Artists: There are many wonderful things about the arts and artists, especially the childlike innocence involved in the act of making things as a career choice. Artists have license to spend a lifetime involved in childlike creativity; they never have to leave the sandbox, let alone they get paid handsomely for it. A dose of mischievousness and eccentricity is not only encouraged but rather expected. Slicing off your ear is considered a run of the mill hazard of the profession not to be questioned as out of the ordinary. The Korean video artist Nam June Paik said he became an artist so he could sleep in.
On the other hand, artists can be a capricious and self-serious lot. Correct me if I am wrong in assuming art never cured a strain of cancer. Some artists certainly carry themselves in such a fashion like peacocks with their feathers in full display. Some years ago I bought two artworks from a struggling artist who had been given the works as gifts. When I tried to sell the pieces years on the results were astonishing: both artists independently declared the works not to be art. In fact, both pieces were more “art” then the art they normally exhibited—but both artists made efforts to preclude me from selling the works I bought in good faith. It boiled down to issues of trying to control perceptions of the artists and their works.
Only in art can someone equally state that an object lifted off the street or appropriated from a newspaper or magazine is his or her creation and simultaneously declare that something made the old fashion way is garbage. Among the American artist Richard Prince’s most prized and valuable works are a series of photographs “re-photographed” from a Marlborough advert. I bet the original photographer of the ad was less than amused that he got a stipend for his efforts while Prince has been and continues to be paid princely sums (well into the seven figures) for his efforts. Anyway, I sold both disputed works of mine at auction as the houses don’t seem overly concerned about the intent of the artist when it comes to what is or isn’t art.
Auctions: Auctions, like gallery and fair openings were not always the glamorous, star-studded events they are today. Art and auctions were largely ho-hum enterprises peopled by professionals in the trade. Nowadays, auctions are very public social forums where some love nothing better than waving around their paddles like swinging dicks in the most public displays of consumption.
But when it comes to buying and selling at auction, you had better know what you’re doing as you are invariably up against the savviest purchasers in the world. And these days that really does mean the world over, as we are truly in an interdependent, global environment after years of lip service to that effect. In the past, dealers banded together at public sales to keep prices artificially low, and then bid amongst themselves after a given sale. Today it’s the reverse, or so it is said. But even if you own buckets of Basquiats and you obscenely bid one up auction to bolster the market, nevertheless he who he who plays with a paddle pays.
Bloomberg: Bloomberg.com is the new art magazine of the 21st century in the money obsessed world we reside in. Most people in art only look at the pictures and adverts in traditional art magazines unless they or their artists are themselves written about. To read, learn and discover more about today’s art forget specialist magazines, try websites, like the FT, Wall Street Journal—the financial press and fashion magazines (and er, GQ) do a much better job covering the territory without trying to impress with unknowable art speak so often encountered in the art journals.
Commissions: Commissions can range from 50% to a gallery when they represent an artist or 2% if you sell a £25m painting. Auction houses today greedily grab 25% on the buy side—you must add that to your winning purchase price, not a good thing to forget during bidding. Not to mention they take a sizeable chunk on the sell side too. Who said you can’t get it both ways? But its all a giant gray area when it comes to percentages in art transactions both public and private where the rule of thumb typically is: get what you can. There are certain galleries, without mentioning names (hint: one has been involved in several landmark lawsuits), that don’t just go after a slice of the sale proceeds, but make a grab for the whole lot. It never seems to be enough, which fact is rarely if ever communicated to the collectors or for that matter, the artists.
Collectors & Connoisseurship: Sadly, there appears a diminished amount of passion in the art world (for the art anyway) as the days of connoisseurship are mostly behind us; old school collectors who never sell and artists with no regard for private planes and Hello Magazine belong more and more in a display case in a natural history museum. Mind you, I find nothing wrong trading the multi-billion dollar Hirst market—the fact that you can rather pleases me, but let’s not confuse the big money deals with appreciation.
Having no means has never been an impediment to a true collector. In the past ten years there has been more growth in the worldwide art market than in the previous 100 years. The first time contemporary art entered the realm of high-end, expensive evening sales at auction was in 1997 when a children’s heart specialist went to jail for embezzling money from a surgery fund in order to feed his collecting habit. Such is the fervor that grips collectors that one could even steal money from the hands of dying children to fulfill the desire for more acquisitions. That’s what I call a hardcore collector.
