Affordable Art - IELTS Reading Answers

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Passage for Affordable Art IELTS Reading Answers

Given below is the ‘Affordable Art' passage that you can go through and prepare yourself for the reading section with this IELTS Reading practice test.

Affordable Art 

Art prices have fallen drastically. The art market is being flooded with good material, much of it from big-name artists, including Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Many pieces sell for less than you might expect, with items that would have made £20,000 two years ago fetching only £5,000 to £10,000 this autumn, according to Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the Fine Art Fund. Here, we round up what is looking cheap now, with a focus on works in the range of £500 to £10,000. 

Picasso is one of the most iconic names in art, yet some of his ceramics and lithographs fetched less than £1,000 each at Bonhams on Thursday. The low prices are because he produced so many of them. However, their value has increased steadily and his works will only become scarcer as examples are lost. 

Nic McElhatton, the chairman of Christie's South Kensington, says that the biggest 'affordable' category for top artists is 'multiples' - prints such as screenprints or lithographs in limited editions. In a Christie's sale this month, examples by Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Steinlen sold for less than £5,000 each.

Alexandra Gill, the head of prints at the auction house, says that some prints are heavily hand-worked, or often coloured, by the artist, making them personalised. 'Howard Hodgkin's are a good example,' she says. 'There's still prejudice against prints, but for the artist it was another, equal medium. 

Mr Hoffman believes that these types of works are currently about as 'cheap as they can get' and will hold their value in the long run - though he admits that their sheer number means prices are unlikely to rise any time soon. 

It can be smarter to buy really good one-offs from lesser-known artists, he adds. A limited budget will not run to the blockbuster names you can obtain with multiples, but it will buy you work by Royal Academicians (RAs) and others whose pieces are held in national collections and who are given long write-ups in the art history books. For example, the Christie's sale of art from the Lehman Brothers collection on Wednesday will include Valley with cornflowers in oil by Anthony Gross (22 of whose works are held by the Tate), at £1,000 to £1,500. There is no reserve on items with estimates of £1,000 or less, and William Porter, who is in charge of the sale, expects some lots to go for 'very little'. The sale also has oils by the popular Mary Fedden (whose works are often reproduced on greetings cards), including Spanish House and The White Hyacinth, at £7,000 to £10,000 each. 

Large works by important Victorian painters are available in this sort of price range, too. These are affordable because their style has come to be considered 'uncool', but they please a large traditionalist following nonetheless. For example, the sale of 19th century paintings at Bonhams on Wednesday has a Hampstead landscape by Frederick William Watts at £6,000 to £8,000 and a study of three Spanish girls by John Bagnold Burgess at £4,000 to £6,000. There are proto-social realist works depicting poverty, too, such as Uncared For by Augustus Edwin Mulready, at £10,000 to £15,000. 

Smaller auction houses offer a mix of periods and media. Tuesday's sale at Chiswick Auctions in West London includes a 1968 screenprint of Campbell's Tomato Soup by Andy Warhol, at £6,000 to £8,000, and 44 sketches by Augustus John, at £200 to £800 each. The latter have been restored after the artist tore them up. Meanwhile, the paintings and furniture sale at Duke's of Dorchester on Thursday has a coloured block print of Acrobats at Play by Marc Chagall, at £100 to £200, and a lithograph of a mother and child by Henry Moore, at £500 to £700. A group of five watercolour landscape studies by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot is up at £1,500 to £3,000. 

Affordable works from lesser-known artists and younger markets are less safe, but they have the potential to offer greater rewards if you catch an emerging trend. Speculating on such trends is high-risk, so it is worthwhile only if you like what you buy (you get something beautiful to keep, whatever happens), and can afford to lose the capital and enjoy the necessary research. 

A trend could be based on a country or region. China has rocketed, but other Asian and Middle Eastern markets have yet to really emerge. Mr Horwich mentions some 1970s Iraqi paintings that he sold this year in Dubai. 'They are part of a sophisticated scene that remains little-known.' Mr Hoffman tips Turkey and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale in New York features a 1962 oil by the Vietnamese Vu Cao Dam, a graduate of Hanoi's Ecole des Beaux Arts de Undochine and friend of Chagall, at $8,000 to $12,000 (£5,088 to £7,632). The painting shows two girls boating in traditional ao dai dresses. 

A further way of making money is to try to spot talent in younger artists. The annual Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park provides a chance to buy from 170 contemporary galleries. Or you could gamble on the future fame trajectory of an established artist's subject. For example, a Gerald Laing screenprint of The Kiss (2007) showing Amy Winehouse and her ex-husband is up for £4,700 at the Multiplied fair. 

