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the art market ・exclusive, with controlled access

While a “mature” market may be “fair” and present an even playing field for all market participants, the art market remains “exclusive,” with access controlled by market participants.

Five panelists who met during Art Basel to discuss the art market turned their attention to a number of topics, including market-defined hierarchies and market-controlled access.

I quote from the article that appeared in Artsy as the words are fun, worth reading in the original, and insightful:

Rennie, the veteran collector, described visiting Mary Boone’s gallery [Mary Boone Gallery] in the early 1990s, dressed in a ripped ski jacket, and asking two young men standing behind a desk and a woman sitting behind a typewriter whether Mary was in. Both men said no. As Rennie began to explain who he was and why he was visiting, the woman behind the typewriter jumped up, extended a hand and said, “Hi Bob, I’m Mary Boone.” That kind of selective attention, he said, happens routinely in the art world.

Further along in his collecting career, in 1999, Rennie said, things changed “very clearly” for him and his wife, after they acquired Mike Kelley’s John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including The Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle).

“I found that when I mentioned that, I got into the club,” he said. “We all of a sudden got access to works that other collectors couldn’t be the custodians of.” He challenged anyone listening to “try and get a Mark Bradford.” You can’t, he said, unless you have a relationship with museums or an existing collection deemed strong or important enough to merit the opportunity to buy one of his works.

Observed Olav Velthuis of the University of Amsterdam,

“It is that part of the market that makes it attractive to people, the whole spiel about the waiting lists, and about getting access and not getting access.”

The art market presents a “a status mechanism,” an indicator of where people “are in this global cultural elite.”

See:

“The Art Market Has Changed Dramatically – But Is It a Mature Industry?” | Anna Louie Sussman, Artsy, 8 July 2017

#art #artmarket #realestate  #collecting #collections #ArtBasel #luxury #smartluxury

 

 

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Andrew Goldstein on Great Art @ Art Basel

Andrew Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of Artnet and formerly of Artspace, pronounces on “the ten best artworks at Art Basel 2017.”

Included are Francis Bacon’s painting “Study from the Human Body – Figure in Movement” (1982), offered by the Marlborough Gallery, New York, for $25 million and  Christopher Wool’s sculpture”Untitled” (2014), offered by Luhring Augustine, New York, for $2.2 million.

Mr. Goldstein observes that Bacon’s “Study from the Human Body – Figure in Movement,” obtained by the gallery directly from Francis Bacon just before he passed away,  features

“marquee elements of a major Bacon—the spooky transparent box (evoked memorably in the new “Twin Peaks”), vigorous coloration, and mutant figure in apparent agony—the painting advances Bacon’s interest in the body in movement, a subject he often painted from photos in sporting magazines.”

Of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled,” Mr. Goldstein recounts the inspiration that led the artist towards “a new way to translate his painterly aesthetics into sculpture”:

“some years back, the artist Christopher Wool was walking the wide streets of Marfa, Texas, when he came across an unusual tumbleweed that had formed in the desert out of barbed wire. Looping and gnarly, it reminded him of his abstract paintings …”

See:

“The Best 10 Artworks at Art Basel 2017” | Andrew Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief, Artnet, 14 June 2017

#art #contemporaryart  #artcollections #artmarket #FrancisBacon #ChristopherWool #MarlboroughGallery #LuhringAugustine #Artnet #Artspace #collections #collecting #realestate #ArtBasel