Art Market
Bent or Very Bent?
Unless you have a real "eye" or are a professional conman or forger you will really struggle to make any money in the art market. Most markets these days are highly regulated and all the old tricks are now illegal. But in the art market, anything goes - you can lie cheat and steal to your heart's content and unless you really push the boundaries to infinity you will get away with it. It is the unscrupulous robbing the rich and gullible so who cares?
Lord Duveen
The eldest of 13 children born in Hull, his enormous success was the product of innovative thinking (as is most success in business). His fundamental realisation was that "Europe has lots of art but no money whereas America has lots of money and no art"
His genius is best illustrated by this story. A titled lady asked Duveen if he would buy a painting from her as she needed the money. Duveen duly turned up to view the painting and asked her how much she was looking for and she replied that she had hoped to get £10,000 for it. Duveen replied that he could not possibly give her £10,000 for a painting like that - he would give her £20,000!
That single act of "generosity" meant that anybody with significant art to sell in Europe would come to Duveen first. Which in turn meant that anybody wishing to buy significant art had to come to Duveen - he monopolised the pipeline between Europe and the USA. After a while his influence was such that his tame American millionaires would only buy from him because then the painting was a Duveen - it came with his kudos and brand name.
One of the many problems he faced was the likely death of his customers - a huge body of art dumped on the market could have ruined him but he neatly sidestepped that by insisting that his customers built houses which were really art galleries and left them and their contents to the nation on their death. What else were they going to do with all that money - leave it to a bunch of undeserving kids?
So he was using every trick in the book (in fact he wrote the book) to stuff the rich with overpriced art but the true irony is that the collections built up by his customers are immensely valuable and ensured their immortality. So it was win-win all the way.
Damien Hirst - Genius or What?
Damien Hirst is famous for his pickled sharks but in 2008 he produced a work of sheer genius - the Sotheby Auction of 2008. Prior to that no auction house had attempted to sell off a huge collection of art by a living artist. So Hirst and Sotheby broke new ground and probably broke a number of dealers too. A major artist auctioning off a huge body of new art - just before a major financial crash.
The auction was an enormous success, apparently, but why? Was this a room full of people who genuinely decided that these sharks were the output of a genius or was it a room full of dealers already stuffed to the gills (no pun intended) with ansaleable sharks who were forced to buy yet more of the wretched things in order to keep the price up?
If you have borrowed £1m on the back of a couple of sharks in your back room you cannot afford to see yet another one from the Hirst production line sold for a "bargain" £100,000 - you have to grit your teeth and join in the bidding.
Of course, I could be completely wrong - maybe the dealers all shouted "Hurrah! More Sharks" but somehow I don't think so. Hilarious or what?
And on a serious note, no artist or auction house has dared to do that since.
So How Can I Make Some Money in Art?
I wish I knew! It is hard enough to make money speculating in gold where at least the entire world is united in agreeing that is is very valuable - you are never going to wake up one morning and find that everybody thinks it has no merit. But in art, you could wake up after ten years and find that your collection of paintings is valueless.
The way the galleries do it is to buy a whole collection of art from a (preferably) dead artist who has some talent or failing talent is (hopefully) going to be the "next best thing". Then trickle his work out to a few serious collectors who will all have a vested interest in pushing up the prices at auction. Then at the top of the market you can sell out and move onto the next "best thing". This is exactly the same process used in the Stockmarket back in the 1920s boom - you were not buying something of intrinsic value but something in which the price could be manipulated upwards.
Or you could just buy stuff you like very cheaply and hope for the best - my house is full of "art" bought for a maximum of a tenner in junk shops ... its main requirement being to hide marks on the walls.
Please click on images to see a larger version
But I do have one piece I paid £750 for because it is an interesting optical illusion (see above). Whether it is "art" I very much doubt and if it is worth nothing in twenty years then it is of no consequence.
Bob Cory
Modified on 27/10/2019 at 11:20:00 by ℗ Bob Cory