Strangely it’s not unusual today for some collectors to buy with their ears rather than eyes; as who’s buying art seems for some to eclipse what it is they are actually purchasing. But whereas in the past it was critics and collectors like Saatchi that were moving markets, today it’s more likely to be what’s in the shopping carts of Prince, Koons and Hirst that collectors are tripping over themselves to emulate.
Contemporary: No one could ever have imagined how art fared so well in light of the crushing recession that brought the world’s economy to its collective knees. But clearly trends have shifted today—in the recent past, $25m Jeff Koons sculptures were being flipped like burgers on the resale market before the crates were even unpacked, and at the same time, you couldn’t give a Monet away. Today, contemporary art is a long way from selling for the prices of office buildings but Picasso’s, Monet’s and Van Gogh’s are reaching dizzying heights as we are in the midst of a flight to quality, with art viewed as a safe harbor in uncertain economic times.
Nevertheless, even contemporary art is gradually clawing its way back to (obscene) 2007 levels. Cash is king no longer holds any credence with most of the financials still resoundingly in the toilet: in effect, things are king, and art of all stripes looks better and better to more and more. We are even seeing a return to waiting lists and deep six-figure price tags for the soup de jour, today’s latest hottest young thing. Whether that’s a good thing I leave to you to decide.
Critics: Another casualty of the recent transformation of the art world into a vast money pit is the slow death of the critic. To make an impact today, an art writer has to become a judge on a reality TV show. Over the years, the balance of power has shifted from critics and dealers who used to be able to make or break a career to artists and collectors (and artists that collect, see above) who are now ruling the roost. Even a negative article by critics past was capable of moving markets up or down, those days are way behind us. Soon critics may be viewed as a quaint profession of the past replaced by the glossies and movers and shakers that rule the roost of the market.
Design Art: This is an artificial term recently coined by an auction house to market high- end furniture like art. Design aped the art market releasing objects in editions, usually of 12 for no rhyme or reason, and in the process raised the bar of what you can get away with charging for a chair. And it worked: Marc Newson, the poster boy for design art shows at Larry Gagosian Gallery and has sold one for $2.5m: Conran eat your heart out. But in the recession, the design market plummeted, suffering from premature ageing disease where tragically a small child goes through an accelerated process ending up with the characteristics of an 80 year old before reaching their teens. Only in its infancy, design soared then hit the floor, though look for it to steadily recover over time.
Death: Death is welcomed and embraced on all fronts in the art world. Firstly, its handy for prying masterpieces out of long held private collections (as is another “D” word, divorce), secondly it’s a surefire way to lift an artists market out of the doldrums, imagine there finally being a definitive cause for no further spot paintings? As for content in art, death like religion goes a long way to make an artist look as serious as mature.
Equality: Or rather the lack of equality for females and minorities that still exists in the art world in relation to opportunities in galleries, museums and moreover, the effect in the marketplace. If Mary Heilmann, one of America’s leading abstract painters had a penis and Brice Marden’s looks, perhaps the disparity in their auction records wouldn’t be, respectively, $182,500 vs. $9.6m.
Experts: Not only are most curators, advisers, and dealers professionally non-qualified (many unqualified too) but also art is the last bastion of unregulated, multi-billion dollar business activity in existence. Perhaps curator and adviser are among the most misused descriptive words in the art world after the over-use of the word important in relationship to describing art works.
Emin: Since moving to the UK some six and a half years ago, I have read no fewer than 1,297 magazine features on Tracey Emin and another few thousand on Sam Taylor Wood. The endless media fascination boggles the mind; in the States, over the past 10 years prior to my departure there have been maybe a handful of articles in the popular press about contemporary artists, though that has admittedly changed over the recent past with the advent of art and artists as media fodder worldwide. Must be the press has run out of other things to obsess about—you can only report on reality TV stars so much I guess. The Daily Mail on a Sunday devoted an entire page 3 to Tracey’s recent relationship status and Taylor Wood’s widely reported social exploits give new meaning to the “boy” in boyfriend. It’s just a reflection of the mainstreaming of artists where in the past art was considered erudite and for the few, now its like open season for grouse.
