blue chip, red chip, white chip

“Red chip” art was first coined by Scott Reyburn, an art market journalist, in an article titled, "Blue-chip artists move over, here come the red chips." (The Art Newspaper, January 8, 2021.) His was a timely description. He used it to characterize works by younger, generally emerging artists whose work was red "hot." Their works were appearing in galleries and at auctions, selling for volatile prices alongside familiar, often over-priced works by market darlings.

The term red chip occasionally pops up in the current, troubled market. Most recently, Keith Estiler used the phrase in his article, “The Slow Death of the Contemporary Art Gallery.” (Hypebeast, August 15, 2025). Estiler suggested

Collectors are increasingly turning their attention to “red chip” artists, a new class of talents whose value is built on viral hype and cultural relevance rather than institutional endorsement. These artists are attractive for two main reasons: their work is often more accessible and affordable, and it brings fresh, diverse cultural perspectives that feel relevant and exciting to a global audience.

This is a generous generalization. It does not begin to address the overwhelming mediocrity of contemporary art, especially in a fatigued, recessionary market. Nor does the description address the range of market-sensitive attributes that make one Picasso a wonder and another a dud. It may be time to add “white chip” art to denote the lowest values and highest market ambiguity. The chip-ness (or symbolic value) of any work of art is quite simply weird. Chip colors imply that art operates like tokens in a game where the value is not inherent in the physical object but in what it signifies within a larger symbolic economy.

Before going further, the etymology of “blue chip” warrants explanation. The phrase originated in the early 1900s in poker, a card game in which you do not have to have the best hand to win; you just need other players to believe you do, or to fold before showing their cards. The psychological element is huge—reading other players, managing your demeanor at the table, knowing when to bluff and when to fold. It is why poker has become such a popular metaphor for strategy, risk-taking, and navigating uncertainty with incomplete information.  As for the poker chips, blue chips traditionally have the highest value among the standard white, red, and blue colors.

In the World Series of Poker, there are nine colors, blue ranking 7th out of nine. In casino poker, there are 13 colors of chips, ranging from white ($1) to maroon ($10,000), with blue ranking 4thout of 13. Obviously, there is greater granularity in Vegas which could be adapted in the art market, to wit: Salvator Mundi might be the only artwork that warrants a maroon ($10,000) chip.

“Blue chips” financial meaning emerged around 1923 when a Dow Jones employee—Oliver Gingold—supposedly began using the phrase "blue chip stocks" to refer to high-priced, high-quality stocks of well-established companies. The term was further popularized when it started appearing in financial publications in the 1930s. From finance, usage was then expanded into other areas, where blue chip connotes, but does not confer, premium quality or top-tier status, such as "blue chip prospects“ in sports recruiting or "blue chip real estate."

"Blue chip" entered the art market discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, well after Gingold first coined it. It was then that the contemporary art market began to mature. Art became commoditized and evolved into a more structured (albeit highly unregulated) investment. The 1973 Robert and Ethel Scull Collection auction at Sotheby Parke-Bernet New York was a watershed moment that solidified the status of iconic Blue-Chip artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. With the internationalization of the art market in leading economies during the 1980s and 1990s, the term “Blue Chip artists” was well-established.

Whether blue, red, or white, the chip color connotes arbitrary value. The overwhelming majority of contemporary art is white chip: low cost, low value, and short-lived. In the hierarchy of prices, a blue-chip art—Basquiat, Picasso, or Warhol, for example—has effectively become art currency. Their chip-ness can often be devalued (sometimes dramatically) if the attributes of an artwork are wobbly, for example, price, medium, year, series, size, shape, color, condition, or provenance. One Los Angeles art dealer recently revealed, “I have a client who scours less well known, often obscure auctions for bargain-priced, blue-chip art works. If he wins it, he invariably complains about the quality, condition, or potential resale value. So, he’s bought a blue-ship artist in a red-chip context” with white-chip value.

To graphically depict the essence of art market chip-ness . . .

To sum it up, before the dealer ‘Rakes the pot,” “Don't count your chips before they're cashed.” “Let the chips fall where they may,” especially “When the chips are down.” Otherwise, you may “Have a chip on one's shoulder,” and even be forced to “Cash in one's chips.”