As the New Year horns sound, January streaks out of the blocks. PST exhibitions at the museums continue, gallery openings abound and the art fairs jockey for calendar space.

Zhang Daqian, Lotus and Mandarin Ducks, 1947, sold for $24.5 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong last year

Art-market analysts have been aflutter since news hit that two Chinese artists, Zhang Daqian and Qi Bashi, took over the top auction-earner spots last year — beating out former titleholders Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Zhang works brought in $506.7 million and Qi did $445.1 million, while Warhol earned $324.8 million and Picasso $311.6 million. In fifth place is another Chinese artist, Xu Beihong, who generated $212.9 million.

The art market defied the economic gloom to return 11 per cent to investors in 2011, outpacing stock market returns for a second consecutive year.

In a year when the S&P 500 made headlines by moving just .04 points in 365 days and theDow Jones Industrial Average gained only 5.5 percent despite mountains of volatility, the art market has shown an impressive 35 percent gain over the last 12 months based on evening sale totals at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Welcome to the SWAG economy (more on that later).

Amidst the swirl of the art fairs, museum shows, private exhibition spaces, parties and flagrant consumption, the rage of discontent finally hit print. Adam Lindemann shouted a boycott of the fairs in his New York Observer article on November 29. Charles Saatchi decried the hideousness of the art world on Friday, Dec 2. In the Art Newspaper, Swiss-based collector, Bijan Kherzi, claimed the art world “has been hijacked by the very same forces that poisoned the world of finance”.

If you were told to make a picture involving a fish, a boat prop, and a beach ball, how many ways could you fit them together? What if we threw in a happy face, Mickey Mouse, and the Virgin of Guadalupe? Add to that a porcupine, a few skulls, some cats, no-legged birds, and a devil girl tattoo, and you’ll find yourself in the iconographic realm of Verdi-based artist, Michael Sarich.

A pile of stools for $575,000. A cabinet full of surgical instruments for a cool $2.5 million. The global economy’s in a tailspin, but among the world’s elite collectors, works are selling for record prices.

The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, is one of the great pilgrimage sites in the contemporary art world. Founder and artist, Donald Judd, conceived it as a place to integrate art, architecture and nature.