While the year 2012 is coming to an end, Influential art market columnists look into the rear view mirror and delivers the point of view of the art market key players. Before the galleries and auctioneers, influential art market columnists's share its view on this year's art market.

Georgina Adam

Art Market Editor at Large, The Art Newspaper

Art Market correspondent, Financial Times

The artist who made the greatest impression on you this year

More a rediscovery for me, the Tate show of Gerhard Richter finally convinced me of his talent, wich I hadn't entirely understood after the show in New York at MoMA (I think) some years ago.

The exhibition which made the greatest impression on you

There were a number of outstanding exhibitons this year, but I would pick out Bronze at the Royal Academy and Yayoi Kusama at Tate, both in London, as very good as well as Freud Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery and, in New York and London, the Freud's drawings. In New York also some excellent non-commercial shows at dealers such as Acquavella, Nahmad, Gagosian (Fontana).

The event of the year on the art market

The extention of the Frieze brand with New York and masters. It was a difficult thing to pull off two new fairs in one year and both overall a success.

Your forecast for 2013

Most interested to see if contemporary art can continue its momentum.

Silvia Anna Barrilà is an Italian journalist specialized in the art market. Among others she is a regular contributor to ArtEconomy24, the art market supplement of the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 ORE.

The artist who made the greatest impression on you this year

Theaster Gates is an artist I did not know before this year. Gates was the first artist I heard of when I arrived in Kassel for Documenta and since then I have been hearing of him all the time. I liked his work at Documenta and I think he is going to grow also on the market.

Another artist I did not know so well before is Icelandic Ragnar Kjartansson. I was at his concert at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (where was also exhibited his Venice 2009 contibution, which is part of the Sandretto collection), and I saw his new video work at Migros Museum in Zurich the week after. I really like his work now.

More recently, I wrote an article about the Future Generation Art Prize, which was awarded to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. I really like her paintings. I had written about her two years ago and I had the chance to see now how her work has developed and also how her market has grown.

The exhibition which made the greatest impression on you

The most impressive exhibition in 2012 was certainly Documenta in Kassel. I wished I had had more time to see it, as it was huge, but there were very high quality contributions and I liked the way the curator expanded the exhibition in the city and integrated the artworks in the urban spaces.

In September 2012, I had the chance to visit Kosovo on the occasion of the end of the supervised independence of the country, and I really liked the exhibition by Nathan Coley in Prishtina to celebrate the event. The artist installed his work "A Place Beyond Belief" in a symbolic place between a library, an abandoned church built by Milošević, a museum and a governmental building. It was reallytouching.

As an Italian, I was very proud of the retrospective of Alighiero Boetti at Tate London, where I liked also Yayoi Kusama's retrospective.

I liked the new display of the Boros Collection in his Bunker in Berlin, as well.

The event of the year on the art market

Art Basel is always my favorite art market event, but I enjoyed also smaller scale events like The Art Show by ADAA in New York, which is always characterized by very high quality; the Salon du Dessin in Paris, which is an elegant mix of Old masters and contemporary drawing; Art Rotterdam and Artissima in Turin, which are very good fairs for contemporary proposals.

Your forecast for 2013

I am looking forward to seeing the Venice Biennial. I would like to visit the new Hong Kong Art Basel and, in general, more events in the BRIC countries and in the MENASA area.

The artist who made the greatest impression on you this year

I was really taken by the artist/musician Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and his visual and sound installations, which make him a very singular player on the international art scene. He is represented in France by the Xippas Gallery (Paris), and in America by the Paula Cooper Gallery (New York). In 2012, he made a highly topical appearance in Paris, which left an indelible impression, when audiences could hear and see the artist's videodrones at the Collège des Bernardins (Paris): a musical system produced using sounds from videos. With several cameras, the artist continuously filmed live goings-on (traffic and passers-by) around the venue. The exhibition combined the mixed images projected onto the walls and the sounds they generated. In the autumn of 2012, the Xippas Gallery presented carbonised wood structures imitating a hive: genuine sound sculptures that diffused buzzing compositions created with pre-recordings made inside a hive with thousands of bees at work. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's work can be seen in a spectacular demonstration (on show until 17 March 2013) at the Centquatre (Paris), where the installation From here to ear (v. 16) immerses us in a huge aviary. The incessant movements of the mandarin ducks (beating wings and feet scratching on electric guitars set up as perches) engender a live, random piece of music, also modulated by the movements of the visitors. The artist has also exhibited in America, notably in the UMass (University of Massachusetts) Fine Arts Centre at Amherst last autumn.

The exhibition which made the greatest impression on you

The opening of the Islamic Arts wing in the Musée du Louvre. The architectural setting, with its mesh roof in the form of a flying carpet (designed by the architects Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti), and its rich content make for genuine discovery and real fascination. The permanent exhibition covers 1,200 years of history chronologically, over three continents. This is difficult to grasp as a whole. But the approach I adopted was to let myself be guided by my aesthetic response, and to refer to the educational panels when I felt the need. This is a chance to mention that there are far fewer visitors at the Louvre's late-night openings (Wednesdays and Fridays), so this is a good time to explore the permanent collections in peace and quiet.

The event of the year on the art market

Probably the Head of a Young Apostle by Raphael, the Renaissance genius, knocked down for a record £29.7 million including the buyer's premium ($47.8/€36.6 million), on 5 December in London. I'm not much impressed by all these record multimillion bids at auction, which reached further heights during 2012 in modern, post-war and contemporary art (Munch, Picasso, Rothko, War and so on). They are the result of a strenuous marketing effort by the auction houses, where the aim is to flatter the egos of millionaires in search of socio-cultural trophies with high added value. Given its fragility, Raphael's drawing is hardly a work that can be displayed permanently, nor is it a work that can immediately be recognised by the jet set. It seems to have been bought by a genuine art lover.

Your forecast for 2013

I've a feeling that public auctions will be focusing even more on works that are commercial (i.e. aesthetically pleasing and not too intellectual) and very exceptional (rare or historical, with an impressive provenance) by artists whose names are now practically brands. Bids will rocket even higher for this type of work. I think that, away from the limelight, gallery owners, antiques dealers and art brokers will have a role to play as moderators in these soaring prices, and as explorers and conveyors of enthusiasm where collectors are concerned. They are the submerged part of the art market iceberg.