There is a new meaning of art appreciation today that has nothing to do with rising investment value. Consider it a reversion to a quaint time in the recent past, say, pre-2004. The era of big, flashy, overproduced art is a thing of the past. Now I understand the etymology of an economic depression: it’s damn depressing, but at the same time perversely exciting. The new economic order we collectively reside in is emasculating, but reading the business pages reveals I am in good company. In days when government money is the only way the Dow can get it up, the art market is as dead as Detroit. GM and Ford have been forced to sell their private planes, will the same fate befall artists’ Damien Hirst and Richard Prince? The only status symbol left, surely not art, is to lose more money than your peers.
We didn’t save when interest rates were measured in real numbers, now they are .01%, not quite foam-at-the-mouth inducements. Nobody seems to know, pundits and armchair quarterbacks alike, which way the market will go—from recovery in 6-9 months or a deep, dark depression for all of eternity, everyone’s got a theory. A year, two years, ten years, twenty, will somebody please tell me…something? The variance of the prognosis is dizzying. We are paying the piper for recent past hyperinflation, a sour medicine that brings little joy or satisfaction. But maybe shopping or collecting was never really the panacea the world bought into. Printing money cannot be the solution either: Hirst’s painting tactics, the art world equivalent, overfed demand by way of flooding the (spot) market with dot paintings.
The backlash has been immediate and widespread from art to design. Recent London Impressionist and Modern auctions were down substantially by volume and value and Contemporary sales fared even worse. Moribund. One upside is that insurance expenditures will drop substantially reflecting the overall decrease in the value of art collections for purposes of premium calculation. Just call in the feds for another insurance company bailout. Nevertheless, there was some very strong sales activity taking into consideration the goalposts have been moved. Ok, so the posts are now practically together. Areas where there has been white-hot, rampant speculation, i.e. Indian and Chinese art, with a tenfold increase in fewer years, were obvious targets for decimation, and the market did not disappoint.
It’s a novel phenomenon when the shift in currencies, the dollar’s surge at the expense of the pound over the past few months, accounted for a proportionate increase in USA based activity in the London auctions. In the truly global marketplace that art has become, the financial markets serve as automatic leveler where countries step in to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities when they arise, smoothing out currency fluctuations and steadying things in the process. At today’s rates, maybe US should do a reverse takeover of the UK.
Phillips De Pury Auction house was taken over by a Russian luxury goods conglomerate and subsequently moved to appoint a former East German Stasi agent to its top corporate position. And an ex-KGB agent has bought The Evening Standard newspaper in London. Spies running auction houses and newspapers—could these be plants, a twisted plot in a cold war revival to win the minds and eyes of the West in some kind of newfangled economic warfare involving the press and contemporary art? Or is that just a symptom of fiscal paranoia on my part?
Bentley has fully stopped production in the UK, and a three-day workweek has been instituted at Aston Martin. I have a shorter workweek, but that is due more to collectors’ disdain rather than forced attrition. There are a few economic anomalies and bright spots in the marketplace though, namely collectible cars and couture. January 2009 car sales at RM Auctions and Gooding and Co. were more than 80% and 90% sold respectively and at Gooding, at a level of value a third greater than in 2008. And couture sales at some of the major houses have reported record earnings increases of late. Perhaps the rare and classic car market never escalated too far ahead of itself as it did during the last cyclical (cynical) uptick and now cars are considered a covetable, tangible asset and safe haven; as for clothes, what better time to look uniquely your best when others are on the floor, down and out?
The present state of the world economy has breathed new life into the word depression. Its depressing knowing the chance of consummating another giant deal in my lifetime is so slim. There is relief in the notion that splitting a dinner bill is now an acceptable method of settling restaurant tabs. But what is the economic answer to antidepressants? Shall I go out on a radical limb: will this economic climate bring us back into the arms of appreciation for traditional ideals of craft and beauty?
I went to galleries on my own accord for the first time in five years after being largely priced out and the experience has again become interesting, even in it’s reductive, redacted new form. Welcome back seeing, learning and connoisseurship. There has never been a better time to start buying art than today; in fact, this could be a once in a life opportunity. Never has art been so broadly based and global in reach: the array of available works from Africa to the Middle East to every corner of the planet is enormous and of better quality that at any previous point in history. Even more alluring than the art itself is the fact that galleries are hobbled by the recent economic slowdown so much so that collectors, for the first time in nearly 20 years, can call the shots with regard to prices, demanding discounts, substantially greater than in the past, to a degree not seen if ever. And to top it all off, recession art is frequently more engaging than art made during a time of complacency to feed a voracious market. Maybe a depression is not so depressing after all.
Kenny Schachter