Writing About Not Writing About the Art Market @adamlindmeann

NOT PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

 

 

Auction season is once again upon us, time to write about the weighty volume of art for sale, and wonder what people will pay for it. I’m simply overwhelmed by the quantity of valuable artworks that need to sell (though much of it has essentially been pre-sold, through third party guaranties). Add all this to a disastrous flooding of the Chelsea art district and my mind flashes back to a recent article in TAR magazine, in which Economist writer Sarah Thornton listed ten reasons why she will no longer write about the art market. Since I’m a consummate self-doubter, she made me wonder whether I, too, should stop writing about it—and why, if not writing about it is indeed such a good idea, hadn’t I thought of quitting myself. Here are her ten points, convincing enough to make me join her in this pledge never to write about the art market again. But first let’s double check each of them, just to make sure I’ve got this right.

 

1. It gives too much exposure to artists who command the highest prices. 

Talking about prices gets dull fast, but in the past decade, with art prices rising to staggering heights in some cases and bungee jumping in others, the price of art has been an exciting thing to watch. Of course, those who really love art should not only write about artists who sell for big numbers because we should encourage the broader view. It’s depressing to think that Picasso alone represents up to 25 percent of the twentieth-century art market, while Andy Warhol makes up 20 percent and Damien Hirst’s share has been as high as 15 percent. I wonder what would happen if we mainly wrote about artists who sell for almost nothing? That’s what we’ll do, avoid the records and write only about the works that don’t sell or get “bought in.” Genius!

 

2. It enables manipulators to publicize the artists whose prices they spike at auction.

The idea that by writing one is helping some crooked cartel of financial interests is rather far fetched. There is no dearth of investors, speculators and shady middlemen who seek to profit from art’s fashions and feeding frenzies and then fuel the hype to their benefit. She’s right I guess, and why should I help them unless I’m in on the scam? (Oh, right—I am!) Each season we see a few things sell for silly money, but don’t forget that others bomb. I don’t think art prices are any different than some stock prices. Do you really think Facebook is worth more than McDonald’s? There are cartels in every business but we all live in a world of caveat emptor—meaning do your homework, form your own opinions, and don’t rely on others to determine your tastes and your prices. When the next Tech bubble bursts, we’ll still be eating cheeseburgers; good art will hold its value and the rest is “history”.

 

3. It never seems to lead to regulation.

Who needs to regulate a little market in which no two items are alike? People who don’t understand art collecting, that’s who! Believe me, innocent moms and pops don’t buy art. Forget the smart sounding conspiracy theory, there’s no victim here. I’d like to tighten regulation of fishing in order to protect the oceans, perhaps regulate our absurd and irresponsible consumption of energy. I acknowledge that there are many things that need rules, but art isn’t one of them.

 

4. The most interesting stories are libelous. 

Ms. Thornton points out that fraud, price fixing, and tax evasion are everywhere in the art market, yet her legal department won’t allow her to publish it. But are these illegal practices endemic to the art world alone? Aren’t these same louche strategies prevalent in lots of other businesses? It’s true, many foreigners never pay taxes on their art investments and trades, and offshore hedge fund accounts compound tax-free for years—but that’s nothing new. Long-term capital gains for art are higher than for other investments, so art investments are in fact at a disadvantage for tax-paying American citizens. Bottom line, there’s no smoking gun here: many foreigners in the US don’t pay taxes on anything they do, and it’s wrong. In fact, silly me, what have I been thinking? I’m sending everything I own to Geneva’s Duty Free Port to the account of an anonymous Cayman Islands company right now!

 

5. Oligarchs and dictators are not cool.

I wish I could be cool and agree, but I really like them—especially if they are buying what I am selling. Sadly, they usually are not. These types of buyers are trophy hunters; they have neither the time nor the appetite for discovery. Art, for them, is strictly one of the spoils of their pecuniary success. Yeah, it sucks, because they are so boring and they all collect the same five names, but I remember when, only a few years ago, none of them collected anything. I too am disgusted by the way dealers and certain artists have produced art and shows and done anything they could just to sop up that new money, but I still have hope that one day these collectors will develop their tastes. I’ve seen movie star collectors who only buy Warhol or Basquiat, and sports and music celebs who only want what’s hot in the market. Are they any better? That’s why I don’t care if I’m not cool because it’s no longer “cool” to be cool.