Frieze: Art fairs, most of which I have actively participated in at one time or another (and been thrown out of, hard to imagine), are the most effective and convenient way to do reconnaissance about what is afoot at any given time. They are wonderful information gathering affairs as well as the closest the art world gets to fostering a sense of community; we all travel to the same destinations and socialize with many of the same people across multiple time zones. But the fairs are also deeply hierarchical enterprises. The decision making process as to who gets to have a booth, and in which section that booth is located in are based largely on political factors. Even who gets admitted as a guest and when (there are earlier entry slots for the VIP VIP’s) are status-laden choices by the powers that be. When you go to an emerging art fair like Frieze, I would guess fully 85% of what is on view will become worthless over time. Perhaps more.
With the nonstop attendant social flurry, the Miami Basel fair is undoubtedly number one on the charts for schmoozing the art party circuit. However, in hot market times at fairs there is competition to purchase new material, and fast, which in such a public forum is not the ideal way to understand and participate in the market. Art should be a slow burn, a contemplative process, not an ad hoc, spur of the moment, decision-making experience.
Gagosian: Safe to say most artists and galleries are like cottage industry entrepreneurs except for a gallery business model like that of Larry Gagosian who appears intent on nothing less than world domination, establishing beachheads far and wide, from New York to Athens via Paris, London and Rome. There is no one in gallery land in his rearview mirror. You could make a flow chart of the prominent families from which his entire staff hales.
Giacometti: People are still endlessly speculating that this artist is overvalued and what that artist is making is not even art. But then again, there are also awful Picasso paintings. In the breadth of an artist’s career you encounter a bell’s curve of what is good, bad and ugly; but that is a good thing as it creates access points for people to enter the market at differing price levels. For instance not everyone could afford a Giacometti sculpture (the last public record of £75m didn’t help) but you can find what is considered a less prized etching that is almost as gripping.
Galleries: Sterile places where are you are judged from head to toe by well-dressed adolescents regarding your status and prospective wallet capacity. They also display art and usually have a uniform architecture composed of clinical white walls and cement floors. Though you cannot dismiss the vital role of galleries in presenting art, archiving the activities of their artists and disseminating the art far and wide to collectors and institutions, why do most have to fulfill that role with such snobbery? Galleries are also about control and sometimes do not have the interests of the artists they represent at heart when at times they forsake opportunities by keeping the works close to their chest rather than facilitate sharing (commissions) with other galleries by spreading works to additional markets.
Hirst: For better or worse and to a greater extent than anyone before, Damien Hirst has done more to spread the word about contemporary art to all corners of the globe from New Jersey to New Delhi. From humble beginnings by pure chutzpah, determination and raw talent, he has risen to the status of global brand and made zillions in the process. Living in London in art, not a single day goes by that his name doesn’t pass often-pursed lips. He tackles the big issues of the day such as life, religion and death and everything between. Though he repeats himself endlessly and without fear that alone cannot detract from his vast accomplishments. His spot paintings refer to pharmaceuticals and most of us don’t get up in the morning without having a personal relationship to popping a pill of one sort or another. And his animals suspended in formaldehyde are the natural conclusion of the traditional still life. Hirst has made his cake (or had it fabricated) and is eating it all the way to Coutts & Co.
His most famous work is the floating shark caught between inciting terror and trembling, between life and death, entitled “The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. With Bono in tow, Hirst has become an international celebrity too, with bona fide rock star status and the cash flow to match. There was even recent coverage in the Economist solely on the past, present and future financial outlook of his oeuvre. As for the wrongly long- term bearish sentiment in the article, I forecast in 10 to 15 years, the market for Hirst fakes alone will total billions. Though his latest foray abandoning his legion of assistants and attempting to make paintings by his own hand flopped, if he sticks to this long enough, I am sure he will master it as well. Measuring one’s life and accomplishments against Hirst is a no- win situation engendering a new sentiment, namely: “The Impossibility of Damien Hirst in the Mind of Someone Not Him”.
