Art Market Anomalies and Machine Learning Price Prediction Potential

In December 2019 at Art Basel Miami, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold three copies of his duct-taped banana artwork titled 'Comedian' for $120,000 to $150,000 each. This occurred within the context of a $67.4 billion annual art market where unpredictable events have drawn public attention. Banksy's painting 'Girl With a Balloon' sold for $1.4 million at Sotheby's before shredding itself during the auction, with experts suggesting the publicity might have increased its value rather than diminished it. These incidents highlight the challenges of predicting art prices, prompting exploration of machine learning applications in this field. The original analysis was published in the Harvard Data Science Review on April 30, 2020.