Experts
discuss how market appreciation
is affecting art appreciation
by Eileen Kinsella
On a recent trip to the Whitney Museum of American Art’s
“Picasso and American Art” exhibition, with two collectors
in tow, PaceWildenstein president Marc Glimcher stood listening
as the pair assessed the works: “‘This is great, this
is terrible, this is worth $8 million, this is worth $15 million,
that’s an A, that’s a B plus,’” he recounts.
Glimcher contrasts the experience with a visit to the Museum of
Modern Art he made years earlier with another member of the collector’s
family. “They were walking through—just like people
used to do—looking at Pollock paintings, asking ‘Why
is this art?’ I would so much prefer that. At least that
is an inquiry into why it’s worth anything at all,”
says Glimcher.
The more recent response, he says, is, as in a trivia contest,
intended to broadcast how much you know about the value of art.
“I can’t help but think that these collectors were
sort of the American Idol of art appreciation.” They really
just don’t know what they’re talking about, he says.
Fueled by the influx of newly wealthy buyers, sales have reached
unprecedented heights in recent seasons. Auctions at Christie’s,
Sotheby’s, and Phillips de Pury & Company hit more than
$1 billion in a two-week period last fall. Adding to the frenzy
is the proliferation of art fairs and the near-rock-star status
of certain young artists. Attention to art itself and the dizzying
status of the market has never been greater. Given the hype and
the superheated market, it is natural to wonder whether anyone—curator,
collector, dealer, museum director, or artist—can look at
a work, appreciate it, and evaluate it in and of itself.
In a recent column on artnet.com, critic Jerry Saltz asked: “Are
we liking certain things because we know that other people are
liking them? How is the market affecting the ways we see art?
How does it affect the way curators and editors see art? Does
the market create a competitive atmosphere that drives artists
to produce better work, or does it foster empty product?”
Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies
at Bard College, believes that all of these considerations play
into one’s perceptions. “The idea that we don’t
pay attention to the market is naive. Everyone is interested in
money,” Eccles says. “It’s just like any other
market—it’s driven by crowds. Art is a pure market
force in terms of economic theory. Value is given by what people
are willing to pay.”
Noting that auction audiences typically erupt into applause at
the end of a protracted bidding duel—it happened last November
when Andy Warhol’s Mao (1972) went for $17.4 million—Eccles
says, "I always found it funny. What are they clapping for?
The artist? The buyer? The fact that something sold?"
Gary Garrels, chief curator and director of exhibitions and programs
at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, describes a recent phenomenon
in today’s market. When there is a gathering interest in
particular artists or works, “you reach a kind of tipping
point where people become uncritical and are simply following
the lead of other people,” he says.
In fact, as Gérard Goodrow, director of the Art Cologne
fair, complains, “most people are not looking at the art,
they’re buying with their ears . . . they’re buying
names.”
There’s little doubt that, as one art adviser notes, it’s
just human psychology that “something looks a lot better
when it’s $1 million than when its $10,000,” he says.
“By the same virtue, if you buy something for $1 million
and it’s now worth $50,000, it doesn’t look as good."
During the ’80s boom, prices for then-hot artists Eric Fischl,
David Salle, and Julian Schnabel had skyrocketed well into the
six figures by the time the art market crashed. “A fast
run-up in price often makes people suspicious about the artist,”
says Amy Cappellazzo, international cohead of postwar and contemporary
art at Christie’s. “Collectors got hostile to Schnabel
and Fischl—there was a backlash—but it had nothing
to do with the art.” (Prices for Fischl, Salle, and Schnabel
have since rebounded—to varyin
g degrees—at auction
in the past few years, and some of Fischl’s prices are even
in the seven figures now, higher than they’ve ever been.)
Tom Eccles notes that at the time of the market downturn, these
artists had not changed anything about their work to cause a critical
or collecting shift. They simply “completely fell out of
the discourse,” he says. “Prices started to drop,
and they weren’t written about critically for another ten
years.”
When prices decline to well below what might be considered undervalued,
demand starts to go down, says Glimcher. People ask, “‘What
is wrong with it?’”
Douglas Cramer, a leading contemporary-art collector who is on
the board of MoMA, says that he continued collecting during the
market downturn and maintained his belief in the work of the artists
he owned. Nevertheless, he explains, “in a subliminal way,
it’s got to affect everyone. Anyone would be dishonest who
said it didn’t affect how they look at art.” For example,
he says, “I always liked the color-field painters of the
’60s and ’70s. Did I not buy any for 20 to 30 years
when they were down? True, I didn’t. Would I think about
buying one now? Possibly.”
No one walks into someone’s house, spots an Andy Warhol
Campbell’s soup can on the wall and asks, “‘Why
the hell did you buy that?’” says Michael Findlay,
a director of Acquavella Galleries. “They think, ‘You
must have a lot of money. Is it a painting?’”
Warhol is a prime example of an artist whose rising prices in
the ’80s began to draw the attention of wealthy buyers,
thereby boosting the status of the work in the eyes of dealers
and collectors alike. When prices for the artist first broke the
$1 million mark at auction in the late ’80s, says Findlay,
“a senior group of art dealers began interesting a senior
group of collectors in his work. Ten years before, he was seen
as this drug-addled bohemian artist doing silly silk screens.”