Haggling: The difference between neophyte art collectors versus a jaded buyer is that a newcomer thinks they are buying something with a designated price requiring payment. A professional collector is like someone negotiating down the price of a container of milk, not paying for it for two years, and then canceling the deal because the milk went sour. Newbies have no idea what they can get away with in the snake pit of art. They are our favorite dupes. Just kidding.
Hedge Funders: When the market for hedge funds crashed, and crash it did, the traders picked up where their funds left off, trading in art. Stevie Cohen among the most renowned has accumulated what I call an encyclopedia collection, everything he buys, usually for about $158,000,000 each, is the iconic, stereotypical image you would expect to see depicted in a reference book.
Insiders: There are various ways to legally insider trade in the art world including front running major museum shows prior to public announcements. This entails being privy to information on the programming of a major museum (or gallery) ostensibly through board members or employees, as to who will be featured in upcoming shows and then buying (and selling) on such non-public knowledge for quick profit. I wouldn’t dream of it.
Impressionists: What people don’t realize is that when the Impressionists were first exhibiting their sun-dappled effusions of color and light they were considered cutting-edge contemporary and unanimously derided by the public and critics alike. That was before they became surefire means for cash strapped museums to bring in a crowd and multi-million dollar trophies to impress upon your peers.
Immortality: The notion of evading death by making lasting marks for posterity endlessly serves as the motivation and content of artists and art.
Juries: The mostly arbitrary groups making arbitrary decisions about who wins arbitrary prizes like the Turner. Once you do a certain amount of weeding to separate wheat from chaff, art is a personal, transcendent thing, not a sports competition. In the end, these events are nothing more than marketing schemes to reel in more bodies to hapless institutions.
Kenny Schachter: Born overweight and alienated in the suburbs of New York with no notion of art or the commercial structures surrounding it. Since then, like an idiot savant, I’ve come to curate shows at some of the world’s most prestigious museums, written books on the subject and taught on the graduate level at institutions such as Columbia University, NYU and the Royal College of Art. If your skin is thick enough, art truly is a (relatively) democratic realm with a (relatively) low entry threshold. Go ahead and give it a try.
Koons: The (self-created) myth goes that he was a commodities broker who went from hawking them on the trading floor to creating them for collectors. Koons’ work has always expressed a color-filled world of childlike wonderment for life, perhaps aside from the “Made in Heaven” series where he is depicted having explicit sex with Ciccolina, his former porn star wife, in just about every orifice imaginable. Today, Koons is best known for his sculptures of inflatable pool toys cast in aluminum and elaborate shiny fabrications of balloon dogs, hearts and flowers, made at a cost of millions and sold for many times more. One of his most notable pieces, entitled Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off) from1985 consisted of three basketballs suspended in a tank which besides suspending belief, in all probability spawned the vitrines of Hirst.
Leisure: Art is a fun, social, life transforming experience not to mention a great way to kill a few hours. It’s also a rare instance when shopping without spending can actually be enjoyable. One can peruse galleries and spectate without getting bogged down by the responsibility and overtly physical thing-ness of collecting and owning art. There is so much new stuff to be learned every day by reading about and viewing art. It’s not all about money; art is the only free lunch left in town as galleries and most museums generally don’t charge admission.
Liquor: The art world has moved on from absinthe to abstinence. Gone are the freewheeling days artists were seen as reckless characters brawling in bars and living a life of bohemia, now its tea and teetotalers. There are paintings entitled “The Absinthe Drinker” from Manet, Degas, and Picasso as well as tales from the legendary Cedar Tavern in New York half a century later where de Kooning, Rothko, and Pollack drank in a dank setting before most were banned from returning for bad behavior. It’s also the place that cemented the Abstract Expressionist school of painting. Skip forward another 50 years and there are colorful stories of the YBA’s going on week long benders, waking in parks, prisons in puddles (of pee). There was Tracey drunk on TV and Damien serving up his willy on a tray to unsuspecting Groucho patrons. Yet today, artists are too preoccupied tending to their careers, stock portfolios and manor house gardens. I’ll drink to that.