Questions for Affordable Art Reading Answers

The Academic passage, Affordable Art, consists of 13 questions. Solving this passage will help you become acquainted with three major IELTS Reading question types with examples. 

The question types in this reading passage include:

• IELTS Reading Table Completion (Q. 1-5)
• IELTS Reading Matching Endings (Q. 6-9)
• IELTS Reading True False Not Given (Q. 10-13)

Questions 1-5 

Questions 6-9 

6 'Multiples' are ………….. 

7 Prints are …………… 

8 Gross and Fedden are ………….. 

9 Victorian painters are ………….. 

List of Endings

i artists that have never been popular at all.

ii hand-made and personal art works. 

iiii items that are not really popular with buyers but good value for money. 

iv artists that seem to like real life topics. 

v top artists that sell many works. 

vi artists who have used a particular type of material. 

vii relatively cheap limited editions prints. 

viii artists whose work is not often seen by the wider public. 

Questions 10-13

10 Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, Miro and Steinlen are big-name artists. 

11 It is possible to buy a painting by Picasso for less than £5,000.

12 Greeting cards can sell for up to £10,000 each.

13 It is not worth investing in new artists or markets because there is a great risk of losing all your money.

Answers and Explanations of Affordable Art IELTS Reading Passage

Check out the detailed explanations for the Affordable Art reading passage questions given above and get an idea of how to solve them and improve your reading skills for a top IELTS band score.

How to Solve the Question Types in the Affordable Art Reading Passage?

Now, let’s check out some IELTS exam preparation tips for achieving a band score of 8+ for each question type in the Affordable Art Reading Answers. 

Table Completion 

• Read the column headings before scanning the passage: Before reading the text, carefully study the table headings (e.g. Example of artist, Type of art form, Reason for low price). This tells you what kind of information you must extract and prevents copying irrelevant but tempting details.
• Identify which column controls the answer: In most IELTS tables, one column (here: Reason for low price) determines where the answer comes from. Focus on sentences explaining why an artwork is cheap, not just descriptions of the artwork itself.
• Scan for artist names, then read around them: Proper nouns like Picasso, Anthony Gross, and Vu Cao Dam are easy to locate. Once found, read 1–2 lines before and after to catch explanations linked to price or popularity.
• Copy answers word-for-word and check limits: Do not paraphrase or add articles such as a or the. After filling each gap, recheck that your answer contains no more than two words, or it will be marked incorrect even if the idea is right.

Matching Sentence Endings

• Read the sentence beginnings and underline key nouns: Focus on the subject of each sentence (e.g. Multiples, Prints, Victorian painters). This helps you predict whether the ending should describe price, popularity, method, or subject matter.
• Locate the defining sentence in the passage first: Do not read the list of endings immediately. Instead, scan the passage to find where the key term is explained, then fully understand the sentence before matching it to an ending.
• Match meaning, not shared vocabulary: IELTS passages often avoid repeating exact words between the passage and the endings. For example, “prejudice against prints” in the passage connects logically to “not really popular with buyers but good value,” even though the wording is different.
• Eliminate endings that are too broad or extreme: Options like “never been popular at all” are often traps. If the passage suggests limited appeal rather than total rejection, remove extreme endings first to narrow your choices.

True/False/Not Given 

• Treat each statement as a mini fact-check: Read one statement at a time and search for exact confirmation or contradiction in the passage. Do not rely on background knowledge about artists like Andy Warhol or Henri Matisse—only the text matters.
• Decide between FALSE and NOT GIVEN carefully: If the passage clearly says the opposite, choose FALSE. If the passage does not mention the information at all (even indirectly), the correct answer is NOT GIVEN.
• Watch out for numbers and absolute claims: Statements involving prices, limits, or certainty (e.g. “less than £5,000” or “not worth investing”) require explicit textual evidence. If no figure or judgement is stated, do not infer; choose NOT GIVEN.
• Base answers on meaning, not isolated words: A sentence may reuse words like ‘risk’ or ‘investment’ but still express a different idea. Always compare the overall message of the passage sentence with the statement before choosing your answer.

In conclusion, reading the passage ‘Affordable Art’ can help you prepare for the IELTS exam and enhance your comprehension skills. To achieve a high score on the IELTS Reading section, it is essential to focus on several factors: your reading speed, your familiarity with the types of questions asked, and your ability to retrieve information. So, to crack the reading module in the first go, try solving more of the IELTS Reading topics for General and Academic, and work on your reading skill set.

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