Christmas is cancelled, museums are closed and galleries have pulled down their shutters, but you can't stop the art world from turning a penny. From online viewing rooms to web shops and Instagram accounts, the internet is awash with art for sale.
This year has seen a greater sense of community and people coming together, so in this spirit galleries across the UK have joined forces to encourage people to spend money in museum shops under the hashtag #shopmuseums. Later this month, #MuseumShopSunday, set up by the Association for Cultural Enterprises, will support a retail push for museums following Black Friday.
Don't know where to start? Here is our pick of the best artworks you can buy online, so that your holidays are more ho ho ho than no no no.
£50 and under
Jeremy Deller, Fuck You 2020 bauble
£14.95
House of Voltaire
We're stocking up on Christmas baubles, Santa hats and wrapping paper by the UK artist Jeremy Deller, all emblazoned with the words Fuck You 2020. A sentiment we can all get behind. Profits go to the Young People Matter charity.
Buy here
David Shrigley, metal water bottle
£25.95
Baltic shop
Do your bit for the environment while nursing your post-over-indulgence hangover with this reusable steel bottle by David Shrigley. His 'ridiculous inflatable swan thing' pool float is also excellent for your next holiday...one can only dream.
Buy here
Barbara Kruger, face mask
£40
Wedel Art Collective
Put your money where your mouth is, and your art too, by buying one of these face masks by Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Barbara Kruger, Raymond Pettibon, Lorna Simpson or Rosemarie Trockel. All proceeds are donated to charity, 50% to the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization, and 50% divided between two charities working to support artists suffering financially from the pandemic.
Buy here
Chris Ofili, Afromuses tea towels
£35
Baltic shop
Definitely too good to dry your dishes with, but we love Chris Ofili and can't afford a real painting by him, so this will have to do. Yes, we'll be framing it.
Buy here
Yorkshire Sculpture Park gin
£40
Yorkshire Sculpture Park shop
Staying in is the new going out, so get creative with your booze cabinet and opt for this arty gin. It is infused with plants from the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and carries a label by the artist and illustrator Tom Frost. Cheers!
Buy here
Evan Ifekoya, The Last Married Couple on Earth, limited edition t-shirt (2018)
£30; edition of 50
Gasworks studio
Lockdown has been hard on couples. If you manage to stay together until there's a vaccine, you deserve to celebrate with this t-shirt by Evan Ifekoya. And also lots and lots of booze.
Buy here
£300 and under
Alice McCabe, Eucalyptus Harvest (2020)
£250
JGM Gallery
For obvious reasons, the floral artist Alice McCabe can't visit her family in Melbourne this year, so she has incorporated the flora of her home town in a new range of Christmas wreaths. Now you can have a little taste of Australia in your own home too, and it's much nicer than Vegemite.
Buy here
Ai Weiwei, Cats and Dogs scarf (Red)
£250; limited edition of 2,500 copies
Taschen
Can't wrap your head around the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei? Wrap it in his twill silk scarf instead. Based on Ai’s papercut Cats and Dogs, it is exclusive to the publisher Taschen.
Buy here (from early December)
Emma Cousin, Mimesis (2020)
£250
Goldsmiths CCA
Every figure in this lovely etching by artist-of-the-moment Emma Cousin is printing something on paper with one of their own body parts. What a way to liven up a Christmas party.
Buy here
Hannah Knox, Shirt paintings (2020)
£200
Remember smart shirts? Neither do we, because we've worn nothing but pyjamas for eight months. But Tottenham-based artist Hannah Knox does, and her paintings are our choice from the Artist Support Pledge, the online support system in which artists are invited to post their works on Instagram using the hashtag #ArtistSupportPledge.
Buy here
£500 and under
Peter Liversidge, Sign Paintings (2020)
£350; unique
Jupiter Artland
The stand-out artist of the UK lockdown, Peter Liversidge's Sign Paintings for the NHS went viral on Instagram after he plastered them across London earlier this year. Now he is supporting Jupiter Artland's work with young adults with these painted versions. This one is about how he ran into the sea. Not sure he'll be so keen in November.
Buy here
Joanna Pallaris, Looking Glass (2015)
£385; edition of 8
As skyrocketing puppy sales can attest, man’s best friend is getting a lot of us through lockdown. And these charming photographs by up-and-coming, London-based photographer Joanna Pallaris are an excellent substitute if the real thing is too distracting (or smelly).
Buy here
Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Fragile 5 (2018)
£500; edition of 25
October Gallery
We love the Congolese artist's allusion to his home country's biggest export, Coltan, the raw material used in mobile phones in his figures' microchipped skin. If nothing else, it would make using Apple Pay much easier.
Buy here
Lee Lozano, Cashmere Blanket
£400
Hauser & Wirth
Even if we could leave the house, we wouldn't if we had this cashmere blanket by the American artist Lee Lozano, who famously went into self-imposed exile in the 1960s and cut all contact with other women. She would have done well in a global pandemic.
Buy here
© the artist, courtesy of ULAY Foundation
Ulay, Elf, (1974-75)
£450
signs and symbols
This special edition has been released in memory of the great performance artist Ulay who died in March this year. Made in collaboration with the Ulay Foundation, 10% of the proceeds will be donated to the Bowery Mission in New York, the charity the artist worked with in the 1990s. And it's called Elf, very Christmassy.
Buy here
£30,000 and under
Roman hollow hoop earrings (around second-third century AD)
£1,450
Charles Ede
Bling up your WFH outfit with these 2,000-year-old hoops. You know what they say: 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do'...but, you know, a couple of millennia later.
Buy here (from 16 November)
Käthe Kollwitz, Helft Russland (Help Russia, 1921)
£ 2,500; edition of 300, signed in pencil
London Original Print Fair
A huge famine in Soviet Russia led the great German artist Käthe Kollwitz to make this work. It was released as part of an international relief effort in response to Lenin's call for help from the international proletariat. An example of this lithograph is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Buy here
© 2020 Magnum Photos, Inc. and Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson, London (1960)
$5,500 + VAT
The Photographers' Gallery
"There was a certain sense of sky and fog, of another place," said the American photographer Bruce Davidson about the UK when he visited it in the 1960s at the age of 27. In this series, he managed to capture post-war Britain—and this adorable kitten—emerging out of austerity.
Buy here
Shezad Dawood, Hybrid I (2020)
£9,000; uniquely hand painted
Timothy Taylor Gallery
London-based Shezad Dawood took social distancing to another level and did a residency on Fogo Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, where they probably don't even have Deliveroo! He came back with a new series of works on climate change. This delightful copy of a hybridised coral was genetically modified to survive warming and acidifying ocean waters.
Buy here
Nathalie Boutté’s collage piece, M. Mme Cooper (2019)
$30,000
Yossi Milo Gallery
Nathalie Boutté uses portraits of African-Americans in Charlottesville, Virginia, taken in the late-19th century, as inspiration for her stunning collages using Japanese paper. Building upon the past, her works bring us crashing into the present.
Buy here
Over £100,000
Edvard Munch, The Girls on the Bridge (1918)
£125,000
London Original Print Fair
The Scream might have been a more appropriate work to end this article and this year, but The Girls on the Bridge is an equally stunning piece by Edvard Munch. This is a rare blue version of the scene he frequently revisited in his body of work. It is described by the seller as a "particularly striking colour proof of this memorable subject".