Money: Art used to be more like a religion, with educational, historic, technical, analytic and cultural aspirations; but over time, as most religions came to be dominated and replaced by the blind pursuit of material wealth, art followed suit, and swiftly at that. Forget Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism and any other -isms you can conjure, most art now is all about Economic-ism.
Museums: The museum sphere, more mid-level than Tate or Serpentine scale, resembles small town politics, with little money and little opportunity to make a sizable impact. In a time when even the biggest institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, have been so strapped for cash they can’t paint the walls between exhibits, museums are losing their capacity to make an impact. Being in such financial straits has in turn reduced the scope and adventurousness of public museums programming capabilities and thereby removed the stinger of these venues. Many times, they can no longer afford to make a difference, instead opting for easy to swallow, crowd pleasing events (see Impressionists above). With less and less funding, and more and more cuts, there is sadly less at stake for institutions across the board.
Networking: From the endless parties, openings, fairs, auctions and biennials, it’s all rather exhausting and nearly impossible to keep up, but keep up one must: out of sight out of mind. That is not even taking into consideration online social networking sites: facebook, Twitter, blah blah, blah. Its enough to make one long for the simple days when there were a mere 6 contemporary art galleries in the world, but there is no going back, if anything it will only get worse.
Old masters: Art is a world of specialization akin to medicine; each niche has its own language both visual, visceral and verbal. There are antiquities, renaissance paintings, British modernism, American painting and so on and so forth. There is no such thing as generalizing when it comes to art that one can have an umbrella understanding of the overall field without a great deal of studying and acquired knowledge. To think one can jump across genres and make the leap from an ability to grasp meaning of one aspect of art to another is foolhardy. For instance, Old Masters is a language I just do not understand, I wouldn’t know a Holbein from a Holiday Inn painting, and I’m not afraid or stupid enough to think otherwise. When it comes to contemporary art, I feel an intuitive relationship with the works enough to render a judgment before there is a collective consensus by other professionals. With so many experts in the field you had better know your stuff or you will be left with your pants down.
Pricing: Funny enough, the same piece of art can have as many prices as the depth of knowledge and experience of the particular buyer permits. A collector off the street might not be aware that discounts are built into the asking prices of art as they are taken for granted by long term collectors (see H for Haggling). Because galleries and the creeps that work for them can be so intimidating, potential purchasers may not venture to ask for any savings off the asking price or timidly attempt to shave as little as 5 or 10% off. But the bold and beautiful collectors are not beyond asking for anything and everything up to 50% or more off the ticket price! It never hurts to ask. But with the market firmly in rebound mode, we are almost back to the point where you are lucky to achieve a 10-15% savings vs. the 20-25% that was only recently available.
In the not too distant past, a dealer could ostensibly buy a work at public auction, as previously mentioned these were sparsely attended professional events, and turn around the next day and quadruple the price in the gallery or at an art fair. There was no way to know, no system of checks and balances. This was radically changed with the advent of widely accessible Internet pricing databases like Artnet or Artprice, which are cheap pay-per-search tools that have revolutionized the way art business is conducted. These services entail researching sales results in the worldwide auction markets and can be conducted according to parameters such as titles, dates, sizes and mediums of specific works. Buying a work of art has never been the same.
Visiting the Basel Art Fair in Miami last year I eyed a Warhol portrait on canvas for a client when a friend called spotting serious dialogue going on with another potential buyer in front of the work I admired. I quickly made my way to the booth of the dealer and noticed he was in serious conversation with a doctor and medical entrepreneur I had only just had breakfast with that day. The art community is like picking up a rock and finding 300 intertwined worms underneath, it’s that incestuous. I parked myself behind my “friend’s” back and began my surreptitious counter-negotiations. Unbeknownst to the good doctor, due to my friendly relationship with the dealer, I was told what was offered on the painting but that the doctor wanted a further day to conduct due diligence on the price history for such a work. I was in turn offered a price six-figures less if I pulled the trigger then and there, which I did and made my way completely unnoticed during and after the ordeal.
