In 1926, the artist and poet Jean Cocteau published a book of essays called Le rappel à l’ordre. That book is said to be the source of the term Return to Order, a movement in which artists, scarred by the machine-age horrors of the First World War, rejected the progressive ideas of Futurism, Cubism, and Fauvism in favor of more reassuringly traditional styles.

A century on, in an age of AI and geopolitical anxiety, might we be seeing a similar flight to tradition among collectors?

‘As the market has got a bit more challenged, we’ve seen a return to more classic taste and more classic paintings, especially as there’s less volatility in a lot of those names. People are gravitating to what they view as “safer bets,”’ says David Schrader, the former head of private sales for contemporary art at Sotheby’s and now a partner at Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries, which is exhibiting at Art Basel this month. ‘We see it in every market – when people get nervous, they tend to gravitate towards the most well-known things; that’s a natural reaction in these sorts of cycles.’

Schrader’s observations are borne out by the figures. The latest Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report found that, while sales by contemporary art dealers were stagnant in 2025, dealers specializing in Modern art saw sales values rise by 11%, ‘as lingering risk aversion kept higher prices concentrated in the most established parts of the market, rather than among newer artists.’ This has contributed to what the report’s author Dr Clare McAndrew calls a ‘structural rebalancing toward established artists and older market sectors.’

This trend is most apparent at auction, where Impressionist, Modern and Postwar art dominated, together accounting for 74% of the value of sales, compared with contemporary art’s 14%.

Supply has a huge impact on these figures, and the latest May auction series in New York were bolstered by 20th-century trophy lots from deceased estates – the Great Wealth Transfer in action. Just 16 works from the collection of the publisher S.I. Newhouse, for instance, made USD 630.8 million at Christie’s, led by a 1948 Jackson Pollock painting, which sold for a record USD 181.2 million, and Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde (c. 1913), which fetched USD 107.6 million.

Estate-dominated auctions naturally skew the data. But the figures do speak to a broader shift towards tried-and-tested Modern and Postwar works.

Most in demand are classic blue-chip names. Schrader lists some of the usual big hitters: Picasso, Monet, Magritte, Giacometti, and Basquiat, but he also notes there has been ‘a return’ to Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as to more historical works by older contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, and Ed Ruscha.

The New York-based gallery Berry Campbell, a new exhibitor at Art Basel this year with a booth devoted to women of Abstract Expressionism, works almost entirely with estates with a focus on overlooked Postwar American painters. Cofounded by Christine Berry and Martha Campbell in 2013, the gallery’s presentation at the fair includes works by Lynne Drexler, Alice Baber, and Elaine de Kooning, among others, priced from USD 340,000 to USD 975,000.

Despite the overall flat market over the past couple of years, Berry Campbell’s sales have improved year-on-year, Campbell says: ‘Because these women artists were not collected back in the day, you’re getting A-plus works directly from the estates, with pristine provenances, by artists already in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney.’

The gallery has also developed a growing Asian client base since exhibiting at Art Basel in Hong Kong, with Drexler and Baber especially popular. ‘We’re meeting clients that are 30-35 years old,’ Berry says. ‘They like that there’s history behind the artwork, that there is value, and that they can see these markets rise.’

Berry Campbell invests heavily in scholarship, and its young Asian collectors in particular pore over provenance and research. This chimes with a rising awareness of due diligence when purchasing art, says James Ratcliffe, the general counsel and director of recoveries at the Art Loss Register, which checks all works exhibited at Art Basel against its database of stolen art. ‘Most collectors still buy based on their desire to own a specific work, but we see more of an effort to back that desire up with due diligence, alongside growing awareness of the potential for provenance to actively increase values,’ Ratcliffe says, adding that collectors are also increasingly aware that museums now expect very high provenance standards for gifted works.

The advisor Melanie Clore of Clore Wyndham observes ‘an extensive level of interest in Kandinsky, Léger, Matisse, Miró, late Monet, late Picasso, both oils and works on paper’  – but, she stresses, ‘it has to be great quality.’ She also sees a renewed appetite for Matisse’s later work, from the 1930s on ­– a period currently being given exposure in the Grand Palais’s exhibition, ‘Matisse 1941-1954’ (until July 26).

‘Most people collect in a much broader way now, and they want the best of everything,’ Clore says, adding: ‘If you want to buy a great Van Gogh, Matisse, or Picasso, you have to pay tomorrow’s prices, because you don’t get great masterpieces at knock-down prices.’

Alma Luxembourg, a partner of the London gallery Luxembourg + Co., has noticed this trend too. ‘We have a few collectors in their 40s, or even a little younger, who are buying Cézanne and Matisse,’ Luxembourg says. ‘They started with contemporary art but have chosen to look a little backwards, too.’

This desire for breadth and context is reflected in programming. During London Gallery Weekend, Luxembourg + Co. opened an exhibition titled ‘Illuminations’ (until August 1) in collaboration with the medieval art specialist Sam Fogg, exploring the influence of stained-glass windows on Paul Klee and Brice Marden. Last year, the gallery paired the work of Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury with drawings by Matisse. This year at Art Basel, the gallery will exhibit a neon work by Fleury, alongside a 1938 painting by Matisse, Le bras, priced at USD 3.8 million, and a Seurat work on paper, La route de la gare (c. 1881), at USD 1.25 million.

Modern highlights elsewhere around the fair include Juan Gris’s La Bouteille de Bordeaux (The Bottle of Claret) from 1913, likely the earliest work on the stand of Hauser & Wirth and priced at over USD 10 million. The Kunstmuseum Basel is currently hosting a Helen Frankenthaler retrospective, and the Abstract Expressionist’s work will be on numerous stands around the fair. Yares Art has a clutch of Frankenthaler works on its booth devoted to American abstract painters: Phoebe, a large 1979 acrylic on canvas by Frankenthaler, is priced at USD 3.2 million.

The Paris gallery Applicat-Prazan has a special hang of six paintings by André Masson, dating from 1934 to 1944, alongside the gallery’s characteristic Postwar School of Paris works. All sourced from the same private European collection, the Masson works are priced between EUR 680,000 and EUR 1 million. Franck Prazan has also observed a shift away from the more speculative ‘commodity driven’ part of the contemporary market in the past 3 to 4 years, in favor of ‘works of art which are seen as more of a stable, long-standing cultural investment.’ Finite supply is the perennial issue, however, and Prazan says: ‘The secondary Modern business has become so much out of [financial] reach for so many people that, although we would like to do more volume, the prices have made that very difficult.’

That said, come the VIP preview of the Swiss fair, people will still be clamoring to see new work by today’s star artists, too. ‘That phenomenon, that sense of discovery, has not gone away,’ Schrader says. ‘A large segment of the market loves collecting artists of their generation. I don’t see that changing.’