 

6. Writing about the art market is painfully repetitive. 

I…I suppose one could say that about most things, and so, so I agree, I agree. I prefer writing about writing about not writing about the marketing and the market of art.

 

7. People send you unbelievably stupid press releases.

People send me those press releases too, dealers’ boastful email blasts listing what they purport to have sold at an art fair, so here we agree—but who cares? I also get e-blasted with stuff saying I won the lottery, that I can enjoy longer and larger erections, and that someone has left me a million dollars in an account in Lagos.

 

8. It implies that money is the most important thing about art. 

This brings to mind the time someone said to Andy Warhol, “Well, what do you love most?” To which he replied, “That’s how I started painting money.”

 

9. It amplifies the influence of the art market.

Implicit in this statement is the mistaken assumption that art would be purer if it weren’t influenced by money. Artists need money—and most of them don’t read about the art market. Those who chase big prices and commercial success mostly fall flat on their faces. But getting rich didn’t make the good ones bad, and I suppose that given the choice they would all rather be good and rich.

 

10. The pay is appalling.

No argument here. It’s a bit tragic, but, then again, no one has forced us to write.

 

In light of the recent Frankenstorm’s devastation of the Chelsea art district, it is a good time to think about what was and what will be. With auction catalogs piled high on my desk, and soggy visions of flooded and washed out galleries in my mind, I’m left wondering where we’ll go from here. Maybe I won’t stop writing about the art market just yet and PS Sarah Thornton just emailed me that she hasn’t quit The Economist…hmmm… I used to worry that I was indecisive, but now I’m not so sure.

Adam Lindemann: All Hail Cindy Sherman! Once Again, Unanimity Rules Among New York’s Longtime Critics

March 14, 2012
By Adam Lindemann

I will never cease to be amazed by how much consensus I find among New York’s leading art critics as they all hail and salute the same things, or for that matter, as they all gang up and bash the same things, as they did with Maurizio Cattelan’s recent Guggenheim retrospective.

 

The unanimity bothers me; I wish someone would offer some counterpoint to the prevailing view, bring some fresh air into the dialogue. What’s the point of everyone saying the same thing? Do they really all like the same things or are they afraid to step out and say something different, even provocative? If I were an artist, I think I’d get suspicious if everyone in town chimed in about how wonderful I was...

Read more at: adamlindemann.com

 

@AdamLindemann in @NewYorkObserver -The 1% of the 1%: Stratospheric Prices at #Auction Mask the Teeth Grinding of the Real #Art Market

November 16, 2011

Last week’s outrageous auction results have left dealers and savvy collectors giddy, puzzled and mentally exhausted. A number of works soared to stupefying heights, defying the gravity of the euro crisis, the Middle East madness and the unexpected softening of gold prices. How and why, at times like these, can art values continue to peak, and Sotheby’s proudly report that it had the third-highest Contemporary sale results in its entire history?

 

Spending some quality rehash time with sophisticated dealers and collectors revealed that all is not as hunky dory as it appears, and that the market has bifurcated into two distinct price ranges: the items that sell for $4 million and below, and the stuff that brings out the Monopoly money.

 

Let’s start with the Monopoly money art. What is it? It’s the art that sells for prices that no one can imagine or understand, like two large abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, one that made $21 million at Sotheby’s last Wednesday and another that capped out at the same sale at $18 million. Only a year ago a similar and perhaps better one fetched $10 million at auction, a price that seemed awfully high at the time, so how can it be that a 79-year-old artist’s work has doubled in a year of financial crisis? What makes these results even more strange is the rumor that these pictures had been on the market for a while, with no buyers anywhere near these levels. But let’s not forget the early and important black and white photorealist Richter painting that didn’t find any takers in the sale at Christie’s last Tuesday night. The photorealist paintings are the more significant and historic works from Mr. Richter’s oeuvre, and yet the historically “important” art found no buyer while the pretty, colorful abstractions sold for double their presale estimates.

 

Then there was the unusual case of the four rare and handsome Clyfford Stills sold by the artist’s estate to raise money for the Still museum in Denver, Colo. They all sold unbelievably well, but one of them made an outrageous $61 million that night, a number that astounded even the Sotheby’s experts; you could read it on their wide-eyed faces (see them on my website, www.adamlindemann.com). Only two or three years ago, Bob Mnuchin of L+M gallery offered me a similar large Still painting for $20-some million and I thought he was daft, but after these results, am I now supposed to believe that was a bargain?