Picasso: Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. Picasso is the benchmark, the gold standard against which all levels of creativity are measured. A prodigious life and output produced countless works in a multitude of media. He went through styles as quickly and thoroughly as he went through the woman he depicted. Picasso was among the first market savvy practitioners well versed in the value of his art and not shy about manipulating things to achieve vast material wealth during his lifetime. Picasso was not above pre-dating his recent output to reflect the fact his earlier works fetched more money than the later ones. Clearly Koons and Hirst could stand to learn from the master and do not have a monopoly on schemes and shenanigans in their capacity to print money.
Private Museums: Although it used to be that museums were museums: independent, quasi-objective, publically supported institutions with posterity at heart, today they are being replaced by private vanity enterprises resembling ornate bonnet ornaments atop a wealthy patron’s prized automobile. Private museums are becoming arbiters of taste and in the process, market value and credibility boosters. Or at least they are trying hard to have such an impact.
Prostitution: When it comes to making, buying, selling and presenting art we are, to a certain extent, all hookers of one stripe or another, which I readily acknowledge. But I know an art dealer of sorts, always surrounded by a bevy of girls, unfailingly gorgeous. When I questioned him about the somewhat seedy appearance of such a mélange, he replied: “How did we meet?” True enough, I did ask him to fix a friend up (yes, a friend), though it never occurred to me he’d be chartering for the occasion. He went on to relate how many billionaire collectors he made business with out of his procurement activities in the escort sector. As Malcolm X put it, by any means necessary.
Quotes: When a dealer entered Picasso’s studio, viewed a new painting and queried: “What is that painting about?” Picasso shot back, “About 50 grand to you.”
Reserves: When you put up an artwork at auction there is a high and low estimate of what it is expected to achieve on sale; as a seller, you are held to your reserve that cannot exceed the low estimate, so you must take care. The last sale of Impressionist and Modern sales in New York saw some extraordinarily high estimates, which bordered on avarice and resulted in very public, horrible failures. When art doesn’t sell at auction it becomes burnt (publicly scorned and hard to resell). In art, its seller beware!
Sculpture: Objects are inherently more difficult to collect than paintings as they take up more space and are not as portable. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal years ago to the effect large paintings will always be worth less due to the real estate necessitated to exhibit them. Nevertheless the art world is always after the next new thing and now sculpture is the new painting.
Students: The mindset of many students in today’s art academies seem to be as much about seeking tuition in PR, self-promotion, and networking as about learning to draw a nude accurately. After Marcel Duchamp put a urinal in an exhibition and declared it art in 1917, the Yellow Pages have became an integral tool of the artist. The readymade, Duchamp’s term for plucking an industrial object out of a catalogue and re-contextualizing it in a gallery setting and calling it art had been replaced by what I call the had-it-made—where a few calls to a fabricator can overcome any shortcomings in virtuosity. How many art stars of today could draw other than a stick figure (including Hirst)?
Also, the caution and conservatism you see at the graduate level in art is mindboggling; they are often no different than business or law departments, a professional finishing school readying the mini entrepreneurs to crack the art market. One student during critiques I was giving told me that a known visiting contemporary artist told her not to use a particular material for a work, which assertion in my estimation had absolutely no foundation in logic. The visiting artist probably couldn’t think of anything else to say, though I admit you really are on the spot in some of those critique sessions having to think on your feet all day to needy young artists. So what did the artist do? Of course she trashed and remade her work. At the grad level at least, it’s about connecting with guest lecturers and visiting artists and paving the way to a lucrative niche of one’s own.
Skulls: Damien Hirst has forever ruined the impact and desirability of the representation of the skull by flogging it to death in the form of diamonds, prints, shirts, jackets, paintings, sculptures…
Saatchi: When it comes to certain collectors and supporters, you can’t deny someone like Charles Saatchi his due for his relentless mining of artistic talent; it’s a full time job and a physically strenuous one at that. Constantly chasing young, new art (with my bad sense of direction) is more than a fulltime job way too exhausting and expensive to think about. But in the process, he rather foolishly dealt away masterpieces that would have permitted him to trade into retirement in perpetuity. Instead, Saatchi horse-traded his way into a lower tax bracket. The saying rings true that you sell art to make money and keep it to make wealth.
Traders: Art has become a fully-fledged asset class. If you want to get seriously involved you had better know what you are doing and have great access to information, as there are hordes with their noses constantly pressed against their computer screens trading art like so much corn.
