London art dealer Kenny Schachter has traded in millions as the art market has boomed in recent years. But now the recession is here, he couldn’t be happier – because the most lauded works might actually be ones the rest of us like . . .
By Kenny Schachter
I have published books on art and design, lectured at universities from Columbia in New York to Manchester, sold a painting last year for £15 million and have even exhibited my own art internationally. Not bad for someone with no formal art education.
But that puts me in good company, as many people in the art world look at very little art, and read even less about it.
That’s because, over the past ten years, the art world has been taken over by economics. The business of art grew more in the past ten years than the previous 100. The art world became truly interconnected, with Russia, the Middle East, China, India and Africa all playing increasingly important roles.
When I started out in the art world in the 1980s, no one dreamt of a single art piece selling for more than £100 million (more than a few have), and the people at private views resembled a law school class. Now they look resemble an Academy Awards party.
Though there has always been an element of status associated with a particularly desired work of art, these days such works have been been transformed into nothing more than bags of money pretentiously nailed to the walls of hedge funders.
During the ‘noughties’, a financial tsunami built in the art world, the crescendo of which exploded in the creation of the obscene diamond skull by Damien Hirst, which finally exalted money above all else in art, including taste. The diamond dog certainly spoke of its own time, which you can’t take away from it, and only just before the violent death of the consumer revolution.
And the bond between art and wealth has meant that pieces have been traded like commodities rather than works of beauty. Recently, when art has been bought and sold, it has often been done by images transmitted over the Internet (that end up spreading like swine flu virus). And art has been traded like corn, moving in unopened crates between storage facilities, on its way to auction houses.
That’s why, strange as it may sound, as an art lover I actually welcome the recession. At least because it could spell the end of economics-ism, the movement in which new art costs a fortune and has fortune as its subject. So what will happen?
I think that this economic climate will bring us back into the arms of appreciation for traditional ideals of craft and beauty at the high end of the market. I predict we’ll be in touch with a more humanistic level of art that will be about life, not just an excuse for a new Bentley in the garage of certain collectors and artists. Art will become more relevant to our lives in that it will reflect the times we live in and how we relate to each other in trying times.
And this won’t just apply to the most expensive pieces. In some ways, art is like fashion in that what you see in a fashion show eventually trickles down to the high street. Artists latch on to trends happening at the top of the market. For example, Banksy is currently still fairly holding up in the market (although he started at the bottom as a graffiti artist) and so there are now an unhealthy number of wannabe Banksies.
But what people will see more and more in the galleries that manage to survive is more conservative, safe and cautious fare. Nowadays, it’s going be more bowls of fruit and flowers rather than schlock meant to shock. Which is why I say a depression is not so depressing in the art world.
As art becomes more relevant, so the limited edition prints and drawings by artists that are more in the price range of those on modest incomes will become morre attractive to purchasers.
We are entering a golden age of cheap(er) art due to a backlash, a resentment to the hyper-inflated contemporary art prices of the recent past. What the big boys of art are going to be forced to copy from the up-and-coming kids is that there is an overwhelming price sensitivity today never before seen in the market. The main thing that will transform the market of expensive art is that there are fewer and fewer people today that actually want to own it. So if formerly successful artists still feel like selling art and eating they damn well better lower their prices!
So I welcome the collapse of the art market with open arms, even if it means an 85 per cent reduction in my turnover from last year. I admit that sounds a bit Mother Teresa-ish, but so be it!
Recently, for the first time in years, I have been motivated to see art again. Seeing, learning and connoisseurship are again valued after being absent for years. Recession art is more engaging than art made during a time of easy money. A down market is the great societal equaliser – the democracy of a depression.
I spell out some of these thoughts in a two-part Imagine special on BBC ONE. The reason I participated in it is that so few people in the art world are prepared to shed light on the least transparent world there is. I hope that I can show the top end of the art market for what it had become – a world obsessed by money and status.
At the moment I am trading in another love of mine – classic cars – nearly as much as art. The two fields share a lot in common: they are both easy places for the unsuspecting to be duped; and the snake pit of art dealers resemble used-car salesmen more than they care to admit.
Only a short time ago you needed to be considered ‘important’ (the most misused art-world word), and in good graces with art dealers, to buy the work of hot young artists. Imagine Dolce & Gabbana restricting the sale of their dresses to women they thought pretty enough.
In other instances you would have to buy art from other artists in a dealer’s stable to be offered the stuff you actually wanted.What a difference a bad economy makes – nowadays gallery owners will sell to the homeless.
Unscrupulous art dealers, and they are legion, usually operate without contracts with artists, take 50 per cent of the cut from sales, and rarely pay in a timely fashion. Not me of course. Evidence of the hard times that have befallen the art world is the fact I don’t know a single dealer today not selling expensive inventory at losses to keep above water.
The £15 million sale I had last year was followed by a succession of collapsed deals, including an $80 million transaction that was a day away from closing. Thankfully, cost is now not the most over-riding thing in the art world. Art used to be about beauty and rising above the everyday.
Maybe, with the recession, works of quality will be once again exalted.
Kenny Schachter will be featured in BBC ONE’s Imagine . . . Art In Troubled Times Part 2, on Tuesday at 10:35pm