Modern Art Review – The Most Delightful Way To Fleece Your Friends

Disclaimer: Modern Art was provided for free by Let’s Play Games, a Australian and New Zealand board game distributor. They’re also putting Aussie board gamers in touch with their local board game stores through the website Local Game Stores. As always, all opinions in this review are my own.

I had my Grunkle Stan moment opening the package from Let’s Play Games. Finally, I had them all. With Modern Art in hand, my collection of Reiner Knizia’s legendary auction games was complete: Medici, Ra, and now Modern Art.

You might think I’m going overboard on auction games, but despite sharing the same core mechanic, each one feels completely different.

Medici is precise and calculating. You can often predict the outcome of an auction before it even begins. Ra thrives on pushing your luck, blending risk-taking with light strategy.

And Modern Art? It’s something else entirely.

How to play

Can you predict which artist is about to make it big? Modern Art puts you in the role of an art dealer, where a painting’s value isn’t about the artwork itself, it’s about what the table decides it’s worth. Six million for a banana taped to a wall? Sure, why not.

That said, you don’t start with millions to throw around. Each player begins with a modest $100,000 and a hand of paintings from five real-world contemporary artists: Manuel Carvalho, Sigrid Thaler, Daniel Melim, Ramon Martins, and Rafael Silveira. The artwork is as varied as it is striking, ranging from surreal pieces to bold abstract designs, giving you the feeling of wandering through an actual modern art gallery.

Beyond the visuals, each card shows two key details: the artist’s name and the type of auction it triggers. This matters, because on your turn you’ll choose a card from your hand and put it up for sale using one of five auction styles.

• Open Auction: A classic bidding war. Players call out bids until the auctioneer ends it.
• Hidden Auction: Everyone secretly chooses a bid, then reveals at the same time. Highest offer wins.
• Fixed Price Auction: Set your price and see who bites. Going around the table, players either buy or pass.
• Double Auction: Sell two paintings from the same artist at once. Great for boosting value or pulling off a big play.

Auctions continue until a fifth painting from a single artist is sold, immediately ending the round. Only the three most popular artists, those with the most paintings sold, have any value. The most popular artist’s paintings sell for $30,000 each, second place earns $20,000, and third gets $10,000. Every other painting is worth nothing.

After counting your cash, the next round begins. The rules stay the same, but the market evolves. Artists who placed in the previous round keep their value, stacking with any new payouts and becoming even more lucrative.

After five rounds, each building on the last, the player with the biggest pile of cash wins.

The art of the (shady) deal

Playing Modern Art felt a lot like watching Exit Through the Gift Shop all over again, specifically Mr. Brainwash’s meteoric rise. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a fantastic documentary that dissects the modern art world, where reputation and hype often matter more than artistic talent or emotional depth.

Whether Modern Art is intentionally critiquing that idea, I’m not entirely sure. But it absolutely captures it. The artwork on the cards is stunning, but by the middle of the game, what’s on the card barely matters. All that matters is what you can sell it for at the end of the round.

And that end-of-round speculation? Absolutely wonderful.

Trying to work out which artists will rise, which will fall, and how much to pay for each piece is as delightful as it is difficult to get right. It’s part gut instinct, part hard maths.

You know what’s in your hand and how you can influence the market, but you also know exactly what each painting will pay out. So every bid becomes a calculated gamble.

Of course, none of that careful thinking matters when a master auctioneer is at the table.

Modern Art leans into its theme with an easel to display paintings and a gavel to punctuate each sale. When players embrace that and lean into the performance, whether it’s a sleazy auctioneer hyping up a “priceless masterpiece” or a bidder bluffing their way into a bargain, the game goes from great to unforgettable. Like any good social game, the more energy you put in, the more you get out.

And nothing quite beats the joy of convincing your friends to make a terrible deal.

That said, after a few games in a row, the theatrics naturally start to fade. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but once you’ve said them all, there’s not much left to add. Players shift from fast-talking dealmakers to cold, calculating strategists, focusing more on timing, bids, and money management than putting on a show.

Which, honestly, I didn’t mind. There’s more than enough depth here to stay engaging, even without the theatrics.

Bidding, bluffing, and the best of the best

One of the things I loved about Modern Art is how effortlessly it puts you in the shoes of a high-stakes art dealer. Every round, I found myself weighing up the same question. Do I cash in on a proven artist for quick money, or take a gamble on someone new and try to shape the market? It genuinely feels like you are “discovering” artists, and sometimes that is the best way to snap up undervalued paintings for a bargain.

Another highlight is the variety of auctions. The more I play auction games, the more I realise how tiring straight open auctions can be. They are fun, but they tend to drag and can slow the whole game down. Modern Art still includes them, but balances things out with faster, more dynamic auction styles that keep the pace moving.

Vault Wars tried something similar, but that one left a sour taste for me. It also features multiple auction types, but every time a new one appears, the game grinds to a halt while everyone figures out what to do. Modern Art avoids this entirely by sticking to five distinct, easy-to-learn auction styles. You get the variety without the constant rule checking.

So, the big question. Between Ra, Medici, and Modern Art, which comes out on top?

For me, Medici sits comfortably in third place. But Ra versus Modern Art is a much closer call. Ra brings that brilliant push-your-luck tension with its unique bidding system, while Modern Art leans fully into pure auctions and offers a deeper, more strategic experience.

In the end, while all three are excellent and each has its own flavour, Modern Art just edges ahead.

If you want a pure auction game, stop looking. Modern Art is the one to beat.