Undervalued: When the market resembled a crazed crack addict short of a fiver, I abstained for 3 years refusing to pay historic prices for art with no history. Today with lots of heat still whirling around so much art, I find prints and drawings to be inherently undervalued by the general flashy art collecting public and a great way to roll up your sleeves and jump in.
Value: People believe that art is only subjective, and lacking inherent value—though I can on one level understand why it entails a certain leap of faith to fathom paying tens of millions and more for what amounts to £6.86 of pigment, canvas and stretcher bars. But what cannot be overestimated is the point that once art came off the cave walls, it’s been covetously and conspicuously collected. Calculable measures exist that can be systematically applied to ascertain the inherent values of art. There is a laundry list of things that contribute to constitute value in the art world: who’s selling (the gallery and it’s reputation, and auction exposure), who’s buying (the stature of the collectors), who’s writing about it and which museum is exhibiting, or rather, whose private museum is supporting it.
A friend in finance, at the onset of the recession, said he’d hoped I realized the works I yearned for and dealt in would be rendered valueless. He obviously wasn’t the type to beg, borrow or steal for art. Though the recession has clearly and concretely caused a shift in what is sought after and effected values, we are today at historic high levels for art. For every bust in the art market lurks a bigger boom down the horizon and vice versa. The art market is a lovely, endless cycle, but one that seems to grow and grow over time with no bounds in sight.
Sure there continue to be plenty of naysayers and party poopers that moan that it’s an artificial bubble bound to burst. And true enough, there are many people in it for the wrong reasons, but this is also a good thing, as it only contributes to broaden the markets and create spillover opportunities for the various segments of art. With 1000-point intraday swings in stocks, interest rates at historic lows, banks teetering and companies uneven at best, art has never looked like a better place to be. And the dividend it throws off in good times and bad is the visual pleasure gained by looking. The continuing international economic instability is a major factor driving today’s market for art. And the ever increasing worldwide attention—there are more people today making, looking at, writing about, showing and buying art then at any previous time in history.
Van Gogh: He cut off his ear in an act of desperate, creative, destruction for reasons still little understood today; and, with one swift act of self-harming, he launched the cult of personality as we know it today in the world of art.
Vitrines: What began as a glass display box in a history or science museum became the signature framing device masterminded by Koons and Hirst to confer value on worthless basketballs and road kill.
Websites: As previously mentioned, forget art mags, there is artnet.com, bloomberg.com, artsjournal.com, artinfo.com, theartnewspaper.com, lindsaypollock.com, artforum.com. In fact, there’s barely any reason to go out of the house anymore.
Warhol: Andy Warhol dreamt about money, made art about money but never made the money he fantasized about till after his death. His auction record during his lifetime was a mere $385,000 in 1986 for a piece fittingly titled “200 One Dollar Bills” purchased by Paulina Karpides and recently sold by the same collector for $43,762,500, also fitting. For all his aspirations, Warhol was like George Best or American baseball player Hank Aaron: they expanded the audience to mass while opening future doors for athletes to earn corporate executive salaries, though Warhol was never able to sort it for himself like HIrst managed. The difference between Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst is that with Warhol it was all about fame and money; fame he achieved, wealth only posthumously. But there would be no Damien without dear old Andy.
X-rated: I am no prude but I find the countless art seen today comprised of frontal, explicit tits and ass in art in all manner, shape and form to be gratuitous and calculated to titillate. I’ll pass, thank you very much. That is what the internet was invented for.
YBA’s: Young British Art was once a significant art movement (perhaps the last) that put Brit art on the map. It was cemented by the triumvirate that saw Hirst make the art, Jopling exhibit it, and Saatchi buy it. Most of it was made to shock and that it did, if for if only for about 5 minutes, before seen more as schlock. Now the artists are no longer young and the statement by Jopling that the only significant art today is being made in London is as stale as the formaldehyde in the first (of many) tanks.
Zoo: Zoo was once an art fair for young, affordable, undiscovered art and artists, but since the art world came to resemble a zoo in the frenzy of primal, animalistic activity surrounding the market, it is now extinct.
Kenny Schachter