reported by Bloomberg and The Japan Times, July 2026.

3. Satoshi Maehara, President, Happiness And D Co., quoted in Bloomberg, July 2026.

4. The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, authored by Dr Clare McAndrew, Founder, Arts Economics.

5. Milan Art Institute 2026 Art Trends Forecast; Mario Zonias, Co-Founder, Maddox Gallery, 2026 Art Trends Forecast.