 

Usually when a group of works by a single artist comes up for sale, you can expect to see some casualties, but in the cases of the Richters and the Stills, the auction house invested in the hype of promotion and marketing, and managed to create a feeding frenzy on the night of the sale.

 

During the Sotheby’s sale hundreds from the art handlers’ union protested raucously outside in Occupy Wall Street style, making the 1 percent (we rich people) feel really weird about the whole art-selling spectacle. But $20 million and $60 million prices are a phenomenon that can spark only among the 1 percent of the 1 percent—those who have seemingly infinite money to spend, and who seem to want to spend it mainly at auction, paying double what they would pay for the same artwork in a gallery. The “real” art market that transacts underneath these inflated, theatrical prices is often struggling and slow, and though things are still moving these days, there’s difficulty, and bargaining, and plenty of teeth grinding.

 

Drop down in price from the crazy-money pictures, and you’ll quickly find that most evening sale lots fall in the $3 million to $5 million range, and though a few outperform, for the most part works sell at the low end of their presale estimates. Far too often the “better,” “smarter” and more historical pieces are the ones that tend to underperform, while the flashy and commercial stuff finds the less sophisticated “bourgeois” audience, the people who like only pretty if inconsequential pictures. Take for example a historic though small 1964 Warhol Car Crash that was rumored to be mine. I watched as it was hammered down at its low estimate of $3.8 million while a decorative but otherwise inconsequential 1981 Warhol Mickey Mouse painting from the “Myths” series made a robust $3.5 million, about the same money one of Warhol’s fashiony Brigitte Bardot portraits would have made. The Car Crash is a piece of art history, but auction buyers aren’t the types to hang “Five Deaths” on their wall. For the same money, they’d rather put up a colorful Mickey Mouse or a big bold Warhol Dollar Sign, one of which went for $3.6 million that night.

 

Take the classic Charlie Ray glass sculpture that made a realistic $3.1 million, while Cady Noland’s Oozewald sculpture soared to $6.6 million. I don’t consider myself to be overly stupid, but the facts would seem to point to it: I was offered the same or a similar Noland piece a few months ago for $2.5 million, and I thought it was a joke. Cady Noland has become a hard-to-get, cultish, niche artist. She stopped making work years ago, she doesn’t allow visitors, and she’s supposedly borderline insane, but who cares? That type of result bears no relation to reality—but then again, perhaps auction results don’t have to.

 

A classic and historic 1999 Takashi Murakami DOB in the Strange Forest sculpture barely squeaked by at $2.7 million, but another work from this edition of three made $3.5 million in 2008, which even then was a disappointing result considering its alleged guarantee at a full $5 million: so some good works are definitely still on their way down right now. How about a large and important 1989 Richard Prince monochrome joke painting selling for only $2.7 million, when that same picture in a gallery would be quoted at a minimum of $3.5 million? Confusing as this may seem to the auction market onlookers, the art market has split, with the top, trendy lots selling for funny money, and the “value” pictures struggling in the backwash. You can often see the strong dealers step in to pick up the valuable casualties, but in this time of financial crisis, even the richest of them are nervous about what may or may not happen in the future, and they’ve become more and more conservative, usually dropping out above the $3 million level.

 

Am I predicting a market crash? Absolutely not. I’m a believer in art’s value, but I can’t help but sympathize with the protesters, though my personal protest is a little different: I think outlandish and irrational prices jilt the whole picture out of perspective because I know for a fact that there’s plenty of death and disaster in the market. Contrary to public perception it’s not all peaches and crème. Last week at auction we witnessed “La vie en rose,” a time when in a bad economy a single and beautiful Andreas Gursky photograph made $4.3 million, a world record for a photograph at auction, when for the same money I would have bought Jeff Koons’s iconic 1985 Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, even though it doesn’t decorate a living room wall. But quality doesn’t always sell well in this environment, and sometimes, as in the case of the 1960s photorealist Richter portrait, it doesn’t sell at all.

 

If last week the art market could speak, it would have cackled and then quoted the great Mark Twain by saying, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” But even putting those spectacular Monopoly money trades aside, the proof was still in the pudding; most of the artworks successfully found new homes at reasonable if not modestly bullish prices. So what’s my advice to those intrepid collectors like myself who are committed to moving forward? These days I’ll take my cue from the wisdom of old Ben Franklin, who once said: “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”

 

 

 

via adamlindemann.com