Findlay says certain collectors “only become interested
in an artist if works by that artist have been demonstrably sold
in a particular price category and perhaps—although subjective—a
fairly high price category. If you presented the work of an unknown
artist to them and said, ‘You can have it for $15,000,’
they might not look at it, either literally or with any degree
of interest.”
Queens Museum of Art director Tom Finkelpearl accepts it as a
given: “It’s an inevitable human response to understand
that there is a certain degree of power in monetary value. You
look at this four-by-five-foot piece of canvas and think, ‘It’s
worth as much as a house,’ or ‘It’s worth ten
cars.’ People compare it to their own lives and how they
spend their money.”
The reported value of objects “inevitably shapes the way
we look, perhaps sometimes in stunned disbelief,” says Lynn
Gumpert, director of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.
“It makes us look two or three times at something that we
might not have paid attention to. It makes us rethink our judgment.”
More than one expert used the reality-TV analogy to explain how
the current market is affecting the way people view art. “It
is hard to look at a newcomer and not try to envision the market
potential—not only on the basis of the work but on the personal
circumstances of the artist,” says Ron Warren, director
of the Mary Boone Gallery. “Reality shows are perpetuating
the fallacy that everything is a contest and, more significantly,
that every viewer has a stake in the outcome. The question then
is whether one has a stake in looking at art or an interest in
it.”
Market shifts seem to happen with greater velocity nowadays, observes
New York dealer Marianne Boesky. “What I find interesting
today is that consensus among critics, curators, and certain key
collectors can jump-start a brand-new career overnight and can
resurrect a quiet, long-standing career equally fast.” As
examples, Boesky points to Richard Prince and Richard Tuttle.
Prince “had a steady and strong core following, but only
in the last few years of a very long career have we seen his market
appear to escalate overnight.” Prince’s top ten auction
prices—the highest of which was $2.25 million for Tender
Nurse (2002)—have all been achieved in the past two years.
Boesky says Tuttle is also “someone with a sophisticated,
more under-the-radar following who in the past few years has seen
a jump in demand and price point.”
Immediate market success can have a dangerous effect on younger
artists, particularly those fresh out of graduate programs, who
seem to be under increasing pressure to meet exhibition and art-fair
demands. Richard Solomon, president of Pace Prints and a former
president of the Art Dealers Association of America, says the
growing number of art fairs is “detrimental to artists’
careers and to the whole perception of the health of the art market.”
Traditionally, says Solomon, most galleries hold exhibitions of
their artists roughly every year to a year and a half. “It
takes that much time for an artist to develop a body of work.”
With the demand for exhibitions and art fairs “every two
months, it’s just not possible for quality to be maintained.”
In addition, the proliferation of gallery waiting lists—and
the demands they place on artists—has also become a source
of art-world debate. “It has to have some effect on artistic
production,” says New York–based art adviser Mark
Fletcher. “I think it would be very difficult for a young
artist to say ‘no’ when the market is saying ‘yes.’”
Goodrow adds that waiting lists mean an artist “is caged
in,” since collectors want something in the same style they
already know. “If artists have to stick to that style, it
blocks the path of developme
nt.”
Fletcher says he fears that the market’s high-speed consumption
will limit artists, particularly figurative painters, from having
enough time to develop and experiment. “I would be very
careful about overzealously supporting painters at that early
stage of their career,” he says. “They need years
and years of time in the studio to understand the properties of
paint and to advance their language.”
Younger artists and dealers, however, are cautious about the whims
of the market. “No one wants to be a market darling,”
insists New York gallery owner Zach Feuer, who represents artists
including Jules de Balincourt, Danica Phelps, Dana Schutz, and
Phoebe Washburn. Everyone wants to sell enough of his or her work
to survive, he says, but “no one wants that kind of attention.”
Market success changes “how the work is read,” says
Feuer. “I feel like there is a backlash to artists who are
accepted in the marketplace. People suddenly criticize them as
being filled with hype and forget to look at the painting.”
As examples, he cites Schutz and painter John Currin, whose provocative
work has achieved overwhelming market success but has frequently
sparked heated debate among critics, curators, and dealers.
The big question remains, does market demand for a particular
medium influence what artists make?
Nowadays you see a lot more figurative paintings at galleries
and museums, says one art dealer, because that is what the market
is demanding. Dean Valentine, a Los Angeles–based media
entrepreneur who is on the ARTnews list of the top 200 collectors,
thinks the effects are already visible. “There are a lot
of third-rate, junky figurative paintings,” he says, describing
them as “Neo Rauch knockoffs.”
Of course, the copycat factor is nothing new. As William Feaver,
a critic and London correspondent for ARTnews, observes, “There
are always the followers-on, the parasites, who try to latch onto
someone who seems to be successful.” Feaver says there is
an “awful lot of imitation” of artists like Damien
Hirst or Andy Warhol, “who exploit their brand very vigorously.
You can always spot them as being sequels or a ripoff, kind of
a secondhand version with something gimmicky—like sticking
nails into yourself.”
Some artists seek ways around the constraints of market value
altogether. Talking to London’s Observer last March, artist
Jan Fabre said he stopped making salable objects and turned instead
to performances. “You do a theatrical piece, and after two
hours it has no economic value at all. I find that beautiful.”
Eileen Kinsella is editor of ARTnewsletter.
