Random Ideas about Value in the Art Market
March 10, 2009 at 8:18 pm | In art investment, art market, art price, art prices, art recession, collecting art, contemporary art | 2 Comments
I just gave an interview on a beginners guide to the contemporary art market and I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful. The interviewer kept asking me about value and I kept talking about how necessary art is for the soul. I think, that’s not what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear about how to value art. Which is a difficult question? Especially now, when no one knows the value of anything.
So here are some of my ideas about what is and what is not a good value in the contemporary art market. Please note that this is a very different subject from investing in art. Art is a crummy monetary investment, even now when prices are getting lower by the minute. However, a wonderful work of art that you love pays millions of dividends in pleasure and enlightenment. Continue reading Random Ideas about Value in the Art Market…
Why the market got sooo excessive and what will happen next
January 29, 2009 at 6:04 pm | In Art world, art market, collecting art, contemporary art, judging art | 7 CommentsI’ve always blamed the excesses of the contemporary art market on Warhol. Warhol’s art came out of Duchamp, yes. ( Marcel Duchamp was the guy who exhibited a urinal and said it was art.) The grand idea is that art is anything that an artist says is art. Great. But Warhol, being a product of his time, added a devious twist. The “anything” he chose to be art, was branded commercial images from the media. As you probably don’t recall being too young, it was the proliferation of homogenized media in the 60’s that fed the cult of celebrity and the growth of a consumerist society. Warhol was a child of the 60’s in that all he really cared about was buying stuff and being famous. So, of course, his art reflected the time. He was a self-manufactured brand and subject of his art was how branding created a need for a consumer product or celebrity. So why was Warhol, who recycled the photographic images of our consumer/celebrity culture, so popular? The answer is what I call the Warhol paradox. Continue reading Why the market got sooo excessive and what will happen next…
Attitude Sells Art
November 16, 2008 at 8:12 pm | In Art world, art market, attitude, contemporary art | 1 CommentWe had a wonderful opening on Thursday of amazing paintings by Lisa Breslow and we even sold several. They’re really soo beautiful, they’ll sell in any market.
But I want to write today about the importance of context in the selling of art. I have this theory that half the people in the world need to have their art presented on a silver platter. Otherwise it’s not important enough for them. The other half of the world is like me. When I look at a piece of art I think, “Would the work still speak to me if I saw it hanging in my gas station?” That’s my test. Unlike most of my colleagues, my definition of good art is that it can stand on its own. I would love it if I saw it at Sam’s Shell. It shouldn’t need explanation, back story, or verbiage. Continue reading Attitude Sells Art…
My fool-proof art investment strategy
November 10, 2008 at 11:27 pm | In Art world, art market, collecting art, contemporary art | 1 CommentUp until last month, I had the greatest, totally fool-proof strategy for making lots of money in the crazy world of hot-off-the press art. Of course, I never used it myself. I don’t like art as investment. Right now, however, nothing is gonna to work. There are big auctions tonight and tomorrow night and things don’t look good. For the past 4 years, so many of us have looked in open-mouthed disbelief as prices soared beyond – waaay beyond – the logical. People were spending stupid money on last year’s flipped Richard Prince and over produced Murakamis. How does the art made yesterday get to be an asset class? Didn’t anyone remember 1991????
But one day the stupid money will be back and my strategy will be viable again. Continue reading My fool-proof art investment strategy…
The Cult of the Young
September 8, 2008 at 11:00 pm | In art market, collecting art, contemporary art | Leave a Comment“It is much easier for an art dealer to find new artists for old clients than it is to find new clients for old artists” – Peter Plagens on What Drives the Contemporary Art Market
I read this in the New Art Examiner in the late 70’s or early 80’s and it struck me then – as it does now – as a logical explanation of why the art world takes some lucky number of kids straight from MFA programs and makes them overnight art stars. Articles in the Times talk about how art dealers hang around the studios at Columbia, or Yale – about how a particularly promising pick has 3 or 4 dealers competing for him, like a football scouts hanging around high schools. But it was always thus. Continue reading The Cult of the Young…
All art galleries are different
September 8, 2008 at 10:17 pm | In art market, collecting art, contemporary art | Leave a CommentTags: Add new tag, art business, Art Galleries
There are almost 400 galleries in Chelsea today and just as every artist is different, and the market for every artist is different, so is every art dealer and his gallery different. Every “gallerist” – the current terminology -has his own agenda – aesthetically, financially or socially. Continue reading All art galleries are different…
How to tell good art from bad
September 8, 2008 at 5:14 pm | In art market, collecting art, contemporary art | Leave a Comment
There is no bottom line in the art world, no numbers to add up at the end of the year to tell you how good something is. Value – and I’m talking artistic value now, not financial value – is always only a matter of perception. But here are some points to note. Continue reading How to tell good art from bad…
How to think about looking at art – step #1
September 3, 2008 at 2:15 am | In art market, collecting art, contemporary art | Leave a CommentTags: art advice, art advisor, collecting art, contemporary art, new art collector
Step number one is to look, look, and look some more. There are literally hundreds of thousands of artists of all sorts making millions of paintings, drawings, and objects that are all vying for your attention. Learning how to look at art is a life- long process of self discovery and pleasure, and frankly takes a lot of time and effort – just as it would take me years to understand what really goes on a football field. All I see is a bunch of guys hitting each other but I assume there’s more to it that. (God I hope so). Likewise, one of the defining characteristics of a good piece of art as opposed to a boring mediocre one, is that there is more to it than what you initially see. Continue reading How to think about looking at art – step #1…
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