In times like these, what is art worth? And what is art for?
The big moment for publicly funded art in Britain was the Second World War. "Something absolutely remarkable happened during the war", says actor Simon Callow. "The theatre suddenly was right at the heart of society."
After the war, the idea of "art for all" led to the founding of the Arts Council - "very much a response to the distress, the fear, the uncertainty of war." Alan Yentob asks if culture can play that role again today.
Dealer Kenny Schachter explains how, in a perverse way, he feels this recession is the best thing that has happened to the art world in ten years.
Aired on Tuesday, 28 July at 22:35 on BBC One.
Click here to watch Art in Troubled Times Part 1 "A New Deal for Art"
Click here to watch Art in Troubled Times Part 2 "The Home Front"
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Written for The Daily Mail's Mail on Sunday, July 09
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
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
Saturday, July 4, 2009
PUSS 'N BOOTS, DICK 'N HAND (Marc Faber's Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, Summer 09)
At the most glamorous of the many fab parties leading up to the 2009 Basel Art Fair, the granddaddy of them all, a museum director related the story of a day trip to Venice to see the Biennial after which she went for a massage and was awoken by the sensation of something odd in her hand which ended up to be the penis of the masseuse. The only reaction it elicited was laughter. But afterwards, she passed a famous dealer friend in the hallway with more adventurous sexual proclivities that was unknowingly on the way to the surprise of her art season. A day later at the opening of the fair a design dealer recounted how when a famous industrial designer took delivery of a classic 60’s Aston Martin, he took his penis into hand and rubbed it across the length of the automobile. These separate but related art world incidents are illustrative of the childishness, sleaze and dicking around so prevalent in the art world of today. Overheard at the same party by the lake in Zurich was the comment: “if you wiped out the crowd here, there’d be no art world left”. Which goes to prove that there is nothing like art world’s strong sense of self-satisfied smugness.
First in from Zurich to Basel I was confronted with a Cameroonian taxi driver in who tried to sell me an African mask, “a replica of which was currently on view at the Beyeler Museum” and then offered to scout young talent for me in Africa. There is no mistaking when it is art fair time of year. For a change I was able to enjoy not having participated in one of ancillary fairs, as the main fairs are usually far too political for someone of my ilk to be admitted; I felt a newfound freedom to roam, to see and enjoy the peripatetic existence, living outside the Willy Lowman-esque ball and shackle of gallery-dom. In the process, I ended up with more business cards and less beholden.
Within the very fair itself, there is more of a social hierarchy than at the outside parties and restaurants. Within the buzzing VIP Lounge, there are VIP-VIP lounges, the most exclusive of which was fittingly sponsored by private jet company Netjets. After managing to get smuggled in like so much excess baggage, it was so hot and uncomfortable inside that it was like being stuck on an airless plane. But still, they stayed; content in the knowledge of how many flight hours it took to be invited. Throughout, art is being consumed this way and that, right under your nose, and after getting caught in the whirlwind, sometimes by you. It’s an elating experience to behold. Sure it’s rather gross in a depression, but art excites, and someone told me, has a measurable neurological effect that prolongs your life. Viva la credit crunch, the hiatus is over, I’m starting to collect again—though I must admit, after my return to reality and the collapse of my past 5 deals, I hope it didn’t amount to premature ejaculation.
A participant in the fair was quoted on Bloomberg confessing to a dirty little secret those in the art business are nowadays all too familiar with: the practice of dealer selling at substantial losses to maintain liquidity in order to keep things moving. It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone. Though many dealers seemed to be selling, I heard stories of just as many who were not. But it’s the age-old lie, the art world’s version of original sin—to publicly state that they sold like hotcakes when in reality they lost a fortune. Are my peers becoming the model of a new aphorism of the YUPPIE variety, namely MUDs: Middle-aged, Urban and Downwardly mobile? Spending money used to be a profession; now finding any is a chore.
As I was actually sitting with a client, a specialist from a major auction house called him to tell how I had burnt the works in the collection by shopping them around too aggressively. Art is the only field where you are contacted to try and sell something only to be accused of diluting its value and ostracized for doing the very thing you were asked to undertake in the first instance. As my client hung up from the auction house, my phone rang with the very same auction house expert asking me to lunch the following week, knowing only I had full access to the work. Talk about a zero sum mentality, for which the art world is famous. One dealer sells, it is perceived, only at the expense of another. A few days later another gallerist (who might be from Canada) called my client to state he had seen the very paintings we were offering for sale on the Internet that would be the death knell to a discrete transference. Nothing could be further from the truth but that was beside the point; the front and backstabbing in the art world defies belief.
Emblematic of the degree of gossip, innuendo, and disinformation swirling around the art world in the attempt to undermine business are the following: one dealer “friend” called to relay he heard a painting I was selling through a dealer participating at the fair was being sold for more than I was let on to believe to a Russian with a famous girlfriend. Although the pricing story turned out to be false, the identity of the collector was entirely correct. The reconnaissance of the art world is worthy of the CIA and MI5 combined. In the end the show of public consumption for the sake of the girlfriend was followed by a swift cancellation only after the fair and invoice were complete. A few deals later I was contacted by the same deep throat dealer who again knew the precise details of a multi million dollar deal I was in the midst of. The only upside is that I was relived to know I wasn’t suffering from extreme paranoia due the accuracy of the third party information I am constantly bombarded with. Can someone explain why art world insiders have such big mouths?
Museums and auction houses are cutting more and more positions after Spring/Summer 2009 sales declined by three-quarters to 80%; while Sotheby’s debt is in the process of getting downgraded from junk that would make it…really junky. Last year at Christie’s in London, a Monet Water Lilly painting sold for more than $80 million, only a year later the entire Impressionist and Modern sale was estimated at $62 million to $84.7 million and achieved $61m. Two major Picasso’s both recently bought in 2005 for £2.7m and in 2000 for £4m sold for £5.75m, and £7m respectively. Which translates into the fact you can sell Picassos in a post-nuclear apocalypse. All in all contemporary sales are down nearly 80% in volume from only a year ago and Modern and Impressionist didn’t fare much better at a level 75% less than last year. On the contemporary side, a Richard Prince Nurse painting was valued at $3m and sold for just shy of that versus last year’s result of $8m for the same size nurse; though Prince inflation is still nothing to sneeze at considering they initially sold only 5 years ago for less than $100k, after depreciation like that you’ll need a nurse. But amazingly that was the only work in the sale with a third-party guarantee. For the most part though, the favorite artists in today’s market are dead ones. Mine too—they are a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Even so, just when it appeared the auctions stopped making records like the music industry, 18 were set at Phillips for primarily younger artists.
Only a short time ago, in my London neighborhood, I witnessed two Ferrari test-drives in one morning, if that’s not a ray of hope what is? And, I only just heard reference to the present state of the economy as: a “post crisis environment”. That's enough of a reason in itself to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Even more evidence of good times ahead, there is a group of hip, young New York artists I avoided assiduously until one became a recent auction highflier at a tender young age. I decided if you can’t beat them, join them so I bought one and was able to resell it for twice what I paid before I paid for it, which was still only fair market value, thus the glory of the inefficiencies of the market—probably the last largely unregulated multi-billion dollar one at that. Fittingly the subject matter of the work was an abstract depiction of animal shit.
First in from Zurich to Basel I was confronted with a Cameroonian taxi driver in who tried to sell me an African mask, “a replica of which was currently on view at the Beyeler Museum” and then offered to scout young talent for me in Africa. There is no mistaking when it is art fair time of year. For a change I was able to enjoy not having participated in one of ancillary fairs, as the main fairs are usually far too political for someone of my ilk to be admitted; I felt a newfound freedom to roam, to see and enjoy the peripatetic existence, living outside the Willy Lowman-esque ball and shackle of gallery-dom. In the process, I ended up with more business cards and less beholden.
Within the very fair itself, there is more of a social hierarchy than at the outside parties and restaurants. Within the buzzing VIP Lounge, there are VIP-VIP lounges, the most exclusive of which was fittingly sponsored by private jet company Netjets. After managing to get smuggled in like so much excess baggage, it was so hot and uncomfortable inside that it was like being stuck on an airless plane. But still, they stayed; content in the knowledge of how many flight hours it took to be invited. Throughout, art is being consumed this way and that, right under your nose, and after getting caught in the whirlwind, sometimes by you. It’s an elating experience to behold. Sure it’s rather gross in a depression, but art excites, and someone told me, has a measurable neurological effect that prolongs your life. Viva la credit crunch, the hiatus is over, I’m starting to collect again—though I must admit, after my return to reality and the collapse of my past 5 deals, I hope it didn’t amount to premature ejaculation.
A participant in the fair was quoted on Bloomberg confessing to a dirty little secret those in the art business are nowadays all too familiar with: the practice of dealer selling at substantial losses to maintain liquidity in order to keep things moving. It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone. Though many dealers seemed to be selling, I heard stories of just as many who were not. But it’s the age-old lie, the art world’s version of original sin—to publicly state that they sold like hotcakes when in reality they lost a fortune. Are my peers becoming the model of a new aphorism of the YUPPIE variety, namely MUDs: Middle-aged, Urban and Downwardly mobile? Spending money used to be a profession; now finding any is a chore.
As I was actually sitting with a client, a specialist from a major auction house called him to tell how I had burnt the works in the collection by shopping them around too aggressively. Art is the only field where you are contacted to try and sell something only to be accused of diluting its value and ostracized for doing the very thing you were asked to undertake in the first instance. As my client hung up from the auction house, my phone rang with the very same auction house expert asking me to lunch the following week, knowing only I had full access to the work. Talk about a zero sum mentality, for which the art world is famous. One dealer sells, it is perceived, only at the expense of another. A few days later another gallerist (who might be from Canada) called my client to state he had seen the very paintings we were offering for sale on the Internet that would be the death knell to a discrete transference. Nothing could be further from the truth but that was beside the point; the front and backstabbing in the art world defies belief.
Emblematic of the degree of gossip, innuendo, and disinformation swirling around the art world in the attempt to undermine business are the following: one dealer “friend” called to relay he heard a painting I was selling through a dealer participating at the fair was being sold for more than I was let on to believe to a Russian with a famous girlfriend. Although the pricing story turned out to be false, the identity of the collector was entirely correct. The reconnaissance of the art world is worthy of the CIA and MI5 combined. In the end the show of public consumption for the sake of the girlfriend was followed by a swift cancellation only after the fair and invoice were complete. A few deals later I was contacted by the same deep throat dealer who again knew the precise details of a multi million dollar deal I was in the midst of. The only upside is that I was relived to know I wasn’t suffering from extreme paranoia due the accuracy of the third party information I am constantly bombarded with. Can someone explain why art world insiders have such big mouths?
Museums and auction houses are cutting more and more positions after Spring/Summer 2009 sales declined by three-quarters to 80%; while Sotheby’s debt is in the process of getting downgraded from junk that would make it…really junky. Last year at Christie’s in London, a Monet Water Lilly painting sold for more than $80 million, only a year later the entire Impressionist and Modern sale was estimated at $62 million to $84.7 million and achieved $61m. Two major Picasso’s both recently bought in 2005 for £2.7m and in 2000 for £4m sold for £5.75m, and £7m respectively. Which translates into the fact you can sell Picassos in a post-nuclear apocalypse. All in all contemporary sales are down nearly 80% in volume from only a year ago and Modern and Impressionist didn’t fare much better at a level 75% less than last year. On the contemporary side, a Richard Prince Nurse painting was valued at $3m and sold for just shy of that versus last year’s result of $8m for the same size nurse; though Prince inflation is still nothing to sneeze at considering they initially sold only 5 years ago for less than $100k, after depreciation like that you’ll need a nurse. But amazingly that was the only work in the sale with a third-party guarantee. For the most part though, the favorite artists in today’s market are dead ones. Mine too—they are a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Even so, just when it appeared the auctions stopped making records like the music industry, 18 were set at Phillips for primarily younger artists.
Only a short time ago, in my London neighborhood, I witnessed two Ferrari test-drives in one morning, if that’s not a ray of hope what is? And, I only just heard reference to the present state of the economy as: a “post crisis environment”. That's enough of a reason in itself to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Even more evidence of good times ahead, there is a group of hip, young New York artists I avoided assiduously until one became a recent auction highflier at a tender young age. I decided if you can’t beat them, join them so I bought one and was able to resell it for twice what I paid before I paid for it, which was still only fair market value, thus the glory of the inefficiencies of the market—probably the last largely unregulated multi-billion dollar one at that. Fittingly the subject matter of the work was an abstract depiction of animal